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Fisk: When it comes to Gaza, leave the Second World War out of it

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  • Fisk: When it comes to Gaza, leave the Second World War out of it

    Robert Fisk's World: When it comes to Gaza, leave the Second World War
    out of it

    How do Holocaust survivors in Israel feel about being called Nazis?

    Saturday, 17 January 2009
    Independent.co.uk Web

    Exaggeration always gets my goat. I started to hate it back in the
    1970s when the Provisional IRA claimed that Long Kesh internment camp
    was "worse than Belsen". It wasn't as if there was anything nice about
    Long Kesh ` or the Maze prison as it was later politely dubbed ` but it
    simply wasn't as bad as Belsen. And now we're off again. Passing
    through Paris this week, I found pro-Palestinian demonstrators carrying
    signs which read "Gaza, it's Guernica" and "Gaza-sur-Glane".


    Guernica, as we all know, was the Basque city razed by the Luftwaffe in
    1937 and Oradour-sur-Glane the French village whose occupants were
    murdered by the SS in 1944. Israel's savagery in Gaza has also been
    compared to a "genocide" and ` of course ` a "holocaust". The French
    Union of Islamic Organisations called it "a genocide without precedent"
    ` which does take the biscuit when even the Pope's "minister for peace
    and justice" has compared Gaza to "a big concentration camp".

    Before I state the obvious, I only wish the French Union of Islamic
    Organisations would call the Armenian genocide a genocide ` it doesn't
    have the courage to do so, does it, because that would be offensive to
    the Turks and, well, the million and a half Armenians massacred in 1915
    happened to be, er, Christians.

    Mind you, that didn't stop George Bush from dropping the word from his
    vocabulary lest he, too, should offend the Turkish generals whose
    airbases America needs for its continuing campaign in Iraq. And even
    Israel doesn't use the word "genocide" about the Armenians lest it
    loses its only Muslim ally in the Middle East. Strange, isn't it? When
    there's a real genocide ` of Armenians ` we don't like to use the word.
    But when there is no genocide, everyone wants to get in on the act.

    Yes, I know what all these people are trying to do: make a direct
    connection between Israel and Hitler's Germany. And in several radio
    interviews this past week, I've heard a good deal of condemnation about
    such comparisons. How do Holocaust survivors in Israel feel about being
    called Nazis? How can anyone compare the Israeli army to the Wehrmacht?
    Merely to make such a parallel is an act of anti-Semitism.

    Having come under fire from the Israeli army on many occasions, I'm not
    sure that's necessarily true. I've never understood why strafing the
    roads of northern France in 1940 was a war crime while strafing the
    roads of southern Lebanon is not a war crime. The massacre of up to
    1,700 Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatila camps ` perpetrated by
    Israel's Lebanese Phalangist allies while Israeli soldiers watched and
    did nothing ` falls pretty much into the Second World War bracket.
    Israel's own estimate of the dead ` a paltry 460 ` was only nine fewer
    than the Nazi massacre at the Czech village of Lidice in 1942 when
    almost 300 women and children were also sent to Ravensbrück (a real
    concentration camp). Lidice was destroyed in revenge for the murder by
    Allied agents of Reinhard Heydrich. The Palestinians were slaughtered
    after Ariel Sharon told the world ` untruthfully ` that a Palestinian
    had murdered the Lebanese Phalangist leader Bashir Gemayel.

    Indeed, it was the courageous Professor Yeshayahu Leibovitz of the
    Hebrew University (and editor of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica) who wrote
    that the Sabra and Chatila massacre "was done by us. The Phalangists
    are our mercenaries, exactly as the Ukrainians and the Croatians and
    the Slovakians were the mercenaries of Hitler, who organised them as
    soldiers to do the work for him. Even so have we organised the
    assassins of Lebanon in order to murder the Palestinians". Remarks like
    these were greeted by Israel's then minister of interior and religious
    affairs, Yosef Burg, with the imperishable words: "Christians killed
    Muslims ` how are the Jews guilty?"

    I have long raged against any comparisons with the Second World War `
    whether of the Arafat-is-Hitler variety once deployed by Menachem Begin
    or of the anti-war-demonstrators-are-1930s-appeasers,
    most recently
    used by George Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara. And pro-Palestinian
    marchers should think twice before they start waffling about genocide
    when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem once shook Hitler's hand and said `
    in Berlin on 2 November 1943, to be precise ` "The Germans know how to
    get rid of the Jews... They have definitely solved the Jewish problem."
    The Grand Mufti, it need hardly be added, was a Palestinian. He lies
    today in a shabby grave about two miles from my Beirut home.

    No, the real reason why "Gaza-Genocide" is a dangerous parallel is
    because it is not true. Gaza's one and a half million refugees are
    treated outrageously enough, but they are not being herded into gas
    chambers or forced on death marches. That the Israeli army is a rabble
    is not in question ` though I was amused to read one of Newsweek's
    regular correspondents calling it "splendid" last week ` but that does
    not mean they are all war criminals. The issue, surely, is that war
    crimes do appear to have been committed in Gaza. Firing at UN schools
    is a criminal act. It breaks every International Red Cross protocol.
    There is no excuse for the killing of so many women and children.

    I should add that I had a sneaking sympathy for the Syrian foreign
    minister who this week asked why a whole international tribunal has
    been set up in the Hague to investigate the murder of one man `=2
    0
    Lebanese ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri ` while no such tribunal is set
    up to investigate the deaths of more than 1,000 Palestinians.

    I should add, however, that the Hague tribunal may well be pointing the
    finger at Syria and I would still like to see a tribunal set up into
    the Syrian massacre at Hama in 1982 when thousands of civilians were
    shot at the hands of Rifaat al-Assad's special forces. The aforesaid
    Rifaat, I should add, today lives safely within the European Union. And
    how about a trial for the Israeli artillerymen who massacred 106
    civilians ` more than half of them children ` at the UN base at Qana in
    1996?

    What this is really about is international law. It's about
    accountability. It's about justice ` something the Palestinians have
    never received ` and it's about bringing criminals to trial. Arab war
    criminals, Israeli war criminals ` the whole lot. And don't say it
    cannot be done. Wasn't that the message behind the Yugoslav tribunal?
    Didn't some of the murderers get their just deserts? Just leave the
    Second World War out of it.
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