of Israeli Politics
Conclusion
By Roger GaraudyThese great myths mark the epic of the dawn of humanity, expressing, through the tale of the exploits of a god or a legendary ancestor, the major moments during which man grew aware of his powers and his duties, of his vocation to surpass his present condition by way of his experience or his hopes, projecting himself into an ultimate future in which all his dreams of happiness and "salvation" would be accomplished.
To mention but a few examples stemming from various continents, the Ramayanah of India gives us, through the tale of the trials and victories of its hero, Rama, and his wife,Sita, the highest image of man and woman, their sense of honor, of fidelity to the demands of a spotless life. The very name of the hero, Rama, is close to that of God: Ram. The power of the myth is such - far beyond the tale - that it provided inspiration for thousands of years in the lives of different peoples, giving them a grandiose vision of man on the horizon of their own existence: centuries after the version of Valkimi, which gathered together in writing the finest oral traditions, the poet Tulsidas rewrote the Ramayanah in the XVth century, in accordance with a more profound mystic vision of the never-ending poem of human ascent. When Gandhi was dying, as he blessed his assassin, the last word upon his lips was the name of Ram. The same holds true of the Mahabaratha, which culminates in the Bhagavah Gitah, in which Prince Arjunah asks himself in the midst of battle the ultimate question as to the meaning of life and its struggles. In another civilization, in other words within another concept of the relationship between man and nature, of man with other men and of man with God, there was the Iliad; all the popular oral traditions of which it is made up were set in writing by Homer, as Valkimi had done for the Ramayanah. The Iliad gave the highest possible image that could be given of man, as for example when Hector walked to a predestined death with inflexible resolve for the salvation of his people.
The characters in the Prometheus of Aeschylus were to become, two thousand years later in the XIXth century, with Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound", the eternal symbol of the greatness of struggles for freedom, or Antigone's appeal to the "unwritten laws" whose echo has continued to ring in the heads and hearts of all those who wish to "live high", beyond the written word, the powers and the laws.
The great epics of initiation from Africa, such as those of the Kaydarah, oral traditions set in writing by Hampate Ba, the African Homer or Valmiki were, like the anonymous authors of the Exodus of the Aztec tribes, like Goethe who spent a lifetime nurturing his "Faust", myth of all XIXth century Europe's desires, like Dostoyevski creating in his novel, "The Idiot", a new version of Jesus with his Prince Mishkin, who breaks with all the idols of modern life, as did the prophet-knight, Don Quixote, who unflaggingly attacked all the institutions of a century ruled by money, where fearless and blameless generosity could only end in failure and ridicule.
The above are only a few examples, selected at random, of the "Legend of the Centuries", as Victor Hugo called the poems with which he too aroused the conscience of his fellow-men.
But, taken as a whole, the body of these epics makes up the genuine "Bible" of humanity, the history of man's greatness, asserting itself even through his abortive attempts to go beyond established order and customs. What we call "History" is written by the winners, by the masters of empires, by generals who devastate men's lands, by the financiers who loot the world's wealth and subjugate the genius of great scientific and technical inventors, putting it at the service of their economic or military domination.
Traces have remained of those masters, inscribed on stone monuments, in fortresses, in triumphal arches, in palaces, in texts praising their glory, in the images carved on stone such as those of Karnak, celebrating the ferocious deeds of Ramses, or in the memoirs of the chronicler, Gilbert de Nogent, which are an apologia of the crusades, or in the writings of greedy conquerors like Julius Caesar, with his "Gallic Wars", or Napoleon, who boasted of his exploits through the complacent pen of Las Cases in the "Memorial of Saint Helena", though all he achieved was to leave France smaller than he had found it.
This kind of history is not above pressing myths into its service and chaining them to its chariots of victory.
b) - The myth disguised as history and its political use A reading of this work on "The founding myths of the policy of Israel" must not engender any religious or political confusion.
Criticism of the Zionist interpretation of the Torah and of the "historical books" (especially those of Joshua, Samuel and Kings) in no way implies an underestimation of the Bible or what it too has revealed of man's human and divine epic. Abraham's sacrifice is the eternal model of how a man can go beyond temporary morality and the fragile logic on which it is based, in the name of unconditional values that make morality a relative value. In the same way, the Exodus remains a symbol of a people's quest for freedom, wresting itself from bondage in its quest for God and the Spirit.
What we reject is Zionism's tribalistic and nationalistic interpretation of those texts, the reduction of a great idea - an Alliance between God and all of mankind, His presence within each human being - to the most nefarious concept of all: that of a "chosen" people, elected by a partial god, a notion which justifies in advance every kind of domination, colonization and massacre.
This work is based entirely on factual sources; its aim is not to preach the destruction of the State of lsrael, but simply to desacralize the underlying concept: the land in question was never promised but conquered, just like that of France, Germany or the United States, according to the prevailing balance of power at the time.
The object is not to wage war on anyone or to rewrite history indefinitely, but simply to demand the application for all concerned of an international law that will not perpetrate the law of the jungle.
In the case of the Middle East, we only ask for the application (without questioning their original legitimacy) of the decisions taken by the United Nations after World War II, in particular resolution 242, which excluded the erosion of the frontiers of neighboring countries and the illegal appropriation of their waters, as well as the implantation in illegally occupied zones of colonies protected by the Israeli army and settlers' guns. It is the perpetration de facto of the occupation which makes a genuine peace impossible, as it prevents a lasting peaceful cohabitation between two equal and independent peoples; this peace would be symbolized by the common respect of Jerusalem, without claims to exclusive possession; the holy city would be a meeting-place for the three religions derived from Abraham.
But the political exploitation by a nation, which did not exist at the time the crimes were committed, of arbitrarily exaggerated figures, used to try and prove that the suffering of some far surpassed that of others, and the sacred nature given the event by the very use of a religious term like "Holocaust", tend to make us forget other, even more ferocious genocides such as the massacre of the American Indians and the enslavement of countless Africans, as well as many other mass murders by bloody dictatorships.
The Nuremberg trial by the winners of World War II satisfied everyone, making the Americans forget their Indian manhunts, and letting Stalin forget his purges, while the English and the French could blot out the memory of their imperialist crimes.
The biggest winners were the Zionists, who posed as the sole victims of the war and created the State of Israel in the process; despite the 50 million people killed in the war, the Zionists made themselves out to be almost the only ones to have suffered at Hitler's hands, and thus placed themselves above and beyond the law in order to legalize all their internal and external exactions.
The sole purpose of this book is to provide the reader with elements that will enable him to judge the bloody misdeeds engendered by a Zionist mythology which, with the unconditional support of the United States, has already engendered five wars and poses a constant threat to world peace and unity, due to the influence exerted by its lobby on the United States and, through that, on world opinion.
c) The forgers and critical history Finally, it was essential for us - by giving the source and the proof of what we assert even for the smallest item of information to separate ourselves radically from all the forgeries destined to throw discredit on a religion or a community, and to thus draw hatred and persecution upon it. The model of this type of forgery is the infamous "Protocol of the Elders of Zion", which I spoke of in my book: "Palestine, land of divine messages (p.206 to 214), demonstrating how it was fabricated, basing myself upon Henri Rollin's irrefutable demonstration, "L'Apocalypse de notre temps" (published by Gallimard in 1939). This work was destroyed by Hitler in 1940 because it annihilated one of the Nazis' favorite instruments of anti-Jewish propaganda.
Henri Rollin exhumed one of the two plagiaries from which the forgery was fabricated by Von Plehven the Russian Minister of the Interior, at the beginning of the century.
1° - A pamphlet written in France in 1864 by Maurice Joly against Napoleon III: « Dialogue in Hell between Montesquieu and Machiavel », of which he reproduced, paragraph by paragraph, all the criticisms of the Emperor's dictatorship, which can be applied to any policy of domination.
2° - An essay composed by a Russian emigré, Ilya Tsion, against Russia's Minister of Finance, Count de Witte, entitled: « Where Mr. Witte's dictatorship is leading Russia » (1895), which was already a plagiarism of a pre-1789 lampoon against Monsieur de Calonne, and which can be applied to all the relations between a Minister of Finance and the international banks. In this particular case, the attack was directed by Von Plehve against de Witte, whom he hated.
Unfortunately, this ignoble police forgery has widely been used (especially in certain Arab countries, that I have long blamed for doing so). It gave the Zionists and the Israelis an excuse to denounce any criticism of their policy in the Middle East and of their pressure groups throughout the world, assimilating it to the work of forgers.
This is why, at the risk of tiring the reader who is eager to reach conclusions without going through the wearisome labor of reading through the evidence, we have not put forward a single argument without giving the sources.
Hitler based himself on his racist ideology from the first political manifestations to take the Jews as a target after Communism, whose destruction was his principal mission ( a fact which gained him the indulgence of the "Western democracies" for a long time, leading to his rearmament by industrialists as well as betrayal of populations by the West, as at Munich). Hitler's first pretexts for fighting the Jews were contradictory: on the one hand, he claimed that the October Revolution was the work of Jews who threatened to set up Communism in Europe, and he developed the theme of "Judeo-Bolshevism" as the incarnation of the world Communist movement; at the same time, he denounced the Jews as the incarnation of world capitalism.
The program of the National-Socialist Party proclaimed from the start that « a Jew cannot be a compatriot. »
Source: P.S. 1708.
Hitler thus excluded from Germany some of its most outstanding figures in the realm of culture, music and science, because they were of Jewish descent; he deliberately ignored the distinction between religion and race. Starting from this monstrous exclusion, which disowned the poet Heine as well as the great Einstein, Hitler defined what he called his "ultimate goal" ("letztes Ziel") in a letter to his friend Gemlich as early as 1919: "the removal of the Jews". This "ultimate goal" would remain a constant until his death, as would the struggle against "Bolshevism", which led to his defeat.
This "removal of the Jews", one of the leitmotifs of his policy, was to take various forms according to the vicissitudes of his career. As soon as he came to power, his Minister of the Economy signed an agreement with the Jewish (Zionist) Agency, on August 28th 1933. This agreement facilitated the "transfer" ("Haavara" in Hebrew) of German Jews to Palestine.
Source: Broszat, Jacobsen, Krausnick: "Anatomie des SS staates", Munich 1982. vol.II,p.263.
Two years later, the Nuremberg laws of September 15th 1935 turned into official legislation article 4 and 5 of the Party program formulated at Munich on February 24th 1920. These laws concerned citizenship of the Reich and the "defense of the blood" as the "Catholic kings" of Spain had done in the XVIth century for the sake of "purity of the blood" (limpieza del sangre"), against Jews and the Moors. Both Hitler and the Spaniards were only copying the example of Ezra and Nehemiah in the Bible. These laws made it possible to exclude the Jews from the Civil Service and from prominent positions in private business. They made intermarriage illegal and gave to the Jews the status of foreigners.
Discrimination was to become more fierce still in 1938, with the "Crystal night" set off on a pretext.
On November 7th 1938, a young Jew called Grynspan assassinated Von Rath, an embassy councillor in Paris.
The event,clamored by the Nazi press, sparked off a manhunt of Jews in the night of the 9th-10th November, with the looting of their shops, the ransacking of their wares and the breakage of their shop-windows (from whence the name "Crystal night").
The end result was appalling : « Looting and destruction of 815 shops, 171 houses, 276 synagogues, 14 other monuments of the Jewish community, arrest of 20,000 Jews, 7 Aryans, 3 foreigners, 36 dead and 36 injured. » Source: Report by Heydrich to Goering dated November 11th 1938, Nur. T. IX. p.554. Document recognized as authentic by Goering and all the accused against which it was produced."
It was not a passionate reaction on the part of the German people but a pogrom organized by the Nazi party. This is borne out by the report of the Supreme judge of the National-Socialist party, Walter Buch, who was put in charge of the investigation that followed (Doc. P.S. 3063 dated February 13th 1939, Nur. T. XXXII,pp.29) who was to judge the 174 Party members arrested on November 11th by order of Heydrich for having organized the pogrom and taken part in it.
But the 174 included only minor Party cadres.
The government (apart from Goebbels, who approved of the crime), and even the Fürher himself, disowned the pogrom. But this does not exclude the theory of directives "from above", as would suggest the fact that Goering immediately passed three decrees aggravating the discrimination. - the first concerned the German Jews, who were given a collective fine of one billion marks (P.S. 1412 Reichsgesetzblatt 1938, part I, page 1579); - the second excluded the Jews from German economic life (P.S. 2875 Reichsgesetzblatt 1938, part I, page 1580); - the final one decided that the insurance companies would pay the State and not the insured the damage caused to his property on the Crystal night (P.S. 2694 Reichsgesetzbatt 1938, part I, page 1581).
1 - A striking parallel can be drawn between the pretexts and methods used to persecute the Jews in Germany and the Arabs in Palestine: in 1982, an attempt was made on the life of an Israeli diplomat in London. The Israeli leaders instantly attributed it to the PLO , invaded the Lebanon to destroy the PLO bases, resulting in the death of 20,000 people. Begin and Ariel Sharon, like Goebbels in the past, had their "crystal night", with a much higher number of innocent victims.
The difference is in the pretext for setting off an invasion of Lebanon planned by Israeli leaders a long time in advance. On May 21st 1948, Ben Gurion wrote in his "Diary":
« The Achilles' heel of the coalition...is Lebanon. Muslim supremacy in that country is artificial and could easily be reversed; a Christian state must be set up in that country. Its southern frontier would be the Litani river. »
Source: Michael Ben Zohar: "Ben Gurion, le prophète armé". p. 139.
General Moshe Dayan set out the method on June 16th 1955: « All that remains to be found is an officer, even a simple captain. We must win him to our cause, buy him, so that he will declare himself to be the savior of the Maronite population. Then, the Israeli army would enter Lebanon, would occupy the territories where a Christian regime allied to Israel would be established, and everything would work like clockwork. The Southern part of the Lebanon would be completely annexed to Israel. »
Source: "Diary" of the ex-Prime Minister of Israel, Moshe Sharett, published in Hebrew in 1979
What makes the crime of Lebanon even more odious by its very principle (beyond the massacres perpetrated under Sharon's very eyes and prepared thanks to him) is that the pretext for them could not be imputed to the PLO.
Margaret Thatcher brought the proof before the House of Commons that the crime had been the deed of a declared enemy of the PLO. Immediately after the arrest of the criminals and the police investigation, she declared: « On the list of personalities marked out for assassination, found on the authors of the attempt, figured the name of the head of the PLO in London...This would tend to prove that the attackers did not, as Israel has claimed, have the PLO support... I do not believe that the Israeli attack on Lebanon was an act of reprisal consecutive to this attack: the Israelis used it as a pretext to reopen hostilities. »
Source: International Herald Tribune, June 8th 1982.
This denial of Israeli propaganda went almost unnoticed in France, while it destroyed the legend of "legitimate defence" which had served as a pretext for this new aggression.
For this war, like all the aggressions and extortions of the State of Israel, was wholly in keeping with the Zionist doctrine, just as the "Crystal night" was wholly in keeping with the internal logic of Hitlerian racism.
The situation of the Jews after the "Crystal night" became more and more dramatic. The "Western democracies" met at the Evian Conference in 1938, an assembly of 33 countries (the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia were not represented; Hungary, Romania and Poland were only allowed observers to ask to be rid of their own Jews).
President Roosevelt set an example of selfishness when he declared at the "Warm Springs" press conference that « no revision or increase in immigration quotas to the United States was forecast. »
Source: Mazor: "Il y a trente ans, la Conférence d'Evian" in "le monde Juif", April-June 1968, N° 50; p.23 and 25.
At Evian, no-one was concerned to « take charge of the persecuted ones, or even to be seriously concerned by their fate »
Source: "Dix leçons sur le Nazisme", edited by Alfred Grosser. Paris 1976, p.216.
In March 1943, Goebbels could still declare ironically : « What will be the solution to the Jewish question ? Will a Jewish State be created one day in one territory or another ? We shall know later. But it is curious to note that those countries whose public opinion is in favor of the Jews still refuse to take them in. »
Source: Leon Poliakov. "Bréviaire de la haine" p.41.
After the defeat of Poland, another temporary solution to the Jewish question seemed possible: on September 21st, Heydrich, recalling the "ultimate goal" (Endziel) ordered the heads of security to create a sort of "Jewish reserve" at the new frontier with the USSR.
Source: Leon Poliakov. Op. Cit. p.41.
The defeat of France opened new perspectives to the Nazis. One could use the French colonial empire for the "final solution" of the Jewish question. The idea of expelling all the Jews to Madagascar had cropped up at the time of the Armistice in June 1940.
As early as May 1940, Himmler wrote in a note entitled « A few thoughts concerning the treatment of foreigners in the East »: « I hope to see the notion of Jew definitively eradicated through the evacuation of all the Jews towards Africa or in a colony. »
Source: V.f.Z. 1957. p.197.
On June 24th 1940, Heydrich wrote to Ribbentrop, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, that one could henceforth glimpse "a final territorial solution". ("eine territoriale Endlosung") of the Jewish problem.
Source: Gerald Fleming: "Hitler und die Endlosung" Wiesbaden Munich. 1982. p.56.
From that time on, the "Madagascar project" was elaborated technically-speaking: on July 3rd 1940, Franz Rademaker, who was in charge of Jewish affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, elaborated a report which said: « Imminent victory gives Germany the possibility and, in my opinion, also the duty to resolve the Jewish question in Europe. The desirable solution is: all Jews out of Europe ("Alles Juden aus Europa"). Referat D III proposes as a solution to the Jewish question: in the peace treaty, France must make the island of Madagascar available for the solution of the Jewish question and must transfer and compensate the 25,000 French residents. The island will be placed under German mandate. » Source: N.G. 2586 -B. See: "Documents on German Foreign Policy (1918-1945)" Series D Vol.X.London,1957.p. 11-113.
On July 25th 1940, Hans Frank, governor of Poland, confirmed that the Fürher agreed to this evacuation, but that overseas transport on that scale would not be feasible for as long as the British hold the keys to the seas.
Source: P.S. 22.23. I M G vol. XXIX, p. 405.
A temporary replacement solution had to be found. It is said in the "minutes of the meeting"(cf s): « It is the SS Reichfürher and the head of the German police who will be responsible for the overall measures required for the final solution (Endlosung der Judensfrage), without regards for the geographical limits. » Source: N.G.2586 G.
Henceforth, the Jewish question was posed on the European scale, in those countries occupied by the Nazis. The Madagascar project was temporarily postponed; « The war against the Soviet Union has placed new territories at our disposal for the final solution (fur die Endlosung). Consequently, the Fürher has decided to expel the Jews not to Madagascar but towards the East. »
Source: N.G. 5570.
Indeed, the Fürher had declared on January 2nd 1942: « The Jews must leave Europe. The best thing is for them to go to Russia. »
Source: Adolf Hitler: "Monologues" 1941-1944. Albrecht Krauss Verlag. Hamburg 1980. p.241.
With the surging back of the German armies under the pressure of the Soviet army, the solution to the "Jewish question" demanded "ruthless severity". Source: H. Monneraey: "La persecution des juifs dans les pays de l'Est." p.91-92.
In May 1944, Hitler gave orders for 200,000 Jews guarded by 10,000 Waffen SS to work be put to work in the armament factories or in the concentration camps. Conditions were so dreadful that tens of thousands died of typhus, leading to the multiplication of crematorium ovens.
The deportees were then sent out on roads that they themselves had to build in conditions of exhaustion and famine such that the majority of them died by tens of thousands.
This was the martyrdom of the deported Jews and slaves of the savagery of the Hitlerian masters, who treated them like slaves deprived even of the human value of useful workers.
These crimes by Hitler cannot be underestimated, any more than the untold suffering of the victims. That is why there is no need to add to this horrendous picture the light of flames borrowed from Dante's Inferno, or to attribute to them the theological and sacrificial attributes of the "Holocaust" to describe such basic deeds of stark inhumanity. The least emphatic history is, on its own, more accusatory than the myth. And above all it does not reduce the breadth of the true crime against humanity, which led to 50 million deaths, to the dimensions of a pogrom towards only one category of innocent victims, while millions died fighting to combat barbarity.
A great deal of work therefore remains to be done, on condition myth and history are not confused and conclusions not reached before research, as a certain intellectual terrorism has tried to impose it until now: "the canonization of the Nuremberg texts has proved extremely fragile. History, like science, cannot use an untouchable a priori as a point of departure.
Nuremberg had promulgated figures whose most important have proved to be false: the "4 million" dead at Auschwitz have been reduced by scientific research to "a little over a million", and even the "authorities" have had to accept this revision and change the plaques commemorating the crime. The dogma of the "six million", already questioned by the most intransigent defenders of the genocide like Reitlinger, who reached the figure of four and a half million in his book ,"The Final Solution", is henceforth excluded by the entire scientific community, even if it remains a theme of propaganda with the media for schoolchildren and the general public.
If we challenge the figures regarding the number of Jewish victims, it is not in a macabre or quibbling spirit, but to show how the deliberate wish to perpetrate a lie has forced people to falsify history systematically and arbitrarily.
Because they supposedly did not want the genuine martyrdom of the Jews to seem "banal", the deaths of 17 million Russians and 9 million Germans have been relegated to second place, and the real suffering of the Jews was also given a "sacred" character (under the name of "Holocaust") which was denied to the others.
To attain this objective, it was necessary to violate all the elementary rules of justice and of the establishment of the truth.
For example, the "final solution" had to mean extermination, "genocide", whereas no text allows this interpretation, always dealing with the expulsion of all the Jews from Europe, first to the East and later to some African reservation. This in itself was monstrous enough. To do this, all documents had to be falsified: the word "transfer" translated by "extermination", in such a way that this "method" of interpretation made it possible to make any text say what it was supposed to say. What was a horrible massacre became a "genocide". To quote only one example of this tendentious manipulation of the texts: in his book, "Les crématoires d'Auschwitz" (1993), Claude Pressac was so determined to add further horrors to this fearful mortality that every time he encountered the German word "Leichenkeller", "body chamber", in other words "morgue", he translated it as "gas chamber" (example p.65), once again introducing the notion of "coded language", explaining that Messing, the killer, "did not have the guts to write that the "body chamber" was a "gassing cave""(p.74)
The hypothesis of the "coded language" constantly used to make texts say what one wants them to say has no foundation; first of all because, as we have already shown (p....) Hitler and his accomplices never tried to dissimulate their other crimes, proclaiming them cynically in clear language, and secondly because the British had developed to a very high degree the techniques and the apparatus used for deciphering codes, having access to the messages, which would have been numerous if there really had existed a technical undertaking huge enough for the deliberate extermination of millions of people.
In the same arbitrary way, when it was proven that, despite a large number of "eyewitness accounts" concerning the existence of "gas chambers", these had never existed on German soil, so people continued to regard as unchallengeable the identical accounts on their existence in the Eastern camps.
Finally, the refusal to discuss in a scientific and at the same public way the technical appraisements by experts, and on the contrary to answer them only by repression and silence, can only serve to maintain doubt. There is no more effective indictment against Hitlerism than the establishment of the historical truth.
It is to that truth we wanted to contribute with this work.
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Reply to the Media Lynching of Abbe Pierre and Roger Garaudy
Samizdat
by Roger Garaudy
1996 (June)
Samizdat
by Roger Garaudy
1996 (June)
Machination of a Lynching
Not a word of refutation about the collaboration of Zionist leaders with Hitler.In the flood of insults unfurled against Abbe Pierre and myself, no argument was produced to refute the proofs I provided of each accusation in my book against Israeli politics.
For example, the collaboration of Zionist leaders (who became Israeli leaders) with the Nazis, since the Haavara agreements allowing Jewish billionaires to transfer their German capital to Palestine.
Then there was the collaboration of the Zionist, Betar, in Hitlerian uniforms and under the flag of the Star of David until 1938 (during 5 years under the Hitler regime).
Then there were the propositions of collaboration, including military, made by Itzhak Shamir to the Hitlerian authorities in 1941. And until the negotiations with the "Jewish Agency" to provide Hitler with 10,000 trucks with the single condition that these trucks be used solely on the Eastern front against the Soviet Union, so as to achieve a separate peace with the United States and England, thus fulfilling the dream of the Western "allies", viz., to use Hitler to crush the Soviet Union (see the proofs of this collaboration with Hitlerism in my book, "Founding Myths of Israeli Politics" (pp. 65-90).
Not a word on Israeli terrorism.
No word to question my analysis of Israeli state terrorism from the massacre of 237 civilians in Deir Yassin by Begin's troops, to the massacre of Arabs praying in Hebron by Baruch Goldstein; the assassination of Comte Bernadotte and of Lord Moyne, who were guilty of denouncing at the U.N. the terror against the Palestinians driven out by the hundreds of thousands from their villages and their desecrated and bulldozed cemeteries; to the aggression against the Suez Canal planned by Sharon and Perez with General Challe (future leader of the coup in Algier); the massacre of thousands of Lebanese civilians by Sharon in 1982 and his responsibility, together with General Rafael Eytan, for the killings of Sabra and Chatila; the occupation, after the "Six Day War" of whatever remained of Palestine and also of South Lebanon, of the Syrian Golan.
To the Israeli leader, the UN resolutions condemning these occupations were not worth "the paper they were written on": Resolution 181 of 1947 stipulating the partition of Palestine; resolution 242 of November 22, 1967, requiring "the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the occupied territories"; resolution 338 of October 22, 1973, reiterating this demand after the Kippur War; resolution 425 condemning the occupation of Lebanon. Like the one (adopted unanimously) of July 4, 1967, on the annexation of Jerusalem. On March 12, 1991, the French foreign minister, M. Roland Dumas, stated in an interview with "Le Monde," "The Security Council has taken a total of 197 resolutions concerning the Arab-Israeli problem and 34 concerning the Palestinians. All these resolutions remain a dead letter."
The first, dealing with the partition, was dismissed by Ben Gourion as "a piece of paper." For 50 years, the Israeli leaders, irrespective of their party, have put themselves above international law. They are not afraid to make public their project of disintegration of all Arab states in the region, as they did in 1982 in the magazine, "Kivounim" (see pp. 203-204 in my book, "The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics.")
Nobody has contested my analysis of the control of American politics by the Israeli "lobby" and of the financing of the State of Israel as a proxy of American politics in the Middle East.
The Scorned "Right to Reply"
Not even an attempt at refutation.With a naive cynicism, Vidal-Naquet wrote in "Le Monde" of April 4, 1996: "The day we accept one of these gentlemen in a public debate on television or in a colloquium of historians, they will have won the game. They are considered as a school. We have to absolutely bar them from such activities."
It is in the name of this "principle" that I was refused any "right to reply" by all the newspapers, which told brazen lies about my book. Yet the "right to reply" is written in the laws. And this goes from "La Croix" to "L'Humanite," passing by "Le Monde," "Liberation" or "Le Journal du Dimanche."
Similarly, none of the 3 television channels let me speak directly, but they set up caricature montages, never allowing me to answer the slanders.
It is significant that they all spoke with the same voice, that of a "litany of hatred" using the same jargon to accuse me of "negationism," a word that does not exist in any French dictionary, for lack of being able to define what is being denied.
It is as though the watchwords came from the same central agency of lies and hate that led General de Gaulle to say, "There exists in France a powerful Israeli lobby, exerting its influence most notably in the information world."
In 1978, a former president of the World Jewish Congress, Mr. Nahum Goldman, asked President Carter "to break the Jewish lobby," which he considered "a force of destruction, an obstacle to peace in the Middle East."
During the Gulf War, Mr. Alain Peyrefitte wrote in "Le Figaro" of November 5, 1990: "Two powerful pressure groups push for the outbreak of the conflict: 1) The Jewish lobby, playing an essential role in the transatlantic media; 2) The business lobby (to revive the economy by the war)."
The Witch hunt
To burn me on the stake, a magic word "negationism" replaced the Middle Ages' accusation of those who dealt with the devil and thus deserved the stakes: "witchcraft."Like the word, "negationist," that of Shoah (which means extermination in Hebrew) comes, too, from the litany of hate. It was popularized by Lanzmann's film, financed by Menachem Begin (author of the "crime against humanity" in the massacre of hundreds of civilians in Deir Yassim), who invested 850,000 dollars in this "project of national interest."
The witch hunt started in "Le Monde" (which, since it has been rescued from its financial difficulties by other investors, is no longer the newspaper of Beuve-Mery or Jacques Fauvet).
"Roger Garaudy negationist" was the headline of an article in the book section of January 26, 1996.
The rumor spread like the slander in the Barber of Seville. It already occupies 4 columns in "Liberation" of January 31st: "Roger Garaudy joins the 'negationists'".
With time, exaggerations increase. In "Liberation" of May 8, 1996, where the headline stretches across the whole page: "Negationism is reassessment."
The same obsession spreads through the whole gamut of the press. From "L'Humanite" of January 25, 1996, which hypocritically pities "a man whose humanism left its mark on an era" and became a "racist," to "La Croix" of February 2, 1996, which was saddened by "the suicidal drowning of a man who might have been the witness of an era" had he not gone to "the most servile madness of antisemitism."
Obviously, my past bothers them. Three months after being decorated with a war medal as a soldier against Hitler, I was arrested on September 14, 19440. When we rose against Nazism prior to the existence of deportations in Germany, we were sent to the Sahara. I was subjected to 33 months in a concentration camp, together with the founder of "LICA" (International League Against Antisemitism, which became "LICRA," International League Against Racism and Antisemitism), Bernard Lecache, with whom I gave lectures about the prophets of Israel to our atheist companions. Upon my return, I received the deportation medal. This is what the LICRA people call today a "neo-Nazi"!
Struggle Against All Fundamentalisms
I fought all fundamentalisms as an organizer of Christian-Marxist, then Christian-Muslim dialogues. In 1970, I was expelled from the Communist Party (of which I was one of the theoreticians and leaders) for declaring that "the Soviet Union is not a socialist country"!In my last three books, I have analyzed, one after the other, 1) Roman Catholic fundamentalism in "Do We Need God," where I wrote, despite the anger of some people, that Jesus could not be the founder of reigning theologies of domination; 2) in "Greatness and Decadence of Islam," I denounced "Islamism" as a sickness of Islam; 3) finally, in "The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics," I analyze the "Zionist heresy" that replaces the God of Israel with the state of Israel and thus, through tribal nationalism, renounces the universalist faith of the great Jewish prophets.
My critiques of Christian and Muslim fundamentalisms naturally raised polemics, which is normal and fruitful. But with my last book, I was touching a taboo, and this time, lacking arguments, they called the police.
Naturally, all the provincial press orchestrates the rumor. It crosses borders, for the Zionist organization has a worldwide network. In Canada, the World Jewish Congress succeeds in banning my lectures (on other topics. But it is the man that must be demonized!) In Switzerland, the LICRA leader, Vodoz, asks the courts to press charges against me. The international press spreads the same slander as the French press, exported, for example, by Finkelkraut in "Corriere de la Sera" in Italy and "El Mundo" in Spain. From the "New York Times" in the United States to "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" in Germany, the same chorus sings the same song.
The Magic Word that Kills
"Negationist," negation of "SHOAH." The same supranational vocabulary serves to "banish" me, as Joshua would say.Let us see what I "DENY":
1) Nowhere do I deny Nazism's crimes or its persecution of Jews. It is an attack against my honor to attribute to me a "denial of crimes against humanity." My book does not cease denouncing "the monstrous objectives of Hitler (pp. 62, 251), their savagery (p. 97); these "immense crimes do not need lies to reveal their atrocity (p. 54). After describing "the horrible conditions that resulted in tens of thousands of victims," I conclude: "Such was the martyrdom of Jewish and Slavic deportees and the ferocity of Hitlerian masters treating them as slaves without any human value" (p. 257).
I add (p. 257), "These crimes cannot be underestimated, nor can the unspeakable suffering of the victims." "Doubtless, the Jews were one of Hitler's preferred targets because of his racist theory of the superiority of the Aryan race" (p. 152).
As for the lies instituted at Nuremberg:
4 million dead at Auschwitz (according to a Soviet report) and the successive "revisions" of historians; 2 million, according to Zionist historian Poliakov in his "Litany of Hate"; 1 million, 250 thousand, according to another Zionist historian, Raoul Hilberg (p. 160 in my book). Bedarida, Director of the Institute of Contemporary History at CNRS reached the conclusion that "the number of 4 million does not rest on any serious basis and must not be kept." "The number of about one million dead is corroborated by all specialists because they agree on a number of victims that varies between 950,000 and 1,200,000" (Le Monde, July 23, 1989).My "revisionism" that my detractors (none of whom read my book) call "negationism" without saying what I deny is nothing but the resumption of "revisions" of "all the specialists" (as Bedarida says), which led in 1994 to replace the plaque that said 4 million (in Auschwitz) with one that says "a little over one million" (p. 159). I add: "It is not a matter of establishing a macabre counting."
The assassination of one single innocent, whether he is Jewish or not, is a crime against humanity (which I repeat, p. 257).
2. As for the "gas chambers," I clearly said that no tribunal, neither Nuremberg nor those that followed it, have ever sought to examine this crime weapon. Expert opinions exist, namely that of the engineer Leuchter, a specialist in the United States, of gas chambers built in 6 states for those sentenced to death. His investigations at Auschwitz-Birkenau led him to radically negative conclusions. "One would have expected the detection of higher rates of cyanide in samples taken from the alleged gas chambers (due to the larger quantities of gas used in these places) than in the control samples taken from the disinfection chambers. Since the opposite is true, it is imperative to conclude that these installations were not execution gas chambers."
Given in Malden (Massachusetts) April 5, 1988 by Fred A. Leuchter Jr., Chief Engineer.
Subsequent studies by other experts in Cracow in 1990 and in Vienna did not produce any new findings.
Since I am not a chemist or a biologist, I cannot decide. I simply say in my book (p. 150) that I am surprised that these reports were not published and openly debated. The only attempt to refute them was a book by Pressac, subsidized by the Klarsfeld Foundation, which curiously enough, nobody refers to. Even Pressac, in his 1993 book, does not even cite the Leuchter Report, while at the same time he triumphantly refutes it.
Concerning the interpretation of the "final solution" and the "gas chambers," my book states clearly these problems.
1. According to the official theory, Hitler might have given the extermination order. However, in a colloquium on "revisionism" in February 1982 at the Sorbonne, Raymond Aron and Jacques Furet stated in the closing press conference: "Despite the most scholarly research, no Hitler order to exterminate the Jews was ever found."
We are told later that the order was given at the Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942. In the January 30, 1992 issue of "Canadian Jewish News," Yehuda Bauer wrote that this interpretation of Wannsee is silly.
Pressac is the latest scourge of revisionism. On p. 114 of his book, "Les crematoires d'Auschwitz," he refers to "the Wannsee Conference on the driving back of the Jews towards the East."
Was there a "coded language?" In the absence of proof, this is suggested by
Nicolas Weill (after many others) in "Le Monde" of May 6, 1996.
Pressac maintains that public works projects did not use any coded language: "Contrary to what is said, there was never a camouflage." (Quoted by Laurent Greilsamer in "Le Monde" of September 26 and 27, 1993.)
After being hailed as a savior of the extermination propagandists, he became more and more suspect: he destroyed their "coded" interpretations of Wannsee. He questioned their "testimonies" refuting Hoss, commander of Auschwitz, the main witness, and Eichmann, too (pp. 41 and 132).
He contradicted their Dantesque interpretations of "Sondermassnahmen" (special measures): contrary to what was believed, these terms have no criminal connotation (p. 107).
He ridicules the numbers given by Wallers, of Jews passing through Auschwitz: "It is obviously inexact." (p. 147)
Is it a matter of a repenting or camouflaged "revisionist?"
While waiting for this technical debate, I stand by what is clearly established: the odious watchword of the Nazis, "all the Jews out of Europe!"
The execution of this plan was initially realized by pushing back Jews toward the East under such inhuman conditions that tens of thousands succumbed. Then, as it was clearly written and asserted, after the war and victory, all European Jews shall be deported to an African island (Madagascar was mentioned, following the fall of France).
This project was already monstrous enough so that even the first stages of its execution cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews.
It is always this objective: the deportation to an African ghetto which was considered as the "final solution," and it is pure barbary.
As to "the extermination," during his 10 years of absolute rule, four of which were over all of Europe, Hitler had all the time to realize it, and fortunately, despite all the indisputable massacres, the Jewish community, though decimated, remained in Europe among us.
Then what do I deny?
I deny that the Zionists assume the power to minimize Hitler's crimes by reducing them to the indisputable persecution of Jews. His drive for expansion and conquest resulted in 50 million dead, of which 16 million were Slavs, Russians and Polish, as Pope John Paul II recalled in Miami.What I deny, what I fight, is the will to remember only one category of victims and to hedge the language so as to conceal contempt for others.
This leads to an inversion of even the meaning of our history, to the negation of the resistance of the overwhelming masses of our people to the Nazi occupation and to the handful of renegade, ruthlessly ambitious collaborators put in power by Hitler's invasion. During the first years of the liberation, "deported" meant resistance fighter. Today, through perversion, "deported" would only mean Jewish victims.
The massacre of a large number of Jews is indisputable, but why call it "genocide"? Genocide means extermination ("There remained no survivor" as it is said in the book of Joshua, telling of the conquest of Canaan). This is unquestionably boastfulness, since the majority of the Canaanite population survived. But if, as Francois Bedarida pretends in "Le Monde" of May 5 and 6, 1996, "the invocation of Joshua by Roger Garaudy seems to me an intellectual stupidity," [note 1: this new tone of language was set in "Le Monde" by Kouchner (the comic actor who carried a rice bag in a Somalian port in order to attract the attention of the media) who called me "bastard."] because "it was put together many centuries after the fact and based on fairly embellished traditions." If this is the case, would Mr. Bedarida explain to us why the Bible that is distributed to young Israeli soldiers with, since 1990, a preface by the Grand Army Rabbi, Gad Navon, stresses the book of Joshua? Its characteristic is the extreme chauvinism underlying the antagonism between Jews and other peoples, to the point of presenting Abraham as "the father of the Jewish nation" standing on one side, and the whole world on the other.
This is what gives Joshua an extreme relevance, all the more as to this Bible, transformed into a nationalism manual, where every stranger is an "enemy," an Atlas has been added where every young soldier can find a map of all the land of Israel, including not only Judea and Samaria but also Jordan, with a glorification of the GOD of armies, who gives victory over the enemies in order "to reenforce the combative spirit of soldiers." (Source: Haaretz of January 22, 1996. Article of Yaron Ezrahi about "the chauvinistic preface of the Bible currently distributed to Israeli soldiers.")
Without denying the extent and the horror of massacres of Jews and other opponents (3.5 million Russian prisoners died in captivity said Bedarida in the same article of "Le Monde"), I reject this "Apartheid of the dead." Under the theological name of Holocaust, it makes the martyrdom of Jews irreducible to any other.
By its sacrificial character, it could be integrated into a divine project in the manner of the crucifixion of Jesus in Christian theology (p. 156 of
my book).
But such discriminations are inherent to the heresy logic of political Zionism, breaking off with the grandiose universalism of the Jewish prophets.
According to the founding father of Zionist heresy, and to Professor Klein, Director of the Institute of Comparative Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the notion of a Jewish state is incompatible with any true democracy. The definition of Jewish is given by Professor Klein in his book, "Le caractere juif de L'Etat d'Israel" (Ed Cujas, Paris, 1977) as it is formulated in the "Law of Return," the fundamental law of 1950, article 4b: "A Jew is considered any person born to a Jewish mother or converted according to halakah." A racial criterion and a parochial criterion. All others are second class citizens.
A true democracy cannot exist in a state based on such discrimination. Not in a "Christian state" where Jews, nonbelievers, Muslims and even non catholics would be second class citizens, even enemies to destroy, as the Crusaders did (by pogroms of Jews along their way to the holy land, where they would massacre the Muslims) or to organize Saint Bartholomews against the Protestants, or today where every Muslim immigrant is a potential terrorist.
Neither can there be "democracy" in a "Muslim state," where Christians cannot worship GOD in a church or Jews in a synagogue, and where their rights are not equal to those of all other members of the nation.
One Goal: Gag Abbe Pierre and Garaudy
Being unable to find in my book any trace of antisemitism, a negation or even a minimization of Hitler's crimes towards the Jews or any other opponent of the regime, my accusers had only one recourse: the question of justice at the Nuremberg Tribunal fell under the blow of the Gayssot Fabius Law.After dooming me to public prosecution as a "negationist," they try to silence me by resorting to the police and to a gag law.
It is true that the court of one-track thought is subject to abrupt variations. On Sunday, April 28, 1996, the Grand Rabbi Sitruk, speaking on "Jewish Radio," thought it useful to "assemble historians to debate the Shoah." Abbe Pierre, hoping for a dialogue, was quickly disappointed. He said in "Liberation" of May 2, 1996: "The Grand Rabbi accepts what LICRA refuses." Monday, April 30, Rabbi Sitruk declared on Europe 1: "There can be no debate on the Holocaust" and that "historians have given definitive proofs." [Note 2: This led Max Clos, one of the rare journalists who, even in his criticism, managed to save the honor of his profession by commenting
that "the notion of 'definitive proof' irrespective of the subject is offensive, for these were the practices of totalitarian regimes such as those of Hitler and Stalin."]
Then the cries of triumph rose to hound me: "Roger Garaudy is under investigation for contesting crimes against humanity" is a headline in "Le Monde" of April 27, 1996. The Zionized "L'Humanite" rejoices that Garaudy is charged under the Gayssot Law that punishes "questioning of crimes against humanity." Pierre Aidenbaum, the president of LICRA, set the tone in his press release of April 24, 1996: "Some can no longer hide their antisemitism under the cover of antizionism. In our country, this has been decided by the courts."
Yes, Mr. Aidenbaum, this has been decided by the courts and precisely to convict your "LICRA," which seeks to make believe that Zionism which is politics is identical with Judaism which is a religion. I recall only the sentence rendered by the High Tribunal of Paris on March 24, 1983 (upheld by the Appeals Court) in the lawsuit filed by LICRA against Father Lelong, Pastor Matthiot, Jacques Fauvet (Le Monde) and myself: "In view of the fact that this is lawful criticism of the politics of a state and of the ideology that inspires it, and not a racial provocation, the court dismisses the suit and orders LICRA to pay the legal costs."
What Nourishes Antisemitism is Not to Denounce its Crimes, but to Commit Them
My struggle against the Zionist politics of the State of Israel that feed antisemitism is an integral part of my unremitting struggle against antisemitism, which is a crime justifiably punished by law.Zionism against Israel
The worst enemy of the prophetic Jewish faith is the nationalist, racist and colonialist logic of tribal Zionism, born of the nationalism, racism and colonialism of 19th century Europe. This logic, which inspired all the colonialisms of the West and all its wars of one nationalism against another, is a suicidal logic.There is no future or security for Israel and no peace in the Middle East unless Israel becomes "dezionized" and returns to the faith of Abraham, which is the spiritual, fraternal and common heritage of the three revealed religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
This is why, after so much trash published in "Le Monde" by the Kouchners, the Vidal-Naquets and others, Bedarida or Weill, the record of infamy is held by Claude Imbert, who likened my book to the "Protocol of the Elders of Zion" in "Le Point" of May 4, 1996. While on p. 249, I analyse the mechanism of fabrication of this vile falsehood (which I refuted in detail in a preceding work, "Palestine, Terre des messages divins," Ed. Albatros, 1986, pp. 206-212).
For slanders of this type, I demand the "right to reply" from "Le Monde," "Liberation," "Parisien," "Journal du dimanche," "La Croix," "L'Humanite." They all refused me this right, recognized by law. This shows the power of the lobby. In fact, those who deny the "crimes against humanity" are precisely the newspapers, radio and television stations, almost the entire media, where nobody dared to designate, as "crime against humanity," the shelling of ambulances carrying wounded children, the deliberate bombardment of a UN camp resulting in over 100 civilian deaths, the pounding of Beirut and all of the coastline by Israeli warplanes. To them, there is no "crime against humanity" when it does not affect Jews.
A crushing UN report shows that it was a deliberate criminal action, supervised and controlled by a helicopter. All of this is treated as a blunder of some air force captain, or some technical mistake, excusing the real villain, the government of Israel and its military command, as it acted in Sabra and Chatila, whose main culprit, Ariel Sharon (recognized as such by the Kahn Commission of Inquiry), was immediately appointed minister in charge of precisely the establishment of "colonies" in the occupied territories (despite UN condemnation and the violation of international
law).
All of this shows the diversionary role of the lynching by the media of Abbe Pierre and of myself. The day of the shelling of Cana, the front page headline of the largest French newspaper announced the crime of Cana in the same character type as "the mistake of Abbe Pierre" and not the reality: "Shimon Peres' crime against humanity."
The day this criminal was received in Paris with great pomp, and when "Likud of France" welcomed in Paris another criminal, General Rafael Eytan (who knowingly let the massacre of Sabra and Chatila take place, and who is now #2 in Likud) with a hymn to the Messiah, the newspapers' headlines announced "Abbe Pierre is expelled from LICRA" for his support of Garaudy.
A Very Powerful Lobby in the United States
Such unanimity is a testimony to the existence and power of the lobby.First, because it is an organ of the State of Israel. Its status appears in the Law of November 24, 1952 of the "World Zionist Organization." Articles 5 and 6 specify its attributes.
Article 5: "The State of Israel counts on the participation of all Jews in all Jewish organizations in building the State" (Israel Government Yearbook. Jerusalem, 1953-54, p. 243).
In the United States, this powerful lobby is officially credited in the Capitol. It is AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee). Zionist leaders in the United States do not hide their role. In the 23rd Congress of the World Zionist Organization, Ben Gurion stated clearly: "The collective obligation of all Zionist organizations in all nations to help the Jewish State in all circumstances is unconditional, even if such an attitude is in conflict with their respective nations" (Jerusalem Post, August 17, 1952). (See my book, p. 206.)
An example of this power is when Senator Fulbright, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, summarized on CBS television on October 7, 1973 his investigation of the lobby, saying: "The Israelis control politics in Congress and in the Senate." He lost his senate seat in the following elections.
A Very Powerful Lobby in France
In France, this pressure is not lesser but is less blatant.For example, while in Israel, the Grand Rabbi Sitruk declared to Shamir (who proposed an alliance with Hitler in 1941): "Every French Jew is a representative of Israel. Rest assured that every Jew in France is a defender of what you defend" (Le Monde," July 12, 1990). But upon his return to France, he added "without necessarily thinking of double allegiance" (Le Monde," July 13, 1990). That could be a mistake!
More recently, July 16, 1995, under the leadership of the same grand rabbi, Chirac declared: "The criminal madness of the occupant was assisted by the French people and the French government." This is a double denial of General de Gaulle's attitude.
General de Gaulle refused:
1. All legitimacy to the "puppets" of Vichy, which he never considered as a state: "I proclaimed the illegitimacy of a regime that existed at the discretion of the enemy." (Memoires, I, p. 107). "There did not exist a properly constituted French government." (I, p. 388). "Hitler created Vichy." (I, p. 389.)
The leaders of CRIF (Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France) enthusiastically welcomed this denial. They expressed an "intense satisfaction to see the highest French authority recognize the continuity of the French State between 1940 and 1944." All the parties and all the press from "Le Monde" to "L'Humanite" fall in behind.
2. De Gaulle did not have such contempt for the French people: "The vast majority of the French people, far from accepting the regime imposed by violence and treason, considered the authority of Free France as the expression of its wishes and its will" (I, p. 394). And he added, as proof, the uprising of the people of Paris: "Four years of oppression did not crush the spirit of the capital. The treason was no more than vile scum on a body that remained healthy" (III, p. 442). "Our people never gave up, not even in the worst moments" (III, p. 194).
In the recent lynching of Abbe Pierre and of myself, the lobby power was asserted not only in the media, but even in the Church. We learned from "L'Humanite" (!) of April 30, 1996 that "Henri Hadjenberg, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), requested that the Church hierarchy in France take a position on the book of negationist Roger Garaudy and the support given to him by Abbe Pierre."
The Church bowed immediately. Hadjenberg pronounced his diktat on April 29. A text was published immediately by the Episcopate "deploring the engagement of Abbe Pierre on the side of Roger Garaudy."
Hadjenberg said that he was satisfied by the position of the Church of France that on Monday "marginalized Abbe Pierre." The same day, LICRA expelled Abbe Pierre because he "maintains his support for Roger Garaudy."
The Nuremberg Taboo: An Inverted Dreyfus Affair
What is this media racket?In other words, what do I deny in what they call, in the jargon, "negationism"?
It is sufficient to read the book in order to see that I do not deny the crimes against humanity committed by Hitler -- due to his bloody racism -- against the Jews. He accused them of being the authors of the October Revolution (he coined the phrase, "Judeo-Bolshevism") and of being the masters of international capitalism. This is a criminal double demagogy: First to please the West as a rampart against communism, and second, for internal consumption, to appeal to the masses. His main trump card was the Treaty of Versailles of 1918, which bled Germany dry. The great English economist Lord Keynes stated in his book, "The Economic Consequences of Peace" (1922): "With this treaty, you will have war within 20 years!"
Here, too, the Nuremberg Tribunal's designation of "crimes against peace" did not indict those who facilitated the rise of Hitler, thus allowing the butcher of people to pass for a savior of his people.
What I deny is that the Nuremberg Tribunal set a legal precedent and served as a criterion of historic truth, while many scholarly revisions have shown how distorted its deliberations and procedures were. (See my book, pp. 91-150.)
My criticism of the "principles" of Nuremberg is based on:
a) The very definition of the Tribunal, given on July 26, 1946 by its Presiding Judge Robert Jackson, Attorney General of the United States: "The Allies are technically still in a state of war with Germany. As a military tribunal, this tribunal represents a continuation of the Allied nations' war efforts."
b) The emergency statutes of this Tribunal (put together in London on August 8, 1945 by American, English, French and Russian leaders) leave no doubt on their "exemplary legal value."
"Article 19: The tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules relating to the admission of evidence."
"Article 21: Documents and reports of allied governments shall be admitted as authentic evidence."
Thanks to the application of these "principles," or rather the absence of principles and deliberate violation of legal ethics, the Soviet prosecutor Rudenko, for example, forced the admission of the report that blamed the German army for the massacre at Katyn of 11,000 Polish officers, while it was proved that the perpetrators were the Soviet leaders.
Similarly, when the Soviets liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, they presented a report, accepted on their word, of 4 million dead. Since then, this number continues to be controversial, as we have seen.
I have shown in my book that the rules that govern courts were not applied at Nuremberg. Neither texts nor testimonies concerning "the final solution" were verified, and the crime weapons (exhaust from trucks, or "gas chambers") were never authenticated.
Making this taboo sacred evidently required a ban on all research, the suppression of all scholarship and the demonization of whoever dares to raise questions.
This is similar to the trial of Captain Dreyfus, where it was deemed blasphemous to question the ruling of an antisemitic military tribunal backed by a Church that demonized Jews by calling them a "deicidal people."
The symmetry is striking. Today, the lobby has taken over the military and religious headquarters, not only to lynch people (like Abbe Pierre and myself) who dare to break the new idols of one-track thought and the "politically correct," but to put under investigation entire peoples, the new "deicidal peoples," against the only "chosen people."
A "Litany of Hate"
Today, there is a resumption of themes launched by Theodor Kaufman in 1942: "Germans, whoever they are, do not deserve to live." He showed the means by which the German race will be totally eliminated in 60 years. He mistook a whole people for its criminal leaders ("Germany must perish"). His racist frenzy paralleled that of Hitler.In 1942, Clifton Fadiman requested the weekly "New Yorker" to incite blazing hatred against all Germans and not only their Nazi leaders, when he said: "The actual Nazi aggression is not the work of a group of gangsters, but rather the final expression of the deepest instincts of the German people."
In 1996, a product of American Zionist education (like Ygal Amir, Rabin's assassin, or Baruch Goldstein, killer of Hebron), a certain Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, inspired by the same "litanies of hate," describes Germans as a "Nation of Killers" in his book, "Hitler's Willing Executioners."
A similar process in operation by Bernard-Henri Levy in his book, "L'ideologie Francaise" (French Ideology). At the price of the worst historical distortions, he tries desperately to make all the French people under the Vichy regime the creators of a "French fascism." Vichy would be the product of all French culture. "French culture is a witness to our seniority in abjectness" (p. 61), and it makes France "the homeland of National-Socialism" (p. 125).
A Tribal Reading of the Bible
The Zionist feeling of superiority very much resembles the glorification of Aryan racial purity, which serves as a justification for any bloody domination policy.In his book, "Le Talmud," (Ed. Payot, 1983), Rabbi A. Cohen is quite diligent in finding universalist elements in the Talmudic tradition. Early in the introduction (p. 19), he apologizes in advance for discriminatory passages: "A Jew needed a religion that not only distinguished him from pagans, but constantly reminded him that he is a member of the Jewish race."
He says that he found in Esdras what he calls "the fire frontier," "distinguishing and separating the Jew from all other people." This, he says, is the seed of the Talmud (p. 19).
We will not tackle here a discussion in theology, but we will only mention the political interpretation and the feeling of superiority that follows from a fundamentalist and literalist reading.
"One is more of a man when one is more Jewish" writes Rabbi Eisenberg, who runs the Sunday Jewish program on Channel 2 (Source: Rabbi Eisenberg "une Histoire des juifs" (CAL, 1970).
This theme is taken up by Elie Wiesel, citing the Talmud in his book, "Celebration Talmudique" (Ed. du Seuil, 1990): "A Jew is closer to humanity than anybody else."
This tribal reading of sacred texts, be it by Israeli extremists, "Islamists" or Christian fundamentalists is a permanent source of conflicts. To track them down is our task, whose aim is unity among men and not division.
Israel has no future in the harmonious fraternity of peoples, unless it is "dezionized," that is, becomes faithful to the admirable Jewish faith of the Prophets, whose goal was not nationalist and colonialist military conquest, but illumination of the divine message on the whole earth.
I have no word to change in my book, which is in line with my human struggle during the past half century, changing my fraternal ties whenever my challenge was not accepted. But I never changed my aim: the defense of man, every man. For GOD dwells in everyone.
A Prophetic Reading: Abbe Pierre
This brotherly love for all mankind is precisely what unites me with Abbe Pierre all through this century despite the different paths that we have followed in order to try to accomplish our divine task for humanity. This brotherliness does not require any blinding of one to the other. When we had divergent views, from the Miners' Strike of 1948 until the Maestricht Treaty, we confronted our differences candidly, but always enriching ourselves with our mutual criticisms, as a brother should help his brother along the path of truth.That is why the treacherous attacks waged against Abbe Pierre because he refused to disown me are a disgrace to those who do not know that dialogue can be filled with controversy and that love means to be in harmony with a truth that is human, hence relative and humble, but filled with divine faith.
How pitiful are those who spoke of "blind friendship" or insulted the Father by accusing him of being senile, or "manipulated" by his entourage, or "antisemitic."
At the beginning of this "Affair," when I met the Abbe, I said to him: "You know, Pierre, how much I admire your work for the excluded, especially the homeless. Millions of Palestinians have been driven out of their homes by Zionist terror and millions of Lebanese had to flee on the road during Israeli aggressions. Don't you think that their defense is an extension of your work for the homeless of France?"
The untiring prophet went to Gaza and asked forgiveness in the name of the West from Palestinians for the despoliation of their lands and homes (he was criticized by the "Jewish Tribune" and the Kouchners). He added that no Arab was responsible for the crimes of Hitler (a "Christian apostate," said Abbe Pierre). Responding to the infamous and untruthful lawsuit against me, he said that violence annuls the Promise. In denouncing the "suicidal policy" of Israeli leaders, he was speaking the language of the Jewish Prophets, from Amos to Micah, shouting: "Listen, leaders of the House of Israel, you are building Zion with the blood of Jerusalem and with crime. Because of you, Zion will be plowed like a field; it will become a pile of rubble." (Micah, III, 1-12.)
Abbe Pierre refused to call a conquered land a "Promised Land," whether conquered by the legendary sacred exterminations of Joshua in Jericho or Hebron, or the very real massacres of Begin and the Irgun in Deir Yassin in 1948, in Kafr Kassim in 1956, or in Lebanon, from Sharon in 1982 to Perez in 1996.
The pack of apostates of the grand universalist faith of the Prophets was set against Abbe Pierre: Jacques Attali, Schwarzenberg, Kouchner, and the "high priests," Sitruk and Kahn, who summoned him to appear, like Jesus, before the Sanhedrin, before the new Inquisition tribunal, charged by the thought police, "LICRA." He refused to recant and was expelled. This was his honor and the shame of the Pharisees.
It is not at all a matter of a religious quarrel, as the sophist, Jean Daniel, wrote in an editorial in "Le Nouvel Observateur" on "Religions Against Peace." On the contrary, Abbe Pierre and myself are against the use of religions for political ends. Jews, Christians and Muslims recognize the same "Father of believers," who was neither Jewish, nor Christian, nor Muslim but anterior to all of them, an "Aramean wanderer," who announced a Covenant of GOD with "all the families of the earth." And since we are all filled with the same GOD, Abbe Pierre, myself and all people who struggle for human unity resist the temptation to attempt to appropriate the divine promise, which is in all of us, thereby making it a tool of bloody nationalism and colonialism.
It is not true, as Jean Daniel claims, that it is religions that are against peace but rather the nationalist heresies, a striking example of which is Israeli leadership. It sanctifies a policy of despoliation, aggression and violation of international laws, according to the goal assigned by its spiritual leader, the atheist Herzl, who wrote in his book, "The Jewish State": "We will be an advanced bastion of Western civilization against the barbarism of the Orient."
Abrogate the Totalitarian Gayssot Law
Today, there is no other resource for the thought police than to press charges against us in the name of the Gayssot Law. This law has not only disgraced the "communist" party and the "socialist" party, but all the political parties that fought it when they were in the opposition. They do not dare abrogate it now that they are in power, for fear of the lobby. During the debate of May 2, 1990, at the National Assembly (Official Record of May 3, 1990) when the "Gayssot Law" was passed, its stated objective was "to repress what is called "revisionism" (O.R., p. 912). "Revisionism must be sanctioned because it is a vehicle for antisemitism" (O.R., p. 956).The hidden premise of the text is that there is no "crime against humanity" unless the crime is against Jews.
The meeting took place under heavy surveillance. A deputy remarks (O.R., p. 905): "We witnessed tonight an extraordinary stage production. During our debate, we rarely saw so many journalists and television cameras. They wanted to show that those who will vote 'against,' refuse to fight racism." (Then current Justice Minister) Toubon said, "It is not a law against racism, it is a manipulation" (O.R., p. 929) and he added, "The law they are going to enact is a media coup" (O.R., p. 936).
In Whose Interest?
Already in an article of July 5, 1983 in "Liberation," Luc Rozenzweig wrote, "'LICRA' enjoys an incredible privilege: the law of July 1, 1972 against racial discrimination, delegates to it the power to automatically decide who is antisemitic and who is not. It alone judges the appropriateness of proceedings, and within the framework of the law, reduces judges to the role of notary public in the register of infamy."The "Gayssot Law" increases this power further. As Toubon said, "This proposition [Article 7, R.G.] was made by 'LICRA' during the work of the consultative commission on human rights" (O.R., p. 948).
Today, it is precisely Kahn, the grand master of "LICRA," who is the president of this commission!
Mssrs. Chirac, Juppe, Seguin, the current ministers of Justice and of Domestic Affairs (Toubon and Debre) and 265 deputies voted against the "Gayssot Law." One wonders what (or who) prevents them today from abrogating this law that they had so clearly denounced?
Francois Terre, the great French jurist, Philosophy of Law Professor at the Assas Faculty of the Institut, wrote: "The spirit of this law is totalitarian. It instituted negationism as a criminal offense. It is up to jurists to safeguard the fundamental freedoms undermined by the Gayssot Law: freedom of opinion and of expression. It is not in the courts that history finds its judges. Then, how can the implementation of the Gayssot Law be prevented when, prior to its promulgation, it could have been stopped by the Constitutional Council (the President of the Republic, the President of the National Assembly and of the Senate, 60 deputies, 60 senators) but which did not have the courage to do so?" The author proposes to submit it to the European Court in Strasbourg, to put an end to "the appalling character of a law that restores 'delit d'opinion' (i.e., defines questioning of official truth as a criminal offense)." ("Le Figaro" of May 16, 1996.)
It is sad to have to appeal to a foreign authority to remind France of what is a state of law.
In the same issue of the paper, a reader wrote about "the dangerous schizophrenia of a country where Salman Rushdie is a hero while Roger Garaudy is banned and Abbe Pierre is exposed to public contempt."
When Deputy Vodoz, President of "LICRA" in Switzerland, demands that a lawsuit be filed against me (in Switzerland!), Georges Andre Chevallaz, former President of the Helvetic Confederation, wrote: "As a historian, I am amazed by this spirit of McCarthyism and witch hunt every time the Holocaust is concerned" (Journal de Geneve, of May 2, 1996).
In France, during the debate on June 21, 1991 of the Gayssot Law in the General Assembly, Deputy Toubon, then Justice Minister, proposed to reject it: "It is a very grave political and legal error. It is an artificial law that imposes historical truth instead of allowing truth to be determined by history. I am sure this law will never be applied" (O.R. of June 22, 1991, p. 3571).
Today, another deputy wrote about "the official truth that fossilizes history." Recalling that the law was enacted during the Affair of Carpentras Cemetery, He described the conditions at the time of the vote, in an article entitled, "A Harmful Law": "The parliamentarians were subjected to a kind of implicit blackmail: any deputy who did not vote for this law would have been suspected of negationism. At the time, influential groups created an unhealthy climate." He added, "It is a law that imposes an official truth. It is worthy of totalitarian regimes, not of a democracy" ("Le Figaro," of May 3, 1996).
If one remembers, as Max Clos wrote in his "Bloc Notes de la semaine," that "The Gayssot Law of July 13, 1990 makes a crime of 'negationism,' the questioning of Nazi crimes against Jews," one can guess which were the "influential groups" that exercised "implicit blackmail" on the parliamentarians and why today, they do not have the courage to abrogate it, as Professor Terre said. We now know who controls and remote controls Presidents of the Republic (current or former), the Assemblies, the Media, the Parties and the Churches, and how difficult it is, through slander or silence, to help millions of well-meaning French people to liberate themselves from this "brainwashing" that hides the role played by this lie in the world domination strategy of the United States and its mercenary guardian of Middle East oil, through a project of disintegration of all the countries in the region (where the Kivounim plan is only an outline).
But the Truth Bursts Against Darkness
Efforts to silence us will be in vain. For this, they must kill us. The surge of hate against our misquoted writings, a real call to murder, shows that some are thinking about it, as though only prison will gag DREYFUS. But this will be a new proof that they cannot find any argument against us.
- Roger Garaudy
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of Israeli Politics
Annexes
Letter of Abbe Pierre to Roger Garaudy
April 15, 1996Very Dear Roger,
You know the limits of my strength. I weaken every day, even though many think that my strength is great because my voice is still resounding and because, as soon as I have the conviction that an action or an issue creates injustice or falsehood, I recover my energies, however briefly.
Forgive me for talking so much about myself, but this is to explain to you and to all who would deem it useful to make my letter known, why, despite phone calls, I am late in expressing my convictions concerning you as a person, whom I have known for over 50 years, and concerning your actions, from the most intimate to those having great public consequences.
As a communist deputy, you were the first person with whom I had a debate, the memory of which has remained unforgettable because it was fruitful for both of us.
Your most recent book reached me while I was at the limits of my strength, attending to other pressing tasks. At 83, with all that is happening to me, I can read very little. I have only 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the afternoon when I can really work.
About this crushing, thousand year old unending drama surrounding Israel, you have known, for many years, my careful considerations and you know that my thoughts extend beyond the contemporary dramas.
We have had serious discussions about this subject.
It is impossible for me to speak about your new book with all the care that is required, not only because of its fundamental subject, but also because of the amazing, brilliant and scrupulous scholarship on which each argument is based, as I noticed while going through it.
I will do my best so that soon, true historians with your same passion for truth will set out to debate it with you.
The insults against you that I have seen (even in a Daily that I like most because of its customary objectivity) and that have bombarded you from all sides show the dishonesty of those who have rashly condemned you.
In this letter, I want to make public two convictions: one, in a few words, concerning your person; the other (still imperfectly expressed) concerns how my life has led me to conceptualize the succession of historical events, which I view with sadness. Such is the admirable faith (but for many centuries withdrawn to itself) of this people, my brothers, that limits itself by not hearing the call to a mission of another, nobler greatness.
Providence had allowed me, in other times (that seem so near), at the risk, voluntarily accepted, of my life, to come to the help of those I could help. Because of this, I am particularly sensitive to their pain.
About you and your life, a few words suffice. You are one of those men who will never cease to be tormented by a devouring thirst for the Absolute, until faced with Infinite Love.
I blame those who are too superficial, or too busy with many other things, that they do not know how to respect and love your research, and do not understand the manner in which (all during your life) you have tried to approximate the Absolute, approaching it from its many, perceived, fragmented dimensions, from all over the world and through the centuries, that people share (and over which they are led astray, and sometimes fight).
It is not without some painful trembling and great humility that I invoke another of my convictions concerning the Jewish portion of the human universe.
After I finished my theological studies, I pursued my own biblical studies. It came as a horrible shock when I discovered the Book of Joshua. I had already been gripped by more serious trouble when I learned of the Golden Calf's order to massacre 3000 people a short time before Moses brought the "Table of Laws," which said, "Thou shall not kill!" But with Joshua, I discovered (surely told centuries after the event) how a true Shoah took place on all existing life in the "Promised Land."
I say: "If I promise you my car, and if you come at night, kill the guard, force the door open and take the promised car, then what is left of the 'promise'?"
Doesn't violence destroy the foundation of the promise? Indeed, afterwards, the Covenant will continue to be repeated constantly with a people who (not unique, it seems, but unique as a highly constituted people) have in their conscience the notion of a Unique Eternal (indeed, not yet clearly knowing that this Essence is Love). I live this revelation with Jesus, Jesus who founded the Trinity of faith: Deus caritas est. But does not this Covenant also concern this part of the world (that can and must be called not "Promised Land," but "Holy Land," filled with crimes but also with Prophets)?
I can no longer justify promises by God (even if orders to massacre are attributed to Him -- and isn't this an offense to God?) for only this corner of the earth, for or against which so many are still dying today.
Is not the Covenant to send all of Israel to spread the faith it has received, for all of the earth?
The promised land is for every Believer (hence, for every Jew, too). I cannot swerve from this idea, of carrying to the whole earth the JOY of experiencing the true GOD.
Oh, how I would like to still be young, to work with fraternal groups for the realization of the mission received first in Israel, then in Jesus.
I do not ignore that the retreat of Israel upon itself is partly due to the strange reversal of history caused by Constantin after the Edict of Milan, and the harmful consequences that accompanied its beneficial effects.
We have heard that in the year 2000, the Pope (will it be the same Pope?) will express the intention to confess the historic mistakes that accompanied the zeal of Christian missions.
Could he underestimate the role that the words, "deicidal people," played in anti-semitism? This would be insane, for it is to all peoples, to all humans, that Jesus offered himself in ransom.
At that time, forbidden martyrs were replaced (to compensate for the decadence of the empire) by the disastrous structures of privilege: Prince-Bishops, Pope-Kings, including the most abusive confusion between the spiritual and temporal.
Roger, we are both old men, and we have to talk more about this and question people more scholarly than myself. Please, from these illegible lines that we will read together over the telephone, keep the force and loyalty of my affectionate esteem and my respect for the enormous work of your new book. To confuse it with what has been called "revisionism" is a deception and a veritable slander by unthinking people.
I embrace you and assure you that you and your family will remain present in my daily offering.
Your brother,
Abbe Pierre
Testimony of a Protestant Pastor
May 11, 1996
Dear Abbe Pierre, Dear Roger Garaudy,
I am saddened by the flood of hatred and contempt heaped upon you. This reveals the feeling that many carry in their hearts. Remember, Abbe Pierre, a devoted man, dragged in mud, will enhance your value (in the eyes) of the one who judges and condemns.
And you, Roger Garaudy, you have a twofold luxury: in the eyes of the French, you incarnate two phobias -- communism and Islam. One would think you do it on purpose.
You have proved that you love the Jews infinitely more than those who give lessons. But here you are, you also love the Palestinians and Arabs in general, the majority of whom are Muslims, but sometimes Christians. All Palestinian or Arab brothers who, for generations, have been humiliated, colonized, dispossessed, bashed, imprisoned, starved. And you have reason to love them and to want justice and peace for them. Nobody understood (and nobody explained, either) that it is because of them that you embarked on the mad enterprise that consists in trying to explain (to the ignorant and to people who do not want to know) the consequences of the horrible extermination of Jews, or the fate of the Arabs, who had nothing to do with Polish or Russian pogroms, the Dreyfus Affair, the concentration camps, or the Nazi extermination. And yet, it is they who are dispossessed. What is contested is not the abjectness and horror of antisemitic massacres, it is their use to justify the creation and permanent expansion of the State of Israel and to cover up mad injustices. To make of "Auschwitz" a political argument to support Israel is to run the risk that this argument be contested. And when the historical reexamination of the Nazi period is refused, when the files are closed, is not that really to prevent the questioning of the legitimacy of the State of Israel and its behavior? Yet history will prevail. One day, everything will be known.
Thank goodness that it was a Jewish historian (for whom I have great respect) who wrote 30 years ago in "Les Temps Modernes" a marvelous article, "Israel, Colonial Fact?" Is he right or wrong? And if it is true that the colonization of Palestine was devised by the Zionist movement a hundred years ago, during the height of the colonialization period, is there no reason to doubt that this colonial domination will end like the others? It is better to think about it than to curse. Has not Arafat agreed to pay a heavy price for peace? And, to a certain extent, the Israeli pacifists, too? Rabin included? Are "negationists" the Nazis of today who want to revise history in order to give good reason for the Nazis of yesterday? I will never believe (after reading Abbe Pierre's declarations and R. Garaudy's book) that these brothers have converted to Nazism.
It is said that the theology of Abbe Pierre is "obsolete." I know others who are even more so, and who could do better to be more modest.
As for you, my two brothers, the struggles you are waging, at your age, to raise the consciousness of all those who need it, compel respect and contribute to hope.
Pastor Roger Parmentier
The Cry of a Deportee
A 1940 Gaullist veteran of the Free French Forces (FFL), I was arrested in October, 1943, and deported for 18 months to Buchenwald, then to the hell of Dora, where thousands of French deportees lost their lives in the underground factories of V1 and V2. I returned disabled.
This is to tell you that we shared with our Jewish comrades all the ordeals of the camps. Having said that, I ask journalists with what right they deny veteran deportees the right to question theories elevated to truth, not by Jewish deportees but by some Zionists?
What kind of society do we live in, where we do not have the right to criticize, in any manner, either Jews or Israelis or Zionists, without being automatically accused of anti-semitism or racism?
Let journalists know one thing: The vast majority of deportees in Nazi camps were not Jewish, even though the media give credence to the thesis that only Jews were deported and exterminated.
Let them know, too, that in France, there were about 250,000 deportees, of which about 25,000 were French Jews. Between 80,000 and 100,000 returned, of which about 15,000 were Jews.
Nobody speaks about the non-Jewish deportees. Why? There is a lot of talk about Shoah, but nothing about the underground factories of V1 and V2 in Dora, where thousands of French deportees died of exhaustion and bad treatment. Dora, too, was a camp of extermination, by work and by hunger.
As for Auschwitz, it is true that about 800,000 Jews from all of Europe perished after 1943, but we must not forget that the first exterminated deportees were 400,000 Soviet soldiers, about 150,000 gypsies, 500,000 to 600,000 Polish, and deportees of other nationalities.
There is no talk about this, either. So why talk only about Jews' sacrifices and conceal the martyrdom of other deportees? They, too, have the right to memory.
As a senior deportee, Garaudy is saying the same thing, when he maintains that deportation of "non-Jews" was concealed and when he denounces the manipulation of numbers, from the official talk initially of about 4 million Jews exterminated in Auschwitz, now reduced to 1 million.
Is it "revisionist" or "negationist" or even antisemitic to maintain this?
In the camps, there was no monopoly by any category. We were all equal in the face of suffering and death.
We cannot accept that deportation be monopolized by some and that journalists who have known neither deportation nor war be permitted such manipulation.
Gaston Pernot
Doctor of Law
Commander of the Legion of Honor, Paris
("Le Figaro," Friday, May 3, 1996)
Indignation of an Israeli Writer: Ari Shavit
Cana: 102 Faceless Dead
We killed 170 people in Lebanon, most of whom were refugees, during the month of April, 1996. Many of them were women, old people and children. We killed 9 civilians, one a 2 year old girl and one, a centenarian, in Sahmour, on April 11th. We killed 11 civilians, including 7 children, in Nabatyeh, on April 18th. In the UN Camp in Cana, we killed 102 people. We made sure to inflict death from a distance. In a very secular manner, without the archaic idea of sin, without the antediluvian worry to consider man in the image of God, and without the primitive proscription, "You shall not kill!"
Our solid alibi is that we are responsible for nothing, that the responsibility falls on Hezbollah. A most doubtful alibi. For when we decided to launch a massive attack on the civilian region of South Lebanon (while Israel ran no vital risk), we decided, ipso facto, to spill the blood of X number of civilians. When we decided to drive half a million people out of their homes and to shell those who remained behind (while in Israel, we did not have one single victim), we decided, in fact, to execute several dozen of them. This (alibi) allowed us to make such cruel decisions without seeing ourselves as rotten.
We killed them because the increasingly wider gap between the sacrosanct character that we attribute to our own lives and the more limited character we give to theirs, allowed us to kill. We believe, in the most absolute manner, with the White House, the Senate, the Pentagon, and the New York Times on our side, that their lives do not have the same weight as ours. We are convinced that with Dimona (Israel's atomic site), Yad Vashem and the Shoah Museum in our hand, we have the right to compel 400,000 people to evacuate their homes in 8 hours. And we have the right, at the end of 8 hours, to consider their homes as military targets. And we reserve the right to rain 16,000 shells on their villages and their populations. And we reserve the right to kill without any guilt feelings.
But all this cannot alleviate the gravity of the massacre, Israeli style, and our responsibility for its execution. For it is perpetrated, in general, in places to which we give free range to immoderate violence.
The shelling of Cana was executed according to the rules, orders and objectives of operation, "Grapes of Wrath." There is something wrong in these rules, orders and objectives. Something that is no longer human. Something that touches on the criminal.
And all of us, without exception, were an integral part of this machine. The public supported the media, who supported the government, who supported the Chief of Staff, who supported the inquiry officer, who supported the officers, who supported the soldiers who fired the three shells that killed 102 in Cana.
Nothing can prevent Cana from becoming an integral part of our biography. Because, after Cana, we did not denounce the crime, we did not want to subject the affair to the eyes of the law, we merely wanted to deny the horror and go on with our current affairs. That is how Cana is part of ourselves -- like one of the features of our face.
As the massacre perpetrated by Baruch Goldstein (in the Cave of the Patriarchs on Muslims while praying) and the crime committed by Ygal Amir (like the reactions to them) were manifestations of rotten seeds in the heart of the national-religious culture, the massacre of Cana is no less extreme a grain of rottenness in the heart of secular Israeli culture: its cynicism, brutality, instrumentalism, egocentrism of the powerful; this tendency to blur the frontier between good and evil, between permitted and prohibited; this tendency not to require justice, not to care about truth.
The manner in which contemporary Israel has functioned during and after Cana shows that modern, rational Israeli life conceals a terrifying aspect.
Ari Shavit/Haaretz/New York Times Syndication.
Ari Shavit is a writer and columnist of the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. He lives in Jerusalem. (Translated from Hebrew in "Liberation" of May 21, 1996.)
This pamphlet is a reply to the lies of the media about Roger Garaudy's book, "The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics: A Reference Book to Purify Political Life in the 21st Century."
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