The Middle East Conflict, Antisemitism and the Holocaust

Frequently it is asserted that the Palestinians and Arabs are paying for the Holocaust. This claim, however, has no foundation in the historical record. Certainly it is the Jews who paid for the Holocaust with the blood of some six million innocent victims - not the perpetrators, not the bystanders and not Arabs in Palestine or anywhere else.

Alleging that the Palestinians are paying for the Holocaust falsely presupposes that the Jewish tie to the Land of Israel became significant only in the wake of the Nazi attempt to eradicate the Jews. It overlooks the ancient and ceaseless connection...

Recently, yet another Hamas spokesperson compared the situation in Gaza to events during the Holocaust. Coming from an official who represents a body that unabashedly declares its commitment to terrorism and the destruction of Israel, this is in itself not surprising. Echoed last week by Libya's deputy UN Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi in a meeting of the UN Security Council a body whose members are officially dedicated to maintaining peace such assessments are even more distressing. The ubiquitous use of Holocaust imagery in the propaganda efforts of Hamas and other organizations is dangerous...

Yad Vashem, as you know, is dedicated to memorialization, education, and research on the genocide of the Jews, which we call Holocaust, or Shoah, a word which means ‘catastrophe’. The denial of the Holocaust as proposed by the ‘conference’ that just took place in Tehran, has been with us since the Holocaust itself, when, as we know from testimonies of survivors, the concentration guards used to tell the inmates that even if they survived, no one would believe in their testimonies. The background of denial has been, for the past sixty years, the desire to justify the National...

The twentieth century was replete with superfluous wars, so much so that today many people in the West have developed a well intentioned and deeply ingrained knee jerk reaction against all wars. In the age of “post” everything, awareness of history and recognition of the crucial role of context for understanding our world have been largely eschewed for a fragmented and disjointed approach that leads to distortion, and confusion, and has greatly impaired our ability to make meaningful comparisons. Coupled with this “post” mentality, the strong strain of indiscriminate pacifism...

I. Introduction
As a result of the enormous suffering inflicted upon the world by the Nazi regime, and especially Europe, a number of European countries have enacted laws criminalizing both the denial of the Holocaust and the promotion of Nazi ideology.The aim of these laws is to prevent the resurrection of Nazism in Europe by stamping out at the earliest opportunity – or to use the phrase “to nip it in the bud” – any public reemergence of Nazi views, whether through speech, symbols, or public association.Individuals and groups today promoting Nazism, often called neo-Nazis,...

As an historian of the Holocaust, the idea of legislating historical truth does not sit well with me. History is a subject of academic inquiry in which there are often divergent opinions. Having and expressing different ideas lie at the heart of academic freedom. What is being said by a scholar of history can really only be measured by one criteria – is it anchored in the documentation and is the interpretation being offered as unbiased as possible? As far as the members of the general public are concerned, when they are discussing history, a similar rule of thumb should apply – do...

On January 27, 1945, the Red Army liberated the concentration and death camp of Auschwitz. This was not the end of the slaughter of World War II, which cost the lives of some 35 million people, most of them civilians. The war was to continue for over three months more. Some ten days prior to the liberation of Auschwitz, 58.000 inmates were marched away because the Nazis did not want them to fall alive into the hands of the liberators; instead, they had to go on what has become known as the Death Marches. Over half of them would die as a result. They left behind the ashes and bones of over a million...

Philosophy that attributes a person or group’s character, abilities, appearance, intelligence, and behavior to race – usually defined as a population with traits in common. Racists divide the world into “superior” and “inferior” races, and believe that, by nature and fate, the superior peoples have the right to dominate the inferior. Before World War II racism began to exert great influence on the policies of political movements in Europe, especially those of the Nazi Party in Germany. The persecution of specific racial groups during the Holocaust, particularly...