About a week ago or so, there were three different news stories from three different continents that did not seem to be linked together. “In Washington, a White supremacist killed a guard at the Holocaust Museum near the White House, and tried to kill others when the guards shot and wounded James von Brunn in the face.” In the city of Nasiriyah in southern Iraq, a terrorist bombing killed 35 people, including women and children. In London, British National Party leader Nick Griffin was hurdled with eggs on his way to Parliament Square where he was celebrating his Fascistic party's victory in the European elections – winning two seats. Since June 10, I have been trying to find something in common between a racist in America, a terrorist in Iraq, and a Fascist in London and all I find in common is hatred and extremism. I will not get myself into the maze of psychological analysis, and whether a person is born an extremist, or acquires radicalism from the community around him. There are plenty of psychologists who are more qualified to tackle this subject than I am. Hence I will just write about it from what I already know. On the same day- the tenth of June - Michael Gerson wrote an article in the Washington Post article entitled “Clarity for the Deniers”. In the article, he praised President Obama for his speech addressed to Muslims, and in which he sought a new beginning with the Muslim world, without ignoring the holocaust, the denial of which he called to be “baseless”, "ignorant" and "hateful." Two days later, Gerson wrote another article in the same newspaper, entitled “Why the Jews?” about anti-Semitism, and about the responses he received to his previous article which attributed to the Jews all the calamities in the world. He again returned to the issue of the denial of the Holocaust, and said that the causes of anti-Semitism against the Jews are many. I don't have anything against Gerson, who is a moderate writer. I don't have any issues when it comes to the Holocaust, but have a problem with those who deny it such as David Irving and Ahmadinejad, and I have criticized them time and again. Nevertheless, I have a remark for Gerson. When he wrote about Holocaust denial he mentioned Israel by name at least ten times. The Holocaust, in his opinion, justifies the establishment of the state of Israel, or its denial means that there are no grounds for the establishment of Israel. Yet, he did not mention that it was the Palestinians who paid for a crime committed by the Christian West, and Jews stole their lands – as Ben-Gurion himself admitted. In the second article, Israel was mentioned only once in the course of the accusations against it of committing a Holocaust against the Palestinians. Gerson did not answer his own question: “Why the Jews?” even once by saying that the reason is Israel. Of course, the causes of anti-Semitism in the East and the West are hatred, racism, and chauvinism, as well as whatever the writer or the reader wants to think, and some of this might also exist in our countries. However, the major cause in our region, if not the only one, is Israel's establishment on Palestinian lands and the continuing occupation crimes. This alone has led to the establishment of Hamas and Hezbollah, all this with a Likudian gang of evil and war in America defending the occupation and blaming its victims for its crimes while attacking Islam and Muslims. Gerson is a Jewish American writer who monitors anti-Semitism and the harm it causes. Meanwhile, I monitor the other side: before Gerson wrote his article about Obama's speech, Aaron Klein wrote on a Likudian website an article about the same speech entitled “Obama speech quoted jihad verse from Quran: Address to Muslims used Islamic text urging war against nonbelievers”. The article mentioned that Obama was reading from chapter 9 verse 119, i.e. Surat Al-Tawbah (Repetence.) The verse simply says “O ye who believe! Fear Allah and be with those who are true (in word and deed)”. But that's not the verse Obama quoted. Rather, he quoted a part of the ninth verse in Surat Al-Nisa'a (The Women) “Be conscious of God and speak always the truth.” The two verses before and after are about kin, orphans and the poor, and those who unfairly take orphans' money and their punishment being in hell. Could Klein have made this mistake when he is quoting an Imam from a mosque in Gaza to explain the scriptures? There are indeed verses in the Koran that urge war against infidels, as there are in other religions. But the point here is that there are Likudian propagandists writing everyday on electronic sites attacking Islam and Muslims. Gerson must know about them as much as I do or more, although comparing the Quran to the Torah is like comparing the Israeli occupation to its victims. What would the Jews have said if a Muslim should write a book entitled «Israeli Zio-Nazism» about Jewish fascism or the neo-Nazis in Israel, similar to the book that Norman Podhoretz (Midge Decter's husband and Elliott Abrams' brother-in-law) wrote and entitled “World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamo-fascism”? This is a rhetorical question to which I don't expect an answer, but I wish to say that a lot of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism will disappear as soon as the occupation is over and a Palestinian state is established.
