Friday, December 15, 2006
Here Robert Fisk (and not his driver Abed) generalizes about millions of people. He claims that all "Muslims of the Middle East" deny the holocaust. First, that is not true especially that he is using anecdotes as his evidence--but that is typical Fisk. His impressions are always equated with facts about the Middle East although his status as a White Man among the natives gives him an analytical advantage. There are holocaust deniers in the US (probably as high as 20% of the population according to a study cited by Deborah Lipstadt in her book on the subject), and there are some holocaust deniers in the Middle East, although the literature of anti-Semitism always originate in the West. But there are CHRISTIANS in the Middle East who also deny the holocaust. The early modern anti-Semitic tracts in the Middle East were written by Christians, sometimes priests. Here is one anecdotal evidence from me: an Jewish American journalist who traveled through the Middle East told me that the most vicious anti-Semites in the Middle East that she had met were Maronite Lebanese in East Beirut. (No, not all Maronites are anti-Semities, but I am making a silly point to a silly article by Fisk.) And who does Robert Fisk think he is to hector the Palestinian people? I mean, I know that he is a White Man, but come on. And he also urges Palestinians to "take a lesson, perhaps, from the Israeli historians who tell the truth about the savagery which attended Israel's birth." Who are the Israeli historians who tell the truth? Is he talking about the so-called revisionist historians who are denounced by their colleagues? Or is he talking about Benny Morris who "told the truth" and yet believed that ethnic cleansing was justified? The Palestinians should take a lesson from those? No, Mr. Fisk. The Palestinians will not take lessons from them, and they certainly will not take lessons from you.