Abu Mazen And The Holocaust

Mr.Spock · Apr 23, 2007

From speaking to recipients of this email list in a number of European countries, Australia, and South America, it has become apparent that very few people outside Israel and the U.S. have heard anything at all about the long history of Holocaust denial of Abu Mazen, the new Palestinian prime minister. A number of people, including journalists from major European newspapers, have told me that the passing reference made to Abu Mazen’s Holocaust denial in the dispatch Road map 2: “This little sliver of land called Israel” (May 25, 2003) was the only time they have heard about this aspect of Abu Mazen’s character.

Abu Mazen may yet turn out to be a peacemaker willing to genuinely recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. But in order to reach this desired goal, it is necessary for European diplomats, journalists and others not to simply ignore Abu Mazen’s long history of Holocaust denial. Abu Mazen’s record does not amount to a single pernicious reference, like those of Jean Marie Le Pen, leader of the French (neo-Fascist) National Front (“the gas chambers were a footnote of history”), or Joerg Haider, leader of the misnamed Austrian Freedom party. Abu Mazen has spent years “researching” and writing on this subject, and produced an entire body of work, with horrifying claims that go well beyond anything Le Pen or Haider have said in public.

Given this, it is strange, especially in Europe, that the world’s most prominent prime ministerial Holocaust denier is being treated with such great respect and moral authority. Why hasn’t Abbas’s main champion in Europe, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, asked him to specifically retract his statements of Holocaust denial?

The willingness of European politicians (and also many Israeli and American ones) to simply ignore Abu Mazen’s record, will not, I believe, help bring the Palestinian and Israeli people closer to peaceful coexistence.

When negotiating with Abu Mazen, politicians should ask what kind of a man would choose to write his entire PhD thesis (at Moscow’s Oriental College) on the subject and follow it up with a book in 1983, “The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and the Zionist Movement,” which denies the Holocaust occurred. Abu Mazen has never specifically repudiated his book, which purports to refute “the fantastic lie that six million Jews were killed” in the Holocaust.

Abu Mazen has written that the German gas chambers were never used to kill Jews, but only to disinfect them and to burn bodies of others to prevent the flow of disease (quoting a “scientific study” to that effect by French Holocaust-denier Robert Faurisson), and to the extent that Jews did die in World War Two (Abu Mazen cites a figure of 890,000 dead), he says this was a joint effort between Jewish leaders and the Nazis. Abu Mazen claimed that Hitler did not decide to kill the Jews until David Ben-Gurion provoked him into doing so when he [Ben-Gurion] “declared war on the Nazis” in 1942. These were not some throwaway lines, but the result of three years spent studying a pseudo-academic science. (Just in case anybody on this list needs reminding, these claims are complete nonsense.) Surely in relation to someone who lies so easily and deeply, we need to be a bit cautious as to his ability to be trusted and tell the truth.

Those few European papers that have made reference to it have done so only in brief passing (for example, the London Daily Telegraph editorial, June 5, 2003 “For a man who once questioned the Holocaust...”) Most media have not only failed to mention it, but described Abu Mazen instead only in positive terms.

* For example, a March 19 Associated Press report called him “urbane” and insisted that he was “known as a moderate and a pragmatist”. Another AP report simply referred to him as “a veteran negotiator.”

* The official BBC News Profile of Abbas (Abu Mazen) states: “A highly intellectual man, Abbas studied law in Egypt before doing a Ph.D. in Moscow. He is the author of several books.”

* The New York Times stated Abbas is “a lawyer and historian ... He holds a doctorate in history from the Moscow Oriental College; his topic was Zionism.”

In an in-depth impartial “media survey” (“World media survey: Peace Hopes Rise After Nomination Of ‘Moderate’ Abbas,” published March 13, 2003) summarizing media reports and commentary about Abu Mazen from Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia, Morocco, Syria, Germany, Russia, Hungary, China, and elsewhere, I found not a single reference to his doctoral thesis, his book, or his links to the Munich Olympic massacre.

A few “right-wing” papers not included in this survey have written about these matters (for example, The Wall Street Journal on May 1, 2003). Why not others? The fact that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell wishes to merely characterize Abu Mazen as a “gentleman” doesn’t mean the media should not be a little more thorough in its reporting.

Meanwhile a number of publications continue to take every opportunity to slander the Israeli prime minister with a mix of selective reporting, distortions and half-truths. Profiles of Ariel Sharon on the BBC website focus on his wealth and housing purchases. Yet I have not seen a single news report outside Israel refer to the enormous wealth Abu Mazen accrued for himself using aid money from the European Union and others as Yasser Arafat’s deputy during the Oslo years, or references to his magnificent villa on the Gaza coastline.

Of course in order to reach peace, and to see to what extent Abu Mazen can be trusted, one should not simply ignore his record. To do so would be to repeat the same mistakes made with Yasser Arafat when the Clinton administration and the Israeli left placed themselves in a complete state of denial about who they were dealing with. Had they kept their eyes open, and insisted that Arafat actually abide by the commitments he had signed up to in the Oslo agreements before continuing to hand him over territory year after year during the 1990s, we might have today had a state of Israel and Palestine living alongside one another in peace. It is important to highlight this truth about Abu Mazen not to spoil the chances for peace but to help us all get there.
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http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/000032.html

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spidergoat · Apr 23, 2007

Just posting the link is sufficient, rather than quoting all that text. Do you have a particular point you want to discuss?

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Mr.Spock · Apr 23, 2007

spidergoat said: ↑

Just posting the link is sufficient, rather than quoting all that text. Do you have a particular point you want to discuss?
Click to expand...

i thought its rather obvious. abu abbas is said to be our only hope for peace...when did we came so low that our only hope is a holocaust denier? dwelling in such matters will cause me depression sooner or later.

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Abu Mazen And The Holocaust

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