Rick's Café American: 31 Aug 2009

Monday, 31 August 2009

Israel Matzav: Horror: Hamas accuses UNRWA of trying to teach Holocaust; UNRWA denies it

Horror: Hamas accuses UNRWA of trying to teach Holocaust; UNRWA denies it

This story is rich.

If this weren't so sadly typical it would almost be funny. But sadly, it illustrates everything that's wrong with the 'Palestinians' and their narrative. You see, they're the only people in the world who have ever been persecuted. So they don't want to hear about anyone else. They're just not capable of seeing the other side of any story.

Hamas is accusing UNRWA of trying to teach about the Holocaust in its Gaza Strip schools. Hamas refers to the Holocaust as "a lie invented by the Zionists." And UNRWA - which ought to be teaching the Holocaust in the schools - denies that it would do anything so horrible. Because UNRWA is there to serve the 'Palestinians' and perpetuate their victimhood status.

Calling the Nazi genocide of the Jews "a lie invented by the Zionists," Hamas wrote in an open letter to a senior UN official that he should withdraw plans for a new history book in the UN schools.

A spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which educates some 200,000 refugee children in Gaza, said the Holocaust was not on its current curriculum. He would not comment on Hamas's statement that it was about to change, Reuters said.

Hamas said it believed UNRWA was about to start using a text for 13-year-olds that included a chapter on the Holocaust.

In an open letter to local UNRWA chief John Ging, the movement's Popular Committees for Refugees said: "We refuse to let our children study a lie invented by the Zionists."

UNRWA spokesman Adnan Abu Hasna said: "There is no mention of the Holocaust in the current syllabus." Asked if UNRWA planned to change that, he declined to comment.
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Israel Matzav: Horror: Hamas accuses UNRWA of trying to teach Holocaust; UNRWA denies it

Hamas is Horrified

Yes, there are things that scare Hamas. The mere rumour, most likely quite unfounded, that the UN may try to teach the children of Gaza that there once was a Holocaust. I don't see why anyone would take such a rumour seriously; it's quite unlike anythng UNRWA might think up; still, the Jew-hating thugs of Hamas were swift to condemn the mere thought.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

Yehoshua Bichler, RIP

My friend Yehushua Bichler died earlier this month, age 80.

His friends from his own generation called him Robino, from Robert, but I felt that would be disrespectful of me so I called him by his Israeli name, Yehoshua. I first met him in a graduate seminar about the SS, in the winter of 1982 I think. He was not a particularly good speaker, and he had trouble focusing what he wished to say into concise paragraphs, so when Prof. Yehuda Bauer anounced one week that the following week Yehoshua would take over for as long as he needed, we were puzzled. We remained puzzled for the first 20 minutes of the next class, too, until it dawned on us that Yehoshua was telling a story none of us had ever seen in the history books.

In a nutshell, we all knew that the Nazi murder policy began with the invasion of the Soviet Union in summer 1941, and it was carried out by the infamous Einsatzgruppen, in which there must have been a few thousand men at most. Bichler, however, had uncovered documents that told of SS Brigades no-one had ever noticed, numbering in the tens of thousands, who had also been part of the operation. They were subordinate to a different part of the SS, their logistics were supported by different units, and their existance changed the picture of general complicity in the murder program.

I recognize this isn't that important to most people, but in all the years since I've never again run into a historian who was able single handedly to rework the outlines of the accepted story in such a clear way. Yehoshua was aware of the stir he was creating, but it didn't go to his head. Perhaps the fact that he himself had been at Auschwitz, had watched the death of his father, and had lost 57 (fifty seven) members of his family, tempered his perspective on things.

A few years later I became the head of archives at Yad Vashem; Yehoshua ran the archives at Givat Haviva, a small research center dedicated to the Zionist youth movements. So now we were colleagues. I came to my task with the energy of youth and lots of big ideas; Yehoshua ran a smaller place and knew every file; he also knew many of the people, places, and the events, in a way I never could. We were friends, but in a very unequal way.

If you ever have two or three spare days, you should go to Yad Vashem and watch Yehushua's 8-hour video testimony about Slovakia, and Auschwitz, and death marches. It's a tape of a man in his sixties, with the mein of a confused and uncomprehending boy, unable to understand the story he was telling, or unable to believe it, or make any sense of it. This, from the man who had uncovered an entire branch of the SS.

Offhand, I don't think I ever saw him not smiling, in an unassuming, slightly embarrassed way.

Nucho Eden, may he rest in peace.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations