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PARTISAN REVIEW
Today, there is no denying the sad fact that Hitler's crimes have
become part of the merciless propaganda struggle between partisans
and adversaries of Zionism. The latter have generally and one–
sidedly emphasized the innocence of the Arabs in the Nazi crimes
against Jewry and the injustice committed by the West in making
them pay for its own guilty conscience. More recently, however,
both the Arabs and the West (especially Europe), by comparing Israel's
treatment of the Palestinians with Nazi oppression of Jews, have
conspired to turn the Holocaust
against
its victims, both parties
thereby trying to free themselves of their historic guilt. The genocide
of World War II has been turned in obscene fashion into a metaphor
for Israeli actions in Lebanon and against the Arabs in general. All
Hitler's sins, including racism, are being projected onto the Jewish
state, which is described as holding itself above the law, acting with
absolute impunity and disdain for moral values, and wreaking
vengeance on its "innocent" Arab neighbors, driven by the convic–
tion of its own superiority and divine chosenness.
This inversion of history, this imprisonment of the present in
the past, is not easy to combat, because it clearly fulfills deep needs
in the Western world, which, despite its democratic values, remains
essentially Christian in Its culture and its perceptions of the Jewish
people. The continuing orgy of accusations against Israel postulates
a kind of
a priori
guilt of the Jews-in this case the "Christ-killers"
have become "mass murderers" of Palestinians. Just as Roman
guilt for the crucifixion ofJesus was transferred to the Jews, so Israel
was blamed by large segments of world opinion for the murders car–
ried out by Christian militiamen in Sabra and Shatilla. For a part of
the Christian West, as for the Arabs, the Soviets, and the Third
World, the Israelis are the new Romans in Palestine or, rather, the
new Nazis. Israeli control of the West Bank becomes The Occupa–
tion, calling to mind the Nazi occupation of Europe in World War II;
the PLO becomes The Resistance fighting The Occupiers; Beirut
becomes the Warsaw ghetto; Lebanon itself is transformed into
Lidice, the Czech village wiped off the earth as a reprisal by the
Nazis, or else into Oradour-sur-Glfme, where the SS massacred
innocent French civilians in 1944.
By force of repetition, banalization, and trivialization, the
reality of the Holocaust is slipping away and losing its substance.
Every brutal action is reduced to the same level; every massacre,
bombardment, or military operation in which civilians lose their
