- 16 Jun 2008 21:18
#1561253
Hamas condemns the Holocaust
We are not engaged in a religious conflict with Jews; this is a political struggle to free ourselves from occupation and oppression
Bassem Naeem
guardian.co.uk, Monday May 12 2008
I can already hear the scoffing from the Zionist camp.
But although this can be taken with a pinch of salt, is this not an improvement? With the outrage caused by Hamas' patron, Iran, over their conference debating whether or not the Holocaust existed is it not significant that a Hamas official goes on record not only acknowledging that the Holocaust was not a hoax but also a crime against humanity?
Also that dissidenting voices from the Jewish community have been acknowledged (i.e. no "the only good Jew is a dead Jew" type sentiment)? Isn't this what is constantly demanded of Islamists?
Also given the hard fact that Hamas is a major player is this not an oppurtunity to engage with them on a more realistic footing, less colored on pre-conceptions?
Should we automatically trust every word Hamas says? No. But not everything Israel's supporters state should be taken at face value as well. Not to mention the constant conflict between Israel's claim to be a state with "true equal rights for all" and it's character as a "Jewish state". So the Israelis certainly have their share of contradictions between words and actions.
Hamas is certainly not "progressive" but this indicates that's it's oversimplistic and inaccurate to dismiss them as "Islamonazis" either. Call it a "dialectic" if you will. Even if Hamas DID begin as this extreme anti-Semitic organization, years of struggle is forcing it to moderate it's stance. Even more so with their stint in government.
From the very beginning the "peace process" has been built on distrust and constant pressure on the Palestinians to "prove" that they're not the coming of the Fourth Reich. That approach hasn't worked for the past 15 years and it still won't work in another 15.
We are not engaged in a religious conflict with Jews; this is a political struggle to free ourselves from occupation and oppression
Bassem Naeem
guardian.co.uk, Monday May 12 2008
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"....
....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.
I can already hear the scoffing from the Zionist camp.
But although this can be taken with a pinch of salt, is this not an improvement? With the outrage caused by Hamas' patron, Iran, over their conference debating whether or not the Holocaust existed is it not significant that a Hamas official goes on record not only acknowledging that the Holocaust was not a hoax but also a crime against humanity?
Also that dissidenting voices from the Jewish community have been acknowledged (i.e. no "the only good Jew is a dead Jew" type sentiment)? Isn't this what is constantly demanded of Islamists?
Also given the hard fact that Hamas is a major player is this not an oppurtunity to engage with them on a more realistic footing, less colored on pre-conceptions?
Should we automatically trust every word Hamas says? No. But not everything Israel's supporters state should be taken at face value as well. Not to mention the constant conflict between Israel's claim to be a state with "true equal rights for all" and it's character as a "Jewish state". So the Israelis certainly have their share of contradictions between words and actions.
Hamas is certainly not "progressive" but this indicates that's it's oversimplistic and inaccurate to dismiss them as "Islamonazis" either. Call it a "dialectic" if you will. Even if Hamas DID begin as this extreme anti-Semitic organization, years of struggle is forcing it to moderate it's stance. Even more so with their stint in government.
From the very beginning the "peace process" has been built on distrust and constant pressure on the Palestinians to "prove" that they're not the coming of the Fourth Reich. That approach hasn't worked for the past 15 years and it still won't work in another 15.
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