Two obscure but vehemently anti-Jewish organizations, the Swiss
"Truth and Justice" and the American "Institute for Historical
Review," called for an international conference to be held at the
end of March 2001 in Beirut on the subject of "Revisionism and
Zionism." The sponsors of the conference, self-styled "revisionist
historians," deny the mass extermination of millions of Jews by the
Nazis (the Holocaust) during the Second World War in Europe. These
European "revisionists" have been trying to promote in Arab circles
the idea that the denial of the Holocaust could be a useful
argument in their struggle against Zionism.
In a statement of protest denouncing the proposed conference,
fourteen prominent Arab intellectuals rejected the "revisionists"
and noted that they were "outraged by this anti-Semitic
undertaking." Their call to the government of Lebanon to prohibit
what they called this "inadmissible conference" significantly
contributed to the decision by the Lebanese authorities to ban
it.
The signatories of the protest statement were Edward Said, Mahmoud
Darwish, Adonis, Mohamed Harbi, Jamel Eddine Bensheikh, Mohammed
Verada, Dominique Edde, Elias Khouri, Gerard Khoury, Salah Stetie,
Fayez Mallas, Farouk Mardam-Bey, Khalida Said, and Elias Sanbar.
(Prof. Said subsequently said that, because of his support for
"everyone's right to free speech," he did not actually sign the
protest. But he declared, "I am deeply opposed to Holocaust
denial.") There was also strong opposition to holding such
conferences in other Arab countries.
The Tragedy and Its Impact
Among the widespread opposition to the proposed conference, the
London-based Arabic language newspaper Al-Hayat wrote in an
editorial that such a conference "disgraces Lebanon." Hani
Shukrallah, the senior editor of the Egyptian Al-Ahram, described
the sponsors of the conference as "a motley crew of European and
American neo-Nazis and anti-Semites," adding that "people like
Edward Said and Mahmoud Darwish brought honor to all Palestinians
and Arabs by… denouncing a Holocaust denial
conference."
In recent years, Arab and especially Palestinian intellectuals have
been increasingly studying the scope and implications of the
genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany against European Jewry. Thus
the eminent Palestinian scholar Edward Said has stressed in an
article that, without becoming acquainted with the horrors of the
Holocaust and without apprehending the impact of this tragedy upon
the surviving Jews and their descendants, it would be impossible to
understand the psychological make-up of Israeli Jews. To this one
may add that Israelis should understand why in this historical
context the Palestinians see themselves as "victims of the
victims."
Holocaust deniers are still at work all over the world; hence, as
in the Irving trial, the importance of showing them up and
denouncing their lies. Holocaust denial should be viewed for what
it is: both as deliberate historical falsification, and as a moral
and political ignominy that must be unreservedly and universally
exposed and repudiated.