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| Kenneth Bandler |
The finding is in the latest index of Arab-Jewish Relations in Israel, an annual survey conducted by Professor Sammy Smooha since 2003. When he first posed the Holocaust question in 2006, 28 percent of Arab citizens doubted its authenticity.
Holocaust denial is prevalent across the Arab and Muslim worlds. Iran’s regime, especially President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made questioning the Holocaust a centerpiece of its ideology, rarely missing an opportunity to proclaim falsehoods about one of the most thoroughly documented periods in history.
In Gaza and West Bank schools administered by the Palestinian Authority, the Nazi campaign to murder 6 million Jews still is not taught. Here, as with the Iranian regime, truth is debunked to advance political goals.
Israeli Arabs, comprising 20 percent of the population, do learn about the Holocaust in school. They live in a country where the premier Holocaust memorial and remembrance institution, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, is frequented by school groups and dignitaries visiting from around the world. And in Israel, many are likely to encounter in public older Jews with numbers on their arms. So how can a significant percentage of Israeli Arabs be so unaware?
“It is important that Arab students visit Yad Vashem to be exposed to the scale of the tragedy,” Ali Haider, co-director of Sikkuy, a leading nonprofit advocating for greater equality between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens, told me.
With all the resources readily available in Israel, why even three years ago did more than a quarter of the country’s Arab citizens doubt the Holocaust? What underlies the surge of 12 percent reflected in the new survey? Further, according to Smooha, 37 percent of Arabs with higher education are among the deniers.
Do they honestly believe the Holocaust is a fraud, or is the reaction politically motivated?
“It can be seen that some of the frustration experienced by the Arab citizens from the failure to achieve equality engenders a resistance to recognizing the Holocaust,” said Haider.
The observation has validity for Smooha, who says, “When they say, ‘There was no Holocaust,’ they are protesting. They are saying ‘I am not giving legitimacy to the Jewish state.’ ”
The survey also found a significant drop in the percentage of Israeli Arabs who recognize Israel’s right to exist as an independent state, from 81.1 percent in 2003 to 53.7 percent in 2009.
Jewish-Arab relations in Israel have long been complicated. Arab citizens enjoy the fruits of Israeli democracy, including the right to vote and serve in the Knesset. But longstanding economic and social inequities, notably unequal budgets allocated to Jewish and Arab communities, have dampened their aspirations of becoming full participants in Israeli society.
Frustrations are deepened by political developments, including the impasse in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the 2006 Lebanon War, the government’s failure to implement recommendations of the Orr Commission — created in the wake of the police shootings of a dozen Arab citizens in 2000 — and, most recently, Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party’s efforts to introduce legislation aimed at the Arab minority.
Israeli Arabs understandably are unlikely to embrace “Hatikvah” and other symbols as the Jewish majority does, but disputing a historical foundation of the state is troubling.
Refuting Israel’s legitimacy by denying the Holocaust must be emphatically countered. Israel’s Arab citizens presumably could help. After all, Israeli Arabs, especially the younger generations who grew up in Israel and are fluent in Hebrew, are best positioned of any Arabs tounderstand the Jewish psyche.
On the other hand, Israeli Arabs know which emotional buttons to press if some choose to hurt the Jewish majority without using violence. Responding to a survey questioner is one tactic and, in this instance, led to headlines emphasizing the hurtful result on the Holocaust.
None of this can fully explain or excuse the evidence of Holocaust denial in Israel’s Arab community. Can it be dismissed as a form of protest by a minority seeking to improve its lot in Israeli society? Or is it more ominous, a worrisome trend aimed at allying with forces seeking to deligitimize — and ultimately eliminate — Israel?
The kernel of doubt, if nurtured, can grow into a mighty myth and expand. What Smooha’s survey has revealed needs urgent attention by Arabs and Jews, working in their own communities as well as together.
Kenneth Bandler is director of communications for the American Jewish Committee.
I like 2 think that all arguments of crime and misslead statments asd lies or as myth be challenged. the hollocoust has been growing in stature for 60 odd years and its never the same it varies so much that i for one have leant the truth is always static . if i was listening to conman variation of a given fact or supposedly fact id ? the validity. Im white and an arian protistant broughht up to tell truths as god would expect of me
PALESTINIAN AND JEWISH ROOTS.
The Jews have been deceiving the world with blatant lies, incessant
propaganda, and biblical mythology, for centuries.
FACT 1: Palestine is not the ancestral land of the Jews.
The Hebrew patriarch Abraham migrated to Palestine (known as
Canaan), from Ur (Iraq), looking for greener pastures. The ancestral
home of the Jews was in Mesopotamia (Iraq).
The Israelites’ historical connection with Palestine has always been
as foreign invaders, foreign settlers (migrants), transient traders, and land thieves.
FACT 2: Palestinians have lived in Palestine (known as the land of
Canaan, in ancient times), for thousands of years. In biblical times,
Palestinians were called “Philistines”. The famous biblical giant Goliath was a Palestinian.
FACT 3: The Israelites (biblical Jews), created a GOD (Yahweh) in their own image; in order to justify their racism, their arrogance, their cruelty, and their land-stealing aspirations.
In other words, Jews are the “Chosen” by a False God of their own
choosing.
The TRUE GOD (the Omnipotent Creator of the Universe) is not a racist who discriminates against his own children. The TRUE GOD abhors violence, injustice, cruelty, wars, barbarism, land stealing, and racism.
Jews love all those things. So, how can they claim to be “God’s chosen people”?
Which God are they talking about? Is “Yahweh” another name for “the
Devil”, “Satan”, or “Lucifer”?
FACT 4: The majority of the Israelis are not TRUE SEMITES. They are the descendants of the KHAZARS who lived in the Northern Caucasus, along the Caspian Sea. The KHAZARS discarded their Tengri Shamanist religion and adopted Judaism during the eighth century.
FACT 5: Jews are not the only Semites in the world. Arabs are also Semites because, like the Jews, they are the descendants of SHEM (one of Noah’s three sons).
Jews show their abysmal ignorance, and crass stupidity, when they accuse the Semite Arabs of anti-Semitism! It is not bad enough that they have monopolized God, by creating a FALSE GOD (Yahweh), now they want to monopolize a racial identity (Semite), by stealing the racial heritage of millions of Arabs!
This is the result of four thousand years of inbreeding.
Len Giles