The Holocaust Industry by Norman Finkelstein Read Free Book Online Page B

of The Holocaust.'' As if Israel otherwise would not have
    gone nuclear.
    There is another factor at work. The claim of Holocaust uniqueness is a claim of Jewish uniqueness.
    The Holocaust Industry: HOAXERS, HUCKSTERS AND HISTORY
    http://www.geocities.com/holocaustindustry/chapter_2.html (3 of 20) [23/11/2000 15:47:20]
    Not the suffering of Jews but that Jews suffered is what made The Holocaust unique. Or: The
    Holocaust is special because Jews are special. Thus Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish
    Theological Seminary, ridicules the Holocaust uniqueness claim as "a distasteful secular version of
    chosenness." 18 Vehement as he is about the uniqueness of The Holocaust, Elie Wiesel is no less
    vehement that Jews are unique. "Everything about us is different." Jews are "ontologically"
    exceptional. 19 Marking the climax of a millennial Gentile hatred of Jews, The Holocaust attested not
    only to the unique suffering of Jews but to Jewish uniqueness as well.
    During and in the aftermath of World War 11, Novick reports, "hardly anyone inside [the US]
    government - and hardly anyone outside it, Jew or Gentile — would have understood the phrase
    'abandonment of the Jews.'" A reversal set in after June 1967. "The world's silence," "the world's
    indifference," "the abandonment of the Jews". these themes became a staple of "Holocaust
    discourse." 20
    Appropriating a Zionist tenet, the Holocaust framework cast Hitler's Final Solution as the climax of a
    millennial Gentile hatred of Jews. The Jews perished because all Gentiles, be it as perpetrators or as
    passive collaborators, wanted them dead. "The free and 'civilized' world,» according to Wiesel,
    handed the Jews «over to the executioner. There were the killers—the murderers - and there were
    those who remained silent." 21 The historical evidence for a murderous Gentile impulse is nil. Daniel
    Goldhagen's ponderous effort to prove one variant of this claim in Hitler's Willing Executioners barely
    rose to the comical. 22 Its political utility, however, is considerable. One might note, incidentally, that
    the "eternal anti-Semitism» theory in fact gives comfort to the anti-Semite. As Arendt says in The
    Origins of Totalitarianism, «that this doctrine was adopted by professional anti-Semites is a matter of
    course; it gives the best possible alibi for all horrors. If it is true that mankind has insisted on
    murdering Jews for more than two thousand years, then Jew-killing is a normal, and even human,
    occupation and Jew-hatred is justified beyond the need of argument. The more surprising aspect of
    this explanation is that it has been adopted by a great many unbiased historians and by an even greater
    number of Jews." 23
    The Holocaust dogma of eternal Gentile hatred has served both to justify the necessity of a Jewish
    state and to account for the hostility directed at Israel. The Jewish state is the only safeguard against
    the next (inevitable) outbreak of homicidal anti-Semitism; conversely, homicidal anti-Semitism is
    behind every attack or even defensive maneuver against the Jewish state. To account for criticism of
    Israel, fiction writer Cynthia Chick had a ready answer: "The world wants to wipe out the Jews . . . the
    world has always wanted to wipe out the Jews." 24 If all the world wants the Jews dead, truly the
    wonder is that they are still alive — and, unlike much of humanity, not exactly starving.
    This dogma has also conferred total license on Israel: Intent as the Gentiles always are on murdering
    Jews, Jews have every right to protect themselves, however they see fit. Whatever expedient Jews
    might resort to, even aggression and torture, constitutes legitimate self-defense. Deploring the
    "Holocaust lesson" of eternal Gentile hatred, Boas Evron observes that it "is really tantamount to a
    deliberate breeding of paranoia.... This mentality ... condones in advance any inhuman treatment of
    non-Jews, for the prevailing mythology is that 'all people