Semitic Revisionism

The Jerusalem history professor Moshe Zimmermann recently presented Israel’s approach to the Holocaust in an accessible way.[1] While the Shoah played practically no role in Israeli public life until the early 1960s, this changed with the Eichmann trial in 1961. Since then, the Holocaust has become increasingly relevant in the consciousness of Israeli Jews, especially in mythical dimensions. Today, the Holocaust is perceived as the most important event in Jewish history, even before the founding of the state of modern Israel and before the acceptance of the Torah at Mount Sinai.[2] This development is accompanied by well-known media and political rituals, as well as by an Israeli school program specifically geared towards the Holocaust – including concentration camp trips to Europe by entire schools. This program is designed to achieve the almost physical identification and solidarity of young people with their own Jewish people through the close reliving of all (actual and supposed) Holocaust atrocities and the associated traumatization.[3] The Holocaust is now so ubiquitously present in Israeli society and politics that opposition Jewish groups try to fight each other with the Auschwitz cudgel.

It is now common knowledge, even in Israel, that the pillars of the State of Israel, the Jewish religion and Zionism, which supported it until the 1960s, have lost a great deal of their viability. They have been replaced by the Holocaust, which not only gives the state of Israel its raison d’être through mystical exaggeration, but is also increasingly used to legitimize Israel’s policies of whatever kind.

In response to this interview, certain circles attempted to dispute Moshe Zimmermann’s professorship through a public campaign, which was ultimately unsuccessful.

It should not be difficult for this group of critical Israelis to establish delicate contacts with dissident Jews in Western countries who do not shy away from contact with Holocaust revisionism,10 especially as the criticism of the mythologization of the Holocaust and certain Talmudic (mis)interpretations of the Torah are identical in both groups. Whether these Israeli Jews are then also prepared to criticize not only the social consequences of the mystification of the Holocaust but also the historiographical ones is to be hoped for and remains to be seen.

Jewish-Israeli Revisionism

It is clear that this development harbors dangers for Jews in general and Israel in particular. Michael Wolffsohn, for example, has pointed out that this focus on the Holocaust as a kind of secular substitute religion not only represents a worrying amputation of Judaism for its important elements of religion and nationalism, but also makes peaceful coexistence with the Germans more difficult, as Israel is increasingly dependent on Germans in general and Germany in particular as an enemy image to justify its existence.[4] Surveys confirm this fear, because even before “Mölln” and “Solingen” [major attacks against immigrants], the Germans had a very bad image in Israel, which has sunk even further in recent times.[5] Zimmermann also points out that the mythologization of the Holocaust also makes the path to normalization with the Arab world as well as to inner-Jewish pacification very difficult.[6] A further criticism of the mystification of the Holocaust is the accusation that the traumatization of the Jews prevents the perception of global political conditions in line with reality. Instead of, for example, considering the option of abandoning this piece of semi-cultivated desert in the face of increasing Islamic fundamentalization, people cling to the fiction that Israel alone can protect the Jews from a “new” Holocaust. So ideologically stubborn, they would rather be beaten to death than move to Western countries. It is precisely this behavior that offers the potential enemy Arabia the easy opportunity for “another” Holocaust. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported under the title “Jerusalem or Babylon, Israel or the Diaspora?” about Jewish dissidents in Israel who consider the state of Israel to be an abnormality that threatens the Jews as a whole and preach a retreat into the Diaspora:[7]

“Philip the Second campaigns in Israel for the return migration of Ashkenazi Jews to Europe – a program opposed to Zionism, which he calls “diasporism”. After the Second World War, Israel may have had its justification; today it is “the most serious threat to the survival of Judaism. ”

Beyond these moderate academic discourses, there is a far more radical approach to criticizing the way Jews deal with their history in general. The spokesman here is undoubtedly the chemistry professor Israel Shahak, who in his recently published book[8] confirms that the criticism of academic anti-Semitism of the Weimar period against the Jewish religion is fully justified (cf. my article in Staatsbriefe 8-9/1995). In addition, Shahak expands on chapters of Jewish history that can hardly be found in any history book. According to this, Jews loyal to the Talmud have always been able to offer themselves to the tyrants of various peoples and epochs as willing helpers in the oppression and exploitation of the most diverse peoples. As a result, the repeated pogroms against Jews appeared to be predominantly a form of resistance by the common people against their unmitigated oppressors. In connection with these observations, Shahak sharply criticizes the way in which right-wing or orthodox Jewish groups in Israel justify their racist-chauvinist policies towards non-Jews in general and Arabs in particular, in a faithful continuation of thousands of years of Jewish history with certain Talmudic interpretations of the Torah. Prof. Zimmermann has revealed in an interview that Prof. Shahak, who is much reviled by the public in Israel, is not alone in this criticism.[9] In it, he compares the ideology and practice of the politics of the extreme Israeli right with those of National Socialism. He also argues that it is more justifiable to publish Mein Kampf in Israel than the Bible, especially as only the Bible serves the far-right Israelis as the ideological basis for their politics. To assume this of Mein Kampf is absurd. In response to this interview, certain circles attempted to dispute Moshe Zimmermann’s professorship through a public campaign, which was ultimately unsuccessful.

It should not be difficult for this group of critical Israelis to establish delicate contacts with dissident Jews in Western countries who do not shy away from contact with Holocaust revisionism,[10] especially as the criticism of the mythologization of the Holocaust and certain Talmudic (mis)interpretations of the Torah are identical for both groups. Whether these Israeli Jews are then also prepared to criticize not only the social consequences of the mystification of the Holocaust but also the historiographical ones is to be hoped for and remains to be seen.

Islamic-Arab Revisionism

Until a few years ago, the Holocaust was generally regarded in Arab countries as a problem of Western countries that was only of peripheral interest, for example when Israel used the Holocaust to justify its occupation policy.[11] Criticism of the mystification of the Holocaust by the Jews and the entire Western world, as well as the resulting social and historiographical problems, was first addressed by Ahmed Rami, a Moroccan living in exile in Sweden.[12] Until 1993, he ran a small radio station in Sweden, Radio Islam, in which he mixed Holocaust revisionist statements with anti-Semitic, pan-Arab and ethnopluralist content. The station was silenced by state intervention. However, these activities quickly attracted the attention of fundamentalist Arabs, so that Ahmed Rami quickly became a sought-after speaker and columnist in these circles. The fundamentalist newspaper Al-Shaab, published twice a week in Cairo and with around two million copies the newspaper with the highest circulation in the Maghreb, published several articles on Western Holocaust revisionism for the first time in the summer and fall of 1993, including an interview with retired Major General Otto Ernst Remer[13] and Prof. Robert Faurisson.[14] As the newspaper was also read in European countries with large Muslim communities, France in particular was obviously concerned about the impact of these issues and confiscated them immediately after publication. Shortly afterwards, several journalists and leading members of the Al-Shaab editorial team were arrested by the Egyptian government and their homes were searched. Officially, the newspaper’s Islamic fundamentalist, oppositional stance served as a pretext for these reprisals, but it can be assumed that this was an anti-revisionist attempt at intimidation, possibly co-initiated by Israeli diplomatic advances.

Shortly after this closing of ranks between Western Holocaust revisionism and Islamic-Pan-Arab fundamentalism, Israel announced that it now wanted to negotiate with the PLO on an autonomous status for the Palestinians. We can only speculate as to whether these two events are causally linked, although it is not unlikely.

It must have been clear to anyone familiar with the dynamics of Islamic-Pan-Arab fundamentalism that the above-mentioned reprisals against Al-Shaab could not extinguish the embers; one need only think of the recent events in Algeria. Since 1993, Al-Shaab has also regularly dealt with Holocaust revisionist issues, above all through its European correspondent Ahmed Rami.[15] Since the fall of 1993 at the latest, the formula that Arabs see the Holocaust as a Western problem and have no affinity with revisionism is no longer true.[11] The extent to which revisionism has now taken root in Arab communities worldwide was demonstrated in the early summer of 1995 in Great Britain, when the British government was forced to revoke the license of the radio station Muslim Community Radio, which had claimed that the Holocaust never happened.[16] Shortly afterwards, the British government learned that government bans cannot suppress interesting news when the leader of the British Muslim organization Hizb ut-Tahrir declared at a press conference during a promotional event for Islam in London with 3,000 participants that the Holocaust had never taken place. Remarkably, with the exception of one Jewish organ,[17] the entire press kept silent about this event.

Now, you can take whatever view you like on Islam. The fact is that Islamic and pan-Arab leaders are increasingly recognizing that it is the mystification of the Holocaust by Israel and the Western world that runs counter to the advancement of their interests. As the Holocaust is increasingly cited as the outstanding reason for the existence of the state of Israel and thus as the justification for Western supremacy in the Middle East, Arab nationalism and radical Islam had to recognize Holocaust revisionism sooner or later as a decisive lever for asserting their interests directed against Israel and the West. It cannot therefore be ruled out that Islam is the gateway through which Holocaust revisionism will also begin its march into the Western world, since all other gates will be blocked by force. It is to be expected that the ideas that emerge among some Muslims regarding the treatment of Jewish Israelis are not always very humane, even if many a Muslim leader claims otherwise.[17]

A Basic Revisionist Consensus

As a revisionist scientist in the ethical tradition of the Christian West, one is confronted with the question of one’s own ethical responsibility in view of these developments in the Semitic peoples of the Middle East.[18] As a scientist, one is initially somewhat perplexed by the results of this Pandora’s Box that has been opened. However, here too, satisfactory results can be achieved if we critically scrutinize traditional taboos of our society, and are prepared to abandon them if necessary. This includes, for example, the fact that the existence of the State of Israel is no more a sacrilege than that of the defunct states of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia.

Israel’s state-supporting religion, Judaism, is being undermined by increasing secularization. Zionism, which gained much of its momentum from the religious identity of the Jews, is also suffering as a result. As shown, the Holocaust is increasingly replacing the weakness of these two pillars. Anti-Semitism as a source of identity and, in particular, the historically evil German as the common enemy are taking first place in the legitimization myths of the State of Israel.

It is obvious that the theological development in Israel’s Arab environment is exactly the opposite, namely an increasing orientation towards the religious roots of Islam.

Holocaust revisionism is thus destroying the only viable pillar of Israel’s identity today. It also undermines the West’s still unlimited willingness to support Israel and gives fundamentalist Islam a deadly impetus against Israel.

Western Holocaust revisionists are therefore faced with the questions: What does Israel mean to them, and how should they behave here?

Objectively speaking, Israel is a Western enclave in the Arab Orient, a foreign body similar to the Christian religious state at the time of the Crusaders. Both times it was justified on fanatical (pseudo‑)religious grounds and, thanks to the tremendous, voluntary (or suggested voluntary) efforts of the West, was maintained as a bastion against the Arabs for several decades. With the end of the religious euphoria, however, the fate of the bastion was sealed.

But can it be considered so indifferently? What would happen if Israel’s state existence were to come to an end? First of all, it is unlikely that the end of Israel will come with a big bang. Rather, Arab pressure will increase, Western support will decrease, and the willingness of the mostly European Israelis to make sacrifices for their piece of cultivated desert will dwindle, regardless of whether Holocaust revisionism prevails or not. In any case, developments must be prevented from coming to a head and, for example, leading to a war or even a nuclear conflict in this region. Furthermore, Europe and North America must be prepared to take back their sons from abroad – including and especially Germany. Hopefully this will not be a problem, because if the views of Holocaust revisionism prevail, the followers of a certain religion will not have friends everywhere. But again, there is no such thing as collective guilt, and forgiveness and mercy distinguish Christianity from “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” Judaism.

The only problem is taming the radical Arab fundamentalists, quite a few of whom want to drive the Jews all into the sea, whether physically or at least culturally. This cannot serve anyone’s interests, because anyone who pretends to be defending themselves against the one Holocaust lie is doing themselves the worst possible disservice if they plan or allow a future actual Holocaust. This is quite apart from the ethically indefensible consequences of such a radical policy.

With this in mind, we must also consider whether fruitful German-Jewish cooperation on an equal footing is possible in Central Europe in the future, indeed whether this is not the only way forward if things in the Middle East continue to develop as before.[19] What we need between non-Jewish Germans and Jews is a reconciliation based on partnership and truth as the starting point for a common, constructive future that will link us more closely together than many on both sides would perhaps like. So, we have the choice between the infinite lie here, the infinite hatred there and the attempt at a partnership-based existence in between.

The fact that there are common approaches to this path is demonstrated by the Jewish-Israeli revisionists who, like the prophets of old, are putting their finger in the festering wound of Jewish self-aggrandizement, and are thus in line with the Western and moderate Islamic-Arab revisionists who are also in dissent with the public. This should be a common starting point for shaping the future.

The road ahead is rocky. The Stuttgart Regional Court considered statements in my private documents that are similar to the above as evidence of anti-Semitism and thus as evidence of my guilt (Ref. No. 17 KLs 83/94).

Endnotes