Holocaust Remembrance Day Duplicity
by Stephen Lendman
Yom HaShoah/Holocaust Remembrance Day is commemorated annually. It’s on the Hebrew calendar’s 27th day.
This year it runs from sundown April 27 to sunset April 28. Its 2013 theme is “1944: From Extermination to Liberation.”
On April 27, six holocaust survivors lit torches. They did so during Yad Vashem holocaust museum ceremonies. Israeli officials laid wreaths.
Holocaust victim names were publicly recited all day. Much more takes place annually.
Never forget. Never again, was said. Hollow words. Other holocausts go unmentioned. Horrific ones exceed Hitler’s final solution. More on this below.
At 10AM local Israeli time Monday, sirens echoed across Israel. Normal activity stopped. A ritual silence followed. Radio and television stations observed it.
Holocaust imagery is duplicitous. It rationalizes occupation harshness. It ignores Israeli state terrorism.
It turns a blind eye to its decades of crimes of war, against humanity and slow-motion genocide. It promotes unique Jewish suffering.
It characterizes Hitler’s extermination policy as unparalleled. It’s mindless of far greater genocides.
During WW II, three times as many Slavs died as Jews. Native American genocide was the greatest ever by far. An estimated 100 million perished. Ritual slaughter continued for 500 years.
Tens of millions of middle passage African slave lives lost don’t matter. Nor do countless millions of corpses attesting to Washington’s post-WW II barbarity alone.
Howard Zinn said America committed “genocide brutally and purposefully.” It was done “in the name of progress.”
US leaders buried ugly truths. They did so “in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth.”
Zinn explained hundreds of years of ritual Native American slaughter. He did it from their point of view. He dispelled popular myths.
He called American slavery “the most cruel form in history: the frenzy for limitless profit that comes from capitalistic agriculture; the reduction of the slave to less than human status by the use of racial hatred, with that relentless clarity based on color, where white was master, black was slave.”
His People’s History of the United States explains what everyone needs to know. It covers what’s airbrushed from duplicitous texts.
It exposes America’s dark side. It’s worse than ever today. It threatens humanity. Popular myths ignore it.
Vulgar dishonesty exploits Jewish suffering. Palestine’s Nakba gets short shrift. Israel treats Palestinians like Hitler persecuted Jews.
Slow-motion genocide is official Israeli policy. State-sponsored viciousness reflects it. Yad Vashem ceremonies ignored it.
Mahmoud Abbas is a longtime Israeli collaborator. His promises lack credibility. His words ring hollow.
On Sunday, he called murdering Jews “the most heinous crime against humanity in modern history.”
He ignored Nakba suffering. He said nothing about decades of Israeli ritual slaughter.
He expressed sympathy to the “families of the victims and the innocent people who were killed by the Nazis including the Jews and others.”
He said the holocaust represents the “concept of ethnic discrimination and racism which the Palestinians strongly reject and act against.”
He asked international leaders to combat racism and injustice. He urged them “to bring to justice and equity to the oppressed people wherever they are.”
“The Palestinian people are suffering from injustice, oppression and denied freedom and peace,” he said.
“We are the first to demand to lift the injustice and racism that befell on people subjected to such crimes.”
“On this occasion, we call on the Israeli government to seize this current opportunity to conclude a just and comprehensive peace in the region, based on two-states vision, Israel and Palestine lives side by side in peace and security.”
He’s Israel’s enforcer. He turns a blind eye to Palestinian suffering. He exacerbates horrific conditions. He’s done nothing to alleviate them.
Netanyahu responded to his statement. One rogue followed another. Abbas “must choose between Hamas and true peace,” he said.
He “made a covenant” with Hamas. He lied claiming it wants Israel destroyed. He’s a serial liar.
He prioritizes state terrorism. He craves violence. He deplores peace. He partners in Washington’s imperial crimes. He waged war on Palestine. He did so throughout his tenure.
He lied on holocaust remembrance day. He called it an occasion to “prevent a nuclear-armed Iran.”
He asked why years before Hitler’s “final solution” world leaders didn’t see it coming. “How could it be that so many didn’t understand reality,” he asked?
“Like back then, some perceive Iran’s nuclear aspirations as… something to accept. Like back then, they are making a historic mistake.”
H lied claiming Iran calls for Israel’s destruction “That’s the reason it is building bunkers, a heavy-water facility,” he said.
“That’s why it’s constructing ballistic missiles.” He called on world leaders to demand Tehran abandon its (entirely peaceful) nuclear capabilities.
He ignored Israel’s formidable nuclear, chemical and biological weapons arsenal. He said nothing about its intention to use it if threatened.
Longstanding Israeli state-terrorism went unmentioned. Holocaust remembrance day commemorations whitewashed Israel’s dark side.
Iran-bashing was featured. Lies substituted for truth.
Separately, John Kerry said Israel risks becoming an apartheid state. More on this below. He ignored decades of apartheid policies. They exceed the worst of South Africa’s dark days.
Colonialism, apartheid and longterm occupation breach fundamental international laws. UN Charter provisions affirm self-determination for all peoples.
So does the International Court of Justice (ICJ). It calls it a fundamental international law principle.
The 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (the Declaration on Colonialism), condemns “colonialism in all its forms and manifestations.”
The 1973 International Convention for the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (the Apartheid Convention), calls it state-sanctioned discriminatory “inhuman” racism.
It’s “committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.”
Apartheid is official Israeli policy. It’s an international crime. The 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court affirms it. Israel is flagrantly guilty. It’s yet to be held accountable.
Apartheid exists when states annex territorial control over another people’s land. When it denies them self-determination. Israel does it by:
- violating Palestine’s integrity;
- prohibiting meaningful self-government;
- integrating the area’s economy into its own;
- controlling its resources;
- denying Palestinians economic enfranchisement, free movement, expression, and their historical heritage;
- denying them equity and justice;
- maintaining nearly 47 years of brutal militarized occupation;
- committing state-sponsored terrorism with impunity;
- committing crimes of war, against humanity and slow-motion genocide.
Kerry ignored what’s most important, saying:
“A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative.”
“Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second class citizens – or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state.”
“Once you put that frame in your mind, that reality, which is the bottom line, you understand how imperative it is to get to the two state solution, which both leaders, even yesterday, said they remain deeply committed to.”
Years ago two states were viable. No longer. Israel controls over 60% of West Bank land. It claims Jerusalem as its exclusive capital.
When completed, the Apartheid Wall will control up to 12% of Palestinian land. Isolated bantustans on worthless scrubland mocks legitimate self-determination.
Kerry’s “unitary state” characterization suggests business as usual. It refers to overall top down control.
Doing so denies Palestinians self-determination on their own land and country. It exposes US/Israeli peace process duplicity.
Unitary state control exists. Israel controls borders, air space, offshore waters, vital resources, the official currency, tax revenues, and administration over all Greater Israel.
Palestinians have no say whatever. Sovereign independence is denied. Kerry’s characterization reflects reality.
Breaking Israel’s chokehold is vital. Kerry’s comment suggests no change. Apartheid remains official Israeli policy. Peace process duplicity rubber-stamps it.
Jimmy Carter is right saying: “Apartheid is a word that is an accurate description of what has been going on in the West Bank, and it’s based on the desire or avarice of a minority of Israelis for Palestinian land.”
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at email@example.com.
His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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