Several seemingly unrelated articles coalesced in my mind today, as I was reading Ha’aretz. It’s all centers around demagography.
Anyone who claims ethnic cleansing (let us not use the sterile term “transfer”) is a marginal phenomenon in Israeli society, has to explain why Sharon chose the two parties identified with this policy as his partners in his coalition government.
Please don’t be fooled by Lapid’s braying that he has a letter from Sharon saying the new government will “support” the Quartet’s road map. This is qualified as the road map with the over 100 corrections the Israeli government wants added – in other words this is road kill. I have previously noted that Shinui as well is a xenophobic extreme right party. The fact that Shinui is happily sitting in a government with the NRP and National Union will hopefully disabuse anyone who might have thought otherwise. In sum, this is a government Milosevic would feel quite comfortable in.
It is no coincidence that this article also appeared in today’s paper. Listen to this:
“Sofer is a long-time gadfly who warns of demographic danger to Israel if it does not create some form of separation between the state and the Palestinians. He says ‘an emergency government is needed, as in 1967, with the national goal of a war to reconquer the territories inside Israel.’”
“He told Haaretz: ‘Deterministic processes are threatening to destroy Israel. We won’t succeed with democracy and pretty words. If we do not exert all out efforts in the Negev and Galilee, with an emergency regime, in another three to five years a dictator will do it.’”
So ethnic cleansing is not only a policy to be applied to the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza. It needs to be applied to the Arab citizens of Israel as well.
The supporters of ethnic cleansing claim it is a “humane” alternative. No one gets killed in the process, they say. The answer to that claim, came in another article in today’s Ha”aretz. At a seminar on the Holocaust, historian Yehuda Bauer, whom Ha’aretz calls “the 77-year-old doyen of Holocaust scholars,” made the following point:
“‘Am I to understand that you think Israel could commit genocide on the Palestinian people?’ asked one young educator, somewhat taken aback. ‘Yes,’ answered Bauer. ‘Just two days ago, extremist settlers passed out flyers to rid Arabs from this land. Ethnic cleansing results in mass killing.’”
The article is entitled “It Could Happen Here.” In the past I have written:
“We have converted the Holocaust into a religion, and Hitler into the devil incarnate. By doing so we prevent ourselves from learning the most important lesson of the Holocaust, viz. that all of us are capable of Nazi-like behavior, in one form or another. The Nazis were human beings like you and me. They share the same DNA we do. We are they and they are us.”
But why listen to me? Bauer, a far greater scholar than I, makes the same exact point:
“Bauer demystifies the Holocaust, refusing to accept the view of some philosophers and historians that the Holocaust is beyond human understanding. He says it can be explained, because it was done by humans ‘for human reasons.’ And although ‘the genocide of the Jews was by far the worst,’ he no longer sees it as a unique event but rather as an unprecedented event which can happen again.”
Similar arguments are made by Debrah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt in their recently released book,”Holocaust: A History:”
“Our approach is very clearly a criticism of the idea of the Holocaust as unique, or something that stands by itself or this otherworldly event.”
Justifying ethnic cleansing is a step away from justifying genocide. In fact, many in the “transfer” movement have already publicly made statements justifying genocide against the Palestinians. The chilling conclusion of all this is: every decent human being, Jew or gentile, must stand up and actively oppose the new government of Israel, before it commits unspeakable crimes against humanity – before it is too late.