My family were ordinary folk \u2013 \u2018twice-a-year Jews\u2019 we used to call them. But like most of us second and third generation, upwardly mobile, North London Jews, our Jewishness filled our lives. And, at that time, that meant Zionism and the Holocaust. For me, my family and our friends, a post-Holocaust Israel meant quite simply \u2018never again\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n But, while seemingly ordinary, my family was also rather extraordinary. My father was unusually tolerant and free-thinking, and my mother too was unusually lively in her thinking. A born rebel, there was nothing she loved more than to burst a balloon. As for me, I started off, first as the family tsaddik \u2013<\/em> awfully concerned with God and my Jewishness (though always strangely at odds with other Jews) –\u00a0then the family dissident-intellectual. By young adulthood, you would have found me somewhere on the Zionist left \u2013 unquestioning in my support for the Jewish state but wishing it would not behave quite so badly and stop embarrassing me in front of my friends. However, when it came to the Holocaust, my faith was unwavering.<\/span><\/p>\n This is me in 1978 at Yad Vashem:<\/span><\/p>\n Then through the museum and its unfolding narrative: Concentration, Deportation, Selection, Extermination. It wears you out, it really does. Like countless others, we stand dumb in front of the little slave-labourer\u2019s shoe in the glass case and also like countless others, we know we\u2019ve had enough.<\/span><\/p>\n Then to the shrine itself: The bunker with its dulled metal floor, off-centre the smoky flame flickers, through the hole in the roof, a trickle of black smoke, a world destroyed. Then outside, from the gloom into the brilliant Mid-Eastern sunshine and up the few steps, and there it is: after the fall, redemption and the future \u2013 the blazing panorama of Jewish Jerusalem. We Jews really do do these things awfully well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n From We Stand with Israel <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/a>by Paul Eisen<\/span><\/p>\n That was 1978 and I didn\u2019t then know what I now know: that, as I came out of that bunker\u00a0– that universally\u00a0 known symbol of Jewish suffering, and took in that perfect view –\u00a0I was looking straight at that completely unknown symbol of Palestinian suffering, the village of Deir Yassin. Of course, I didn\u2019t know then about Deir Yassin, and even if I had known, I probably wouldn\u2019t have much cared.<\/span><\/p>\n Thinking back, I suspect my response would have been something like: Ah yes, Deir Yassin, the one stain on an otherwise unblemished Zionist record. (The line had come, pretty much verbatim from my reading (age eleven) of the blockbuster Exodus<\/em>.) And anyway, I would have reasoned, was not the fevered anguish of the Zionist leadership (later referred to by me as \u2018Jewish breast-beating\u2019)<\/em> yet more evidence of an essential Jewish moral grandeur?<\/span><\/p>\n Sure, I\u2019d known about Deir Yassin \u2013 both the village and the massacre \u2013 but I had not known, nor probably wanted to know, about the close to five hundred other destroyed or depopulated Palestinian villages or about the seventy known massacres which accompanied the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.<\/span><\/p>\n Like the child who does not, cannot, or will not see the lamb chops on his plate as skipping round the farmyard, so for now, I did not, could not and would not see those refugees, terrorists or biblical shepherds on my TV screen as those same folk \u2013 those safely de-personalized and de-humanized \u2018Arabs\u2019 \u2013 who had lived in what was, and as far as I was concerned, had always been, Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n But I must not blame myself. I do not blame myself. Even after digging through the accumulated layers of indoctrination to which any Jewish child could expect to be subjected, this was still some story. After two thousand years of exile, an ancient people return to their ancient homeland \u2013 a land given to them by God, or, (for the more secular amongst us), by History.<\/span><\/p>\n Because mine was no run-of-the-mill Zionism. What was claimed by so many Jews (particularly of the anti-Zionist, Marxist variety) to be an essentially political ideology, just a Jewish version of imperialism or an add-on – an essentially practical solution to an ever-present anti-Semitism, was for me \u2013 and I now know, deep-down, for most Jews \u2013 a deep, emotional, spiritual, even religious affiliation. For my Zionism was a true sense of my Jewishness \u2013 a feeling that came deep from within Jewish history and even destiny \u2013 a feeling that I, with all Jews, had stood at the foot of Mount Sinai and, also with all Jews, had marched through history \u2013 a history which, at the time, I had not yet dreamt of questioning.<\/span><\/p>\n But question it I did. Here I am again in 1996 on the phone to the first name listed under \u201cPalestine\u201d \u2013 PSC: the Palestine Solidarity Campaign:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHello, look, I\u2019m doing a bit of research, trying to find the name of a Palestinian village on the site of a particular kibbutz\u2026I used to stay there\u2026.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhich one?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sorry…?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhich kibbutz?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYad David. It\u2019s in the north, about five miles from….\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHang on\u2026..\u201d Then fifteen seconds later\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s al Zawiyyeh\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cHow did you do that?<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got a list\u2026 It\u2019s from a book. It lists all the villages…\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cCan I get a copy?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWell, you may get it in a couple of bookshops… Try Al Hoda on the Charing Cross Road.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0One hour later I arrived at the Al Hoda Islamic bookshop in the Charing Cross Road and headed for the shelves marked ISRAEL(OCCUPIED PALESTINE). This is heady stuff, and there\u2019re some interesting things too, \u201cThe Zionist in Literature\u201d is one, with an intriguing essay on Ari Ben Canaan, which I really must read sometime, but nothing really on the villages. Most of it\u2019s about this-way-to-peace or that-way-to-peace, so I\u2019m there about three quarters of an hour before I find what I came for. It\u2019s been misplaced on the wrong shelf \u2013 so that\u2019s why I missed it, and it looks like it\u2019s been there for quite a time. Not surprising, when I see the forty-five pound price tag. But it is what I\u2019ve come for, All That Remains by Whalid Khalidi, with the names, locations and the fate of four hundred and sixteen Palestinian villages destroyed since 1948.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cBy the end of the 1948 war, hundreds of entire villages had not only been depopulated but obliterated, travellers of Israeli roads and highways can see traces of their presence that would escape the notice of the casual passer-by: a fenced-in area, often surmounting a gentle hill, of olive and other fruit trees left untended, of cactus hedges and domesticated plants run wild. Now and then a few crumbled houses are left standing, a neglected mosque or church, collapsing walls along the ghost of a village lane, but in the vast majority of cases, all that remains is a scattering of stones and rubble across a forgotten landscape.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n There are photos too, mainly of piles of rubble, which, to tell the truth, are a bit disappointing. After all, when you\u2019ve seen one pile of rubble\u2026 a few stones\u2026 rubble\u2026deserted site\u2026 rubble, overgrown with thorny plants\u2026 rubble\u2026 a few carob trees, piles of stones, crumbling terraces\u2026 rubble\u2026 a few stones\u2026 no landmarks\u2026 rubble\u2026rubble\u2026 rubble.<\/span><\/p>\n But then there is something. As I hold the book in my hands it\u2019s as if I\u2019m holding something important, a record, a testimonial, a symbol of resistance, if you like.<\/span><\/p>\n I move on to the business at hand. District of Tiberias, 23 out of 26 villages destroyed\u2026 District of Bisan, all 28 villages destroyed\u2026 District of Safed, 68 out of 75 villages\u2026 Safed! Yad David is near Safed. Then I spot something\u2026 Kfar Yitzhak\u2026 I know that place. It\u2019s a couple of kilometres from Yad David. I used to cycle there\u2026 Founded in 1943 on the site of the village of Qaytiyya\u2026 population predominantly Muslim\u2026 from agriculture and animal husbandry\u2026 had its own grain mill\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n \u2026at midnight June 5th 1949 army trucks encircled the village and Israeli troops swept down\u2026 rounded up the villagers and dumped them on a hillside south of Safed\u2026 villagers treated with brutality\u2026 kicks and curses\u2026 All that remains are a few stones\u2026 much of the lands absorbed by the settlement of Kefar Yitzhak\u2026<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>I\u00a0cannot believe what I\u2019m reading, but I manage to turn the page just one more time and see what I\u2019ve come here for:<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cYad David\u2026 founded in 1946 one kilometre north of the village of al Zawiyyeh\u2026The village now lies under the cotton fields of Yad David.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n As I\u2019m going out, I show the man the slip of paper on which I\u2019ve written the name al Zawiyyeh and I ask what it means. He looks at the paper. \u201cCorner?\u201d He says as if asking me whether such a thing could really be so. Then, as I\u2019m leaving and just as an afterthought I ask:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s this word I keep seeing. Nakba. What does it mean?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cal Nakba\u2026 the Catastrophe \u201c\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n From \u201c1996\u201dby Paul Eisen<\/span><\/p>\n In 1998, I met Dan McGowan founder of the Palestinian solidarity organisation \u201cDeir Yassin Remembered,\u201d but not once in our short conversation or in the extended interview he gave afterwards did Dan mention the proximity of Deir Yassin to Yad Vashem. I read about that later, in the leaflet Dan gave me, on the London Underground, somewhere between Gloucester Road and Holloway Road.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe Holocaust museum is beautiful, and the message \u2018never to forget man\u2019s inhumanity to man\u2019 is timeless. The children\u2019s museum is particularly heart-wrenching; in a dark room filled with candles and mirrors, the names of Jewish children who perished in the Holocaust are read aloud with their places of birth. Even the most callous person is brought to tears. Upon exiting this portion of the museum, a visitor is facing north and is looking directly at Deir Yassin. There are no markers, no plaques, no memorials, and no mention from any tour guide. But for those who know what they are looking at, the irony is breathtaking.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n From “Deir Yassin Remembered” by Dan McGowan<\/span><\/p>\n For Dan, a conservative American patriot, no more was needed than to note both the fact and the irony. But for me, with my leanings and obsessions, searching as I was for some meaning to the jumbled mass of my Jewish childhood and to the Holocaust, Israel and Palestine, it was epiphany. Deir Yassin was one thing but Deir Yassin in clear sight of Yad Vashem<\/em> was quite another.<\/span><\/p>\n Of course, it was only much later, long after I had begun to think, write and speak about these things, that I was able to properly articulate even to myself that it was precisely this \u2018breathtaking irony\u2019 of Dan\u2019s that had so held my attention. But even if I didn\u2019t then know it, I certainly hung onto it \u2013 from that moment I was a messenger who had found his message.<\/span><\/p>\n And takers there were a-plenty. Palestinians, long resigned to Jewish suffering being placed at the centre of their own tragedy, were still pleased with the surge of publicity that the story and the resulting Jewish participation brought to their cause, and Jews were, as ever, delighted to have themselves and their suffering once more centre-stage. Deir Yassin gave Palestinians a new and effective narrative for resistance, and Jews an activism, sufficiently challenging to seem courageous and meaningful, but not so challenging as to necessitate any loosening of tribal bonds. And the rest \u2013 the Christians, the Marxists and the various non-aligned \u2013 well, as usual, they just went along with the Jews.<\/span><\/p>\n Now I had it all \u2013 Palestinian suffering\/Jewish suffering, ab\u00adused\/ab\u00aduser. Okay, so, my much-loved Jewish victim was now the perpetrator but no matter, Deir Yassin could be viewed only from Yad Vashem \u2013 and the suffering of the Palestinian people could be seen only through the prism of my beloved Jewish suffering.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0Unfortunately or fortunately (it really does go both ways) it didn\u2019t stop there. Here I am in 2004:<\/span><\/p>\n It is understandable that Jews might believe that their suffering is greater, more mysterious and meaningful than that of any other people. It is even understandable that Jews might feel that their suffering can justify the oppression of another people. What is harder to understand is why the rest of the world has gone along with it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And…<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0That Jews have suffered is undeniable. But acknowledgement of this suffering is rarely enough. Jews and others have demanded that not only should Jewish suffering be acknowledged, but that it also be accorded special status.<\/span><\/p>\n Jewish suffering is held to be unique, central and most importantly, mysterious. Jewish suffering is rarely measured against the sufferings of other groups. Blacks, women, children, gays, workers, peasants, minorities of all kinds, all have suffered, but none as much as Jews. Protestants at the hands of Catholics, Catholics at the hands of Protestants, pagans and heretics, all have suffered religious persecution, but none as relentlessly as Jews. Indians, Armenians, gypsies and aborigines, all have been targeted for elimination, but none as murderously and as premeditatedly as Jews.<\/span><\/p>\n Jewish suffering is held to be mysterious, and beyond explanation. Context is rarely examined. The place and role of Jews in society \u2013 their historical relationships with Church and state, landlords and peasantry \u2013 is hardly ever subject to scrutiny, and, whilst non-Jewish attitudes to Jews are the subject of intense interest, Jewish attitudes to non-Jews are rarely mentioned. Attempts to confront these issues are met with suspicion, and sometimes hostility, in the fear that explanation may lead to rationalisation, which may lead to exculpation, and then even to justification.<\/span><\/p>\n From <\/span>Speaking the Truth to Jews <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/a>by Paul Eisen<\/span><\/p>\n And again a few months later…<\/span><\/p>\n The issue (of Jewish suffering) is complex and cannot be fully debated or decided here, but the following points may stimulate thought and discussion.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0During even the most terrible times of Jewish suffering such as the Crusades or the Chmielnitzky massacres of seventeenth century Ukraine, and even more so at other times in history, it has been said that the average peasant would have given his eye-teeth to be a Jew. The meaning is clear: generally speaking, and throughout most of their history, the condition of Jews was often far superior to the mass of the population.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0The above-mentioned Ukrainian massacres took place in the context of a peasant uprising against the oppression of the Ukrainian peasantry by their Polish overlords. As has often been the case, Jews were seen as occupying a traditional position of being in alliance with the ruling class in their oppression of the peasantry. Chmielnitzky, the leader of this popular uprising, is today a Ukrainian national hero, not for his assaults on Jews (there are even references to his having offered poor Jews to join the uprising against their exploitative co-religionists \u2013 the Jews declined) but for his championing of the rights of the oppressed Ukrainians. Again, the inference is plain: outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence, though never justified, have often been responses to Jewish behaviour both real and imaginary.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0In the Holocaust three million Polish Jews died, but so did three million non-Jewish Poles<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0Similarly, the Church burned Jews for their dissenting beliefs but then the church burned everyone for their dissenting beliefs. So again, the question must be asked: what\u2019s so special about Jewish suffering?<\/span><\/p>\n And…<\/span><\/p>\n The Holocaust, the paradigm for all anti-Semitism and all Jewish suffering, is treated as being beyond examination and scrutiny. Questioning the Holocaust narrative is, at best, socially unacceptable, leading often to social exclusion and discrimination, and, at worst, in some places is illegal and subject to severe penalty. Holocaust revisionist scholars, named Holocaust deniers by their opponents, have challenged this. They do not deny a brutal and extensive assault on Jews by the Nazi regime, but they do deny the Holocaust narrative as framed by present day establishments and elites. Specifically, their denial is limited to three main areas. First, they deny that there ever was an official plan on the part of Hitler or any other part of the Nazi regime systematically and physically to eliminate every Jew in Europe; second, they deny that there ever existed homicidal gas-chambers; third, they claim that the numbers of Jewish victims of the Nazi assault have been greatly exaggerated.<\/span><\/p>\n But none of this is the point. Whether those who question the Holocaust narrative are revisionist scholars striving to find the truth and are shamelessly persecuted for opposing a powerful faction, or whether they are crazy Jew-haters denying a tragedy and defaming its victims, the fact is that one may question the Armenian genocide, one may freely discuss the Slave Trade, one can say that the murder of millions of Ibos, Kampucheans and Rwandans never took place and that the moon is but a piece of green cheese floating in space, but one may not question the Jewish Holocaust. Why? Because, like the rest of the Jewish history of suffering, the Holocaust underpins the narrative of Jewish innocence, which is used to bewilder and befuddle any attempt to see and to comprehend Jewish power and responsibility in Israel\/Palestine and elsewhere in the world.
\nFrom<\/span><\/p>\n