Tuesday, February 18, 2003

Final Solution in the Occupied Territories
"Years ago many of us wondered how things that were obviously "beyond belief" could be made to seem normal by the intellectual culture and mainstream media. Deborah Lipstadt, in a book entitled Beyond Belief, which dealt with the Holocaust and its treatment in the West, showed how easily the media could do this by pushing horrendous reports to the back pages, by ignoring other reports, and by episodic treatment without editorial support or indignation.

"In a monstrous historical irony, we can see today that neither the Israelis nor the West in general have learned any lesson from the Holocaust, except on how to make acceptable and normalize policies that are "beyond belief" but which they now pursue. Here are the heirs and survivors of a people that had been subjected to the truest Holocaust in modern times, virtually modelling themselves after their former killers, edging closer and closer to a "final solution" of the problem posed by "grasshoppers" (Shamir), "cockroachs" (Eitan), "beasts walking on two legs" (Begin), and "lice" (Ben-Eliezer) in the Occupied Territories, as they resist being pushed off of their land by a "chosen people" seeking what the Nazis called "Lebensraum."

No comments: