The days of denial must end
Newspaper columnists and writers who identify themselves as conservatives are routinely attacked by the left, but generally the left reserves its vilest hatred and bile for those on its own side who depart from the prescribed line. So we must applaud those on the left, or writing in the liberal-left media, who bravely stand up for the truth in the face of personal abuse and vilification. We might mention here, for example, David Aaronovitch, Nick Cohen and Christopher Hitchens.
While not yet in the same camp as these, Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian has decided that enough is enough: trying to explain anti-semitism by labelling it as ‘anti-Zionism’, or trying to contextualize anti-Jewish hatred as possibly legitimate grievances against Israel, is not going to work anymore. As Freedland explains:
Such has been my standard operating procedure, constantly trying to see if there’s a way to contextualise these incidents, to see them in proportion…
But everyone has their limits and last week I reached mine. On Thursday the president of Iran chose to stand with the cranks, neo-fascists and racists who deny the factual truth of the Holocaust.
“Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces,” said Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “Although we don’t accept this claim…”
Suddenly, the usual apologetics won’t work. No one can say Iran’s president was really complaining about Israel or Zionism, rather than Jews. No one can say he was talking about the west’s colonial crimes. He was peddling, instead, one of the defining tropes of the racist hard right: Holocaust denial. It is a stance that seeks to deny Jews their history, their suffering, almost their very being. Like denying that African-Americans were ever slaves, it is a move made by those who wish
only harm.In this light, Ahmadinejad’s previous musings look rather different. When, in October, he stood beneath a banner that promised “A world without Zionism” and called for Israel to be “wiped off the map”, many Jews felt a chill at what seemed an annihilationist fantasy. Cooler heads said no, this was merely the hyperbolic style of the region, deployed to press a robust anti-Zionist rather than anti-semitic case. What he wanted, they explained patiently, was a world without Zionism, not a world without Jews.
Well, now I’m done with the charitable explanations. A man who refuses to believe the historic truth is capable of anything. This is not an Arabic cable TV station or an obscure Egyptian newspaper. This is a head of government, the leader of a nation of 70 million - a country that aspires to lead the Muslim world. And, lest we forget, Iran has nuclear ambitions. So now it’s not paranoid to worry about a president with annihilationist dreams - it’s smart.
The kind of rhetoric espoused by Ahmadinejad is now rife in the Muslim world, making it all the more important that Muslims themselves denounce such views, as indeed some seem to be doing. But not only Muslims. Says Freedland: “Non-Muslim progressives who have made alliances with Islamists should do the same. It may mean some uncomfortable conversations - but the days of denial must end.”
Update: A reader points out that Freedland’s article makes exaggerated claims about a supposed golden age in which “Muslims were the people of scholarship, of science, of tolerance and coexistence - a contrast with the Crusader [i.e., Christian] barbarians.” That may be so, but we defend him here because he has the honesty to say that he has frequently sought, from presumably the best motives, to contextualize and explain away what is apparently anti-semitic rhetoric, but now can do so no longer. That is an important statement that begs the question of whether others in his position are willing to admit the same. Whether or not he offers a realistic account of history is another matter, of course.
