amas condemns the Holocaust Hamas condemns the Holocaust
Bassem Naeem
May 12, 2008 2:30 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/bassem_naeem/2008/05/hamas_condemns_the_holocaust.html
As the Palestinian people prepare to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the
Nakba ("catastrophe") - the dispossession and expulsion of most of our people
from our land - those remaining in Palestine face escalating aggression,
killings, imprisonment, ethnic cleansing and siege. But instead of support and
solidarity from the western media, we face frequent attempts to defend the
indefensible or turn fire on the Palestinians themselves.
One recent approach, which seems to be part of the wider attempt to isolate
the elected Palestinian leadership, is to portray Hamas and the population of
the Gaza strip as motivated by anti-Jewish sentiment, rather than a hostility
to Zionist occupation and domination of our land. A recent front page article
in the International Herald Tribune followed this line, as did an article for
Cif about an item broadcast on the al-Aqsa satellite TV channnel about the
Nazi Holocaust.
In fact, the al-Aqsa Channel is an independent media institution that often
does not express the views of the Palestinian government headed by Ismail
Haniyeh or of the Hamas movement. The channel regularly gives Palestinians of
different convictions the chance to express views that are not shared by the
Palestinian government or the Hamas movement. In the case of the opinion
expressed on al-Aqsa TV by Amin Dabbur, it is his alone and he is solely
responsible for it.
It is rather surprising to us that so little attention, if any, is given by
the western media to what is regularly broadcast or written in the Israeli
media by politicians and writers demanding the total uprooting or "transfer"
of the Palestinian people from their land.
The Israeli media and pro-Israel western press are full of views that deny or
seek to excuse well-established facts of history including the Nakba of 1948
and the massacres perpetrated then by the Haganah, the Irgun and LEHI with the
objective of forcing a mass dispossession of the Palestinians.
But it should be made clear that neither Hamas nor the Palestinian government
in Gaza denies the Nazi Holocaust. The Holocaust was not only a crime against
humanity but one of the most abhorrent crimes in modern history. We condemn it
as we condemn every abuse of humanity and all forms of discrimination on the
basis of religion, race, gender or nationality.
And at the same time as we unreservedly condemn the crimes perpetrated by the
Nazis against the Jews of Europe, we categorically reject the exploitation of
the Holocaust by the Zionists to justify their crimes and harness
international acceptance of the campaign of ethnic cleansing and subjection
they have been waging against us - to the point where in February the Israeli
deputy defence minister Matan Vilnai threatened the people of Gaza with a
"holocaust".
Within 24 hours, 61 Palestinians - more than half of them civilians and a
quarter children - were killed in a series of air raids. Meanwhile, a horrible
crime against humanity continues to be perpetrated against the people of Gaza:
the two-year-old siege imposed after Hamas won the legislative elections in
January 2006, which is causing great suffering. Due to severe shortages of
medicines and food, scores of Palestinians have lost their lives.
It cannot be right that Europeans in general and the British in particular
maintain a virtual silence toward what the Zionists are doing to the
Palestinians, let alone supporting or justifying their oppressive policies,
under the pretext of showing sympathy for the victims of the Holocaust.
The Palestinian people aspire to freedom, independence and peaceful
coexistence with all their neighbours. There are, today, more than six million
Palestinian refugees. No less than 700,000 Palestinians have been detained at
least once by the Israeli occupation authorities since 1967. Hundreds of
thousands have so far been killed or wounded. Little concern seems to be
caused by all of this or by the erection of an apartheid wall that swallows
more than 20% of the West Bank land or the heavily armed colonies that devour
Palestinian land in a blatant violation of international law.
The plight of our people is not the product of a religious conflict between
us and the Jews in Palestine or anywhere else: the aims and positions of
today's Hamas have been repeatedly spelled out by its leadership, for example
in Hamas's 2006 programme for government. The conflict is of a purely
political nature: it is between a people who have come under occupation and an
oppressive occupying power.
Our right to resistance against occupation is recognised by all conventions
and religious traditions. The Jews are for us the people of a sacred book who
suffered persecution in European lands. Whenever they sought refuge, Muslim
and Arab lands provided them with safe havens. It was in our midst that they
enjoyed peace and prosperity; many of them held leading positions in Muslim
countries.
After almost a century of Zionist colonial and racist oppression, some
Palestinians find it hard to imagine that some of their oppressors are the
sons and daughters of those who were themselves oppressed and massacred.
Palestinians had nothing to do with the Holocaust but find themselves
punished for someone else's crime. But we are well aware and warmly welcome
the outspoken support for Palestinian rights by Israeli and Jewish human
rights activists in Palestine and around the world.
We hope that journalists in the west will begin to adopt a more objective
approach when covering events in Palestine. The Palestinian people are being
killed by Israel's machine of destruction on a daily basis. Nevertheless, we
still see a clear bias in favour of Israel in the western media.
The Europeans bear a direct responsibility for what is befalling the
Palestinians today. Britain was the mandate authority that handed over
Palestine to Israeli occupation. Nazi Germany perpetrated the most heinous
crimes against Jews, forcing the survivors to migrate to Palestine in pursuit
of safety. We, therefore, expect the Europeans to atone for their historic
crimes by restoring some balance to the inhuman and one-sided international
response to the tragedy of our people.
Envy parading behind the mask of Justice is an ugly brute. Gai Eaton - The
King Of The Castle
ABDUL WAHID OSMAN BELAL
