Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Operation: Mindcrime



Our times are often touted as “the age of information”. But it is also the age of misinformation. Because information inconvenient to the powers-that-be is not only suppressed and purged from all forms of academia, but countered in big, glossy official misinformation campaigns.

Says Ruth Linn of the Technion: “Ever since I saw the Lanzmann documentary, this question stayed in my mind: Am I the only crazy Israeli who fell asleep in class when we studied this in the Holocaust? Or maybe we never studied it ... In terms of literature, [Escape from Auschwitz: I cannot forgive] is in the class of Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel, first-class novelists of the Holocaust. But then I turned the book back and forth and I see on the cover, “First published 1963”, and the year is 1994. I said to myself, “Where has this book been for 31 years? I never read about it in Israel.” [*]

We need not suspect Linn of being a charedi stooge. I honestly doubt the Gerrer Rebbe is investing money and time to alter the course of academic consensus. But she is clearly in a very small minority of historians who ever address the subject. In her book escaping Auschwitz: a culture of forgetting, she further alleges that a “family of Israeli historians” have spinned Rudi Vrba’s story to fit their agenda. Who is this “family of historians”? They are the stooges of the Labour party, the ruling bureaucrats of the State of Israel, whether they are actively in power or not. Their ‘leader’, so to speak, is Yehuda Bauer, a dye-in-the wool apparatchik of Mapam and Mapai.

But what am I talking about at all? I’m talking about the willful, premeditated and purposeful obfuscation, purge and confusion of the Kasztner affair and its extended implications (namely, that the leftist-Zionist ruling elites knowingly sabotaged any and all rescue efforts during the Holocaust in order to retain power, further their ideology and defeat their political opponents).
In mainstream Israeli curricula there is absolutely zero mention of the entire affair. In higher education, the affair is being misinterpreted and presented from the sole point of view of the mainstream left. But the mainstream left has two little thorns in its ribs: the hardcore left’s historians, now marketed as “new historians”, and the eternal splinter in Israel’s eyes; the evil, filthy, degenerate charedim, those vermin who plague Israeli society, rob it of its freedom, its identity and its wonderful welfare services.

The new historians are in sync with the mainstream left about Kasztner – but little else. According to them, the Revisionists, and especially their armed divisions, the Lechi, Etzel and “the Stern gang” are simply terrorists, no different than Hamas, Fatach and Hizb’Allah. So far, this is fairly in line with the Mapai (now Labour) party line, albeit a bit too explicit to the Peresoid Wizards of Oz(rael). But to their misfortune, the new historians hold Mapai, Ben-Gurion’s party, as almost equals of the Revisionists. To them, Mapai were hatemongers who instigated a “30 years war” (now 60) with the Arabs. And to this end they are willing to shed light on many crimes that were taboo for a very long time in Israel’s academia and history curriculum.

To the Labour’s even greater horror, the works of certain historians and authors “have been harnessed” to the “charedi conspiracy theory” that Kasztner and his clique, indeed, collaborated with Nazis to a great extent.

This trend is, however, very far from reaching anywhere near ‘mainstream’ status, in either academia or even popular distribution. The Labour, though, is now in high gear to counter this tiny and sadly insignificant trend. It’s well known that Ben Hecht’s Perfidy was censored for a long time in Israel. (Later it was available only with a “refute”, published by Mapai. The “refute” was so childish and idiotic that the Israeli censor soon realized it harmed their position more than Perfidy itself, so it was pulled off the shelves.) But it is in print again, and is widely available. New studies and information reaffirming all that was said therein emerge all the time, but the internet makes it hard to censure completely.

Thus, any book or opinion which runs contrary to “academic consensus” (read: what Labour wants you to think) is being suppressed and purged from any and all educational institutions. New books, reports and exhibitions in different Holocaust research and commemoration establishments (mostly Yad Vashem) are being aggressively promoted. According to Yehuda Bauer, people should learn about the Holocaust only from Yad Vashem.

But why the panic? Haven’t Israel’s traitors learned that the best censorship is freedom of speech? Isn’t “let ‘em say whatever they want, we’ll just ignore them” the modus operandi of contemporary Western pseudo-democracies? What are they afraid of, why the sudden rush?

Because we stand at the end of an era. The last eyewitnesses of the Holocaust are joining the eyewitnesses who didn’t live to tell their tale. And with them will die the memories of betrayal, the memories of Weitzmann and Ben-Gurion’s steamroller that flattened all hope of salvation for two million Hungarian Jews, paving the way for the Mapai State. So Jewish children don’t learn about Joel Brand, how he was arrested, they do not learn about Stephen Wise and Sally Myer, teachers don’t tell them about Henry Morton and the Evian convention, just as they ignore Hillel Kook (a.k.a. Peter Bergson), Michael Bear Weissmandl, Rudi Vrba, Alfred Wetzler and others, who have a tale different than Mapai’s.

Now is a crucial time for the ruling elite to clear their name forever, and determine how History will portray them.
And that is why they are on a rampage now. Every trick and tactic will be used to rewrite history and mislead the public. Historians, librarians, websites, books, magazines, spin doctors and every imaginable vehicle of information are now being revved up to put a thick layer of gloss on the Mapai leaders’ crimes. It is imperative not to let History be misshapen, not let the Left’s crimes be forgotten, and not let them become the Jewish Nation’s saviors.

And there is an even greater, more sinister, and more pressing reason to examine the past from an independent point of view. For “מה שהיה הוא שיהיה ומה שנעשה הוא שיעשה ואין כל חדש תחת השמש- For that which has been is what shell be…” Just as then the Labour were betraying their brothers to the Nazis for political gain, today they sleep with the Arabs while abandoning us again. And just as back then different factions were busier warring one another than concentrating on rescue and salvation efforts, so too we’re busier today with concerts and bans and politics and vindication and finger-pointing.

And, with our now-characteristic docility, we merrily march to the slaughter again.


© Joseph Izrael 2008



3 comments:

J. "יהוא בן יהושפט בן נמשי" Izrael said...

Please, dear reader, if you are not familiar with the names and events mentioned here, take some time to look them all up. It’s Modern Jewish History 101, and in all probability you’ve been robbed of it.

Anonymous said...

Sadly, the historial revisionists will win simply because of apathy. Not know about the Hungarian Jews? Why bother when you don't even know where Hungary is on the map? Weizmann and Ben Gurion? What percentage of Israeli students under the age of 16 know more than just 1 or 2 facts about them?

The left and the Chareidim have always relied on the fact that most people don't give a lick about history. The left has used that to rewrite a history in which their crimes turn into virtues and the Chareidim do the same and in the end, no one protests.

It is the apathy for truth that must be fought.

J. "יהוא בן יהושפט בן נמשי" Izrael said...

Under 16? You gotta be kiddin me, it's more like under 60.
Although a good remark, it misses the point. No Israeli freia kid needs to know where Hungary is or who Weitzmann and BG were - it's enough they know all rabbis sold all their people down all the rivers. That much sticks.

Now to throw the charedim and the left in one bag is pretty dishonest. Focusing only on what's politically/ideologically convenient for one and overexaggerating it is one thing. Fabricating history and shoving it down the multitudes' throats in "official" curriculas, pompously stamped with Academia's Seal Of Irrevocable Truth is another.

Also note that "the charedim" simply don't exist. Each little faction has its own leaders, school system and with it their version of History. When their kids grow up they will have a chance to meet different POV's. Chilonim in most cases don't. There's no charedi history channel or charedi ministry of education.