Gilbert Achcar – The Arabs and the Holocaust
This book is myth-dispelling of the highest order. It takes long held prejudices of Arab-Jewish relations and turns them upside down. The central theme of Holocaust reactions in the Arab world is an area that has required some tidying up over the years and here we have it. He recognises that now Holocaust denial is common throughout the middle east, and surmises that this is a reaction to events than a genuine belief. How does one go about hurting the people of Israel when all recourse to action has been taken away, you revert to name calling.
Where this book excels is its analysis of Arab reactions at the time of the Shoah, as well as prior and post hoc. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in his anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi discourse was the exception to, rather than example of, the rule followed by many in the Arab world with regard to the Jewish Holocaust of World War II.
The shadow of Palestinian nationalism, rather than being the elephant in the room, is the explanation for subsequent attitudes. Arab leaders at the time were not averse to Jewish immigration but they believed this to be a shared burden. The request was for western nations such as The US and Britain to take their fair share of the refugees. Due to their own intolerance of Jews these nations took far fewer than they should have, even when they knew the level to which German intolerance had got. It is documented meticulously with statements from Zionist leaders during the war who in certain ways supported Nazi behaviour since they knew that such persecution in the end would push them straight in to the protecting arms of the Zionists who even then wished to colonise Palestine from “the river to the sea”.
The Nakba vs the Shoah is an unending argument. Statistically we all know which was worse, but both sides invoke the right and refusal of language when it comes to such terms. Indeed Israeli ministers routinely threaten a “shoah” on the Arabs of Palestine. Likewise Palestinian leaders call in to question the number of people killed in the Holocaust. This tit-for-tat is essentially a pathetic attempt at reduction and impact. One tried to keep its sacred tradition of victimhood while the other uses primitive playground taunts as a substitute for power.
This book offers no answers to the current problems in the middle east but it does set the record straight on the history of Arab Holocaust denial. The only group that advocates it are the pan-Islamists who we now call fundamentalists, but who are also part of regimes that we in the west, as well as Israel have propped up for decades under the “anything-but-communism” polices of the Cold War. Now these regimes are biting modernity in the posterior and they have become the enemy that most sensible people always knew they would.
Real Arab national leaders of war-time nations and people in the middle east were incredibly sympathetic to the plight of the Jews in Europe and stood aside their fellow Semites in condemning the German atrocities. Indeed many Muslims risked their own lives to protect those of the Jews in various occupied territories. They saw the Germans as the next great colonial power, knowing that under Nazi rule they would be no better than under British rule and possibly worse. This is an excellent and well researched work with the references running to scores of pages, the bibliography likewise. Well worth reading for anyone who wants a clearer understanding of modern middle-eastern history.
Sarah
redosiris
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