4 May, 2014

A Palestinian’s Open Message to the Jews: Even the holocaust began with “innocuous” graffiti on walls

By Khalid Amayreh in Occupied Jerusalem

The shocking absence on the part of Jewish leaders and intellectuals in Israel and abroad to the growing Jewish terrorist campaign against the Palestinian community in the occupied territories and Israel proper is raising many eyebrows among observers and intellectuals.

Once again, we observe not only total inaction but a deafening silence among Jews toward the virtually daily hateful attacks on peaceful Arab communities on both sides of the so-called Green Line, the erstwhile armistice line between the West Bank and Israel.

These attacks include scrawling racist slogans, such as Mavet le-Arabim or “death to the Arabs” on walls and buildings. Several mosques and churches have also been torched either partially or completely. And the tires of numerous Arab-owned cars have been punctured. The perpetrators of these dastardly acts are believed to be Jewish settlers or like-minded terrorists indoctrinated in a Nazi-like ideology advocating a “final solution” for non-Jews in Israel-Palestine.

Unfortunately these manifestly criminal settlers don’t represent a small or marginal group in the Israeli Jewish society. Far from this, these people are affiliated with powerful political parties in Israel such as ha’Bayt ha’Yahudi (the Jewish Home) a chief coalition partner in the current Israeli government, headed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

This is probably the main reason why these despicable acts of terror have continued for so long without the perpetrators being apprehended or, indeed, prosecuted for their crimes. It is highly unlikely that Israel lacks the ability to capture these criminals. The truth is that Israel lacks the will and resolve to put an end to this grave phenomenon.

Needless to say, the terrorists and their supporters who are numbered in the hundreds of thousands if not in the millions have the mental willingness to commit the unthinkable against non-Jews in general and Palestinians in particular.

I was really shocked a few years ago when a rabbi I was speaking with referred to Jesus as “Hitler of Bethlehem.” The Rabbi made his obscene remarks without batting an eyelash.

Numerous other rabbis have issued implicit or explicit edicts considering non-Jewish lives devoid of sanctity. These nefarious “religious” edicts are purportedly based on Halacha or Jewish law.

In fact there are certain Jewish sects, such as Chabad, that shamelessly advocate murdering non-Jews in order to extricate their organs in case Jews needed the organs. I am not claiming that Jews everywhere believes in this blasphemy. But Jews everywhere ought to raise their voices against such evils which I believe has nothing to do with true Judaic teachings.

I am not a great expert on things Talmudic. However, I believe that a religious book that advocates the murder of people because of their religious orientation is not only despicable; it should also be discarded and burned rather unapologetically.

I am in no way interested in maligning Jews or besmirching their good name. However, I believe that Jews everywhere, especially in Israel are not doing what they must to stem the tide of Jewish hatred against the helpless Palestinian community.

These acts which we have witnessed in the past few days are not innocuous and their gravity must never be underestimated or downplayed. Jews as well as non-Jews ought to remember that the holocaust didn’t begin with Auschwitz, Mauthauzen, Bergen Belsen and other death camps. It actually began the moment anti-Jewish graffiti was scrawled on walls throughout Germany. It was only then that we had the infamous Nuremburg laws, then Kristallnacht and then the death camps.

It has been often argued that had Germans and the world community at large spoken out against the early expressions of fascism in Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s, perhaps things wouldn’t have deteriorated to what they ultimately reached and millions of lives would have been saved.

Now, must the world and Jews in particular repeat the same fateful miscalculation?

Dear Jews: Don’t let your innate defensive reflexes blind you from seeing the truth. There are amongst you, as there are amongst other peoples, people who are willing to commit the unthinkable.

This is the inevitable fruit of decades of racist indoctrination we have been hearing and watching in the synagogues and the media. Fascism in Israel is real, real, real.

Just don’t say “we didn’t know.” Because then this “we didn’t know” of yours would be no more acceptable than the German “we didn’t know.” The truth of the matter is that you do know rather well what your people are saying and doing. In fact, some of you are quite malicious since your hearts and minds are decidedly on the side of the criminals.

Don’t say Jews can’t be Nazi and can’t do Nazi acts. In the final analysis, when Jews think, behave and act like the Nazis thought, behaved and acted, they become Nazis par excellence, even if the New York Times, Washington Post and Fox News said otherwise.

Khalid Amayreh is a Palestinian journalist living in occupied Palestine.