OPINION
Blood Of Innocents
Is On Our Hands
SI FRUMKIN
Special to The Jewish News
I
n 1982 there wasn't a pro-
blem. The world knew
who was responsible. It
was Israel. Sure, not a single
Israeli soldier had fired a
bullet, but they were there,
they had known, or else they
should have known, they
should have stopped it, they
should have taken care to see
that it didn't happen.
The Christian militia came
into the camps. When they
left, over 400 Palestinians
were dead — men, women,
children in the Sabra and
Shatilla refugee camps out-
side of Beirut.
And the world went wild in
a frenzy of righteous indigna-
tion. The United Nations
assembled and pointed fin-
gers, condemned, deplored,
resolved and accused, accus-
ed, accused.
Pulitzer Prize winning car-
toonists drew bodies neatly
lined up in the shape of a Star
of David.
The world was shocked.
How could the Israelis let this
happen, the world said. And
the Israelies had no answer
for they, too, knew better than
most that they should not
have stood by while the blood
of innocents was spilled, that
they should have known,
Si Frumkin is on the board
of the Union of Councils for
Soviet Jewry and is chairman
of the Southern California
Council for Soviet Jews.
should have stopped the
killers, should have prevented
the massacre.
Later, in Israel, there were
investigations and commis-
sions and blame was assign-
ed, and generals and colonels
were told that they should
have known and should have
had more control over their
Christian allies. There were
dismissals and resignations
in high places and, most of
all, there was a sense of
shame, but mostly of sorrow
and a pledge that this
wouldn't happen again.
But now it is 1991 and once
again the world knows who is
We protest Sabra
and Shatilla, but
no Saddam.
responsible, but there is no
outcry and no shame. The vic-
tims do not number 400 —
they are a hundred times that
in one day — women and
children, old and young, some
who fought and others who
did nothing at all. And their
number is growing every
hour, every day, every week.
A strange thing. There is no
need to search for those who
can stop the massacres, those
who have the power to com-
mand an end to the killing
but who choose not to.
They are not ashamed, they
feel no guilt. They announce
in press conferences and
media releases almost proud-
ly, that the killing is not their
concern, that they will do
nothing.
Babies are decapitated
before their parents. Children
are lined up and shot. Men
and women are soaked in
gasoline and set on fire.
Napalm is spread by heli-
copters that we permit to fly.
Gunships spray villages and
roads choked with refugees.
Artillery targets refugee
camps. Bounty is paid to
soldiers for the civilians they
murder.
And we stand and we do
nothing — we, the United
States of America, the leader
of the free world and the
beacon of freedom and
democracy. We let the tyrant
whom we fought and
defeated, we let Saddam Hus-
sein kill his own people and
we do not interfere.
I am a Jew, I am a survivor
of the Holocaust. I could
never understand how the
Free World could stand by
and not speak out, not in-
vervene when the Nazis were
killing my parents, and my
friends and those six million
others.
Now I understand, for today
I am part of the world that is
silent. I am an American and
my country pledged to defend
freedom and oppose Saddam's
tyranny and it has won a
great victory. And now my
country stands by and is
silent while innocents die and
I am ashamed.
I know that the State
Department is functioning.
We "managed to protest
Israel's deportation of four
Palestinians. We also an-
nounced that the ongoing
Refugees eat air dropped food.
-
murder of 50,000? 100,000?
200,000? Iraqis by their
government is none of our
business.
Bush, Baker, Cheney,
Powell, Schwartzkopf, the
White House, the State
Department, the Pentagon —
where does the buck stop and
why aren't they doing
something to stop the
slaughter? Those who don't
have the authority or c n't
violate orders — let them
resign, let them go on a
hunger strike, let them chain
themselves to the White
House fence. Let there be
none who "just follow orders!'
Doesn't anyone care? How
many must die before anyone
does?
❑
The Rationale Of Holocaust Revisionism
MILTON J. STEINHARDT
W
ith recent intensi-
fied efforts to revise
the historical record
of the Holocaust, we rightful-
ly inquire as to the motive: Is
it that fewer survivors are
now living witnesses? Is it
that memories become faint
with the passage of time?
Is it the shame of the
recorded barbarism of the
Hitler era that prompts many
to seek extenuating justifica-
tion? Or is it perhaps a device
Dr. Steinhardt is a retired
psychiatrist. This article
appeared in the Jewish
Community Center's Institute
for Retired Professionals
"IRP Bulletin."
for reducing the moral
justification for the existence
of Israel?
For whatever reason, the
methods used by apologists
for Nazi crimes are
remarkable for their ingenui-
ty: They include total denial,
universalization, denial of in-
tent, and justification.
There are some who deny
the veracity of the Holocaust
altogether, despite living pro-
of. They spitefully call it "Six
Million Lies." This is not
limited to the lunatic fringe
or the ignorant, as according
to Benjamin Netanyahu "in
established American univer-
sities doctoral dissertations
claim that the Holocaust is
Zionist propaganda." Others
argue that the camp deaths
were mainly due to disease
and not to deliberate murder.
More moderate apologists
attempt to attenuate the
enormity of the genocide by
reducing the relative
significance. It is claimed that
non-Jews also perished as
"victims of Fascism." They
equate the gas chamber
deaths with other mass
murder, as the Armenians in
World War I. While this is
partly true, they simply ig-
nore the fact that nearly half
of European Jewry, six
million, perished for the only
reason that they were Jews.
Yehuda Bauer obtained
registration figures of
Auschwitz gas chamber vic-
tims: 1,323,000 Jews, 11,685
Russians, 3,665 Poles. The
comparison and the ratio are
obvious.
Another defense focusing
on the killer is described by
Lucy S. Dawidowicz. She cites
Uwe Dietrich Adam who
states: "Hitler merely reacted
to the circumstances and did
not plan in advance!'
This defense is echoed by
Arne J. Mayer of Princeton
who believes Hitler's crusade
was to "crush and liquidate
entrenched communism, but
he never intended to murder
the Jews." The Germ-an
Ernest Nolte also justifies the
killing of Jews as necessary in
resisting Bolshevism.
The mitigating defense of
the crime itself is done by
universalization, as expound-
ed by Arnold Toynbee "that
what the Nazis have done in
Auschwitz is nothing
unusual. It is but a case of
man's inhumanity to man in
wartime."
Emil Fackenheim stresses
the marked difference bet-
ween the usual violence in
. war and the systematic Nazi
killings. He asks, "Where in
history do we even find a city
`combed' to kill every being of
a certain race?" He further
cites, as an example of the ex-
treme sadism and inhumani-
ty, that pregnant Jewish
women were dispatched at
once to the gas chambers.
The most daring defense of
the avowed Hitler apologists
is justification of the murder
of six million people, in-
cluding women and children,
as "enemies of the Reich."
This ignores that even
prisoners of war are not kill-
Continued on Page 10
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 7