Jewish homeland deniers seize upon Israel’s 1948 “founding,” three years after the end of the European Holocaust, to complain “So if the Europeans wanted to atone for the Holocaust, why didn’t they create an Israel in Europe?”
Holocaust – Not the Cause of Israel’s “Creation”
The Jewish people have lived in the land of Israel continuously for 3,000 years, sovereign twice in ancient times and surviving foreign rule during the centuries between the crushing of Judaea by Rome in the year 135 C.E. until modern Israel’s attainment of independence in 1948, when it became the land’s next native state after Judaea. This historical connection to Palestine and the Jewish people’s right to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in that land has been recognized by international conferences and documents that preceded the Holocaust. Israel was not “created” at all, for she comprises the natural evolution into statehood of the Jewish people’s homeland presence.
Israel’s enemies include Holocaust deniers and doubters who question why Palestinians should suffer, “even if” a calamity befell the Jewish people in Europe. They claim that any recompense due to the Jews should be provided in the place where the presumed injustice was perpetrated; all the while, they spew forth propaganda rather than newsworthy statements. The response to the Holocaust-denial canard is not to recite the evidence documenting that the Holocaust happened. Incontrovertibly, the Holocaust happened. The response is to make clear that Israel was not “created because of the Holocaust,” to cite the historical record – the Balfour Declaration, the San Remo Conference, the League of Nations Palestine Mandate.
Here’s the M.S.M. providing a megaphone for Israel-Because-of-the-Holocaust claimers:
? A.P. (12/9/05, Inq.):
Speaking to reporters at an Islamic summit in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad implied that European countries backed the founding of Israel in the Middle East in 1948 out of guilt over the Holocaust….They (the Jews) faced an injustice in Europe, so why do the repercussions fall on the Palestinians?”
? A.P. (12/10/05, Inq. A2) characterized the Iranian leader as “casting doubt on whether the Holocaust took place and suggesting Europe give land for a Jewish state if it felt guilty about it.” The Inquirer’s headline had him calling “for Israel to be moved to Europe.”
? A.P. (12/14/05) quoted the Iranian leader asking “Why should the Palestinian nation pay the price?”
? Reuters (9/18/09) lede: “President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the Holocaust a lie Friday.…” The article quoted him: “ ‘The pretext (Holocaust) for the creation of the Zionist regime is false….It is a lie based on an uNPRovable and mythical claim.’ ”
Many in the West see a post-hoc connection between the Holocaust and Israel.
? President Obama, addressing the whole world from Cairo on June 4, 2009:
The aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied. Around the world the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an uNPRecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald.
? Former President Jimmy Carter (Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, pp. 65-66):
And then came the world’s awareness of the horrors of the Holocaust and the need to acknowledge the Zionist movement and an Israeli state.
The M.S.M., on its own, has occasionally subscribed to a Holocaust origin:
? Inquirer, Jerusalem Bureau Chief Matza (1/9/04):
Born after World War II and the Holocaust in which millions of Jews were rounded up and killed, Israel was founded on the principle that Jews would never again be so weak.
? A.P. (9/10/07, Inq.):
News of the arrests [of neo-Nazis in Israel] came as a shock in Israel, which was founded nearly 60 years ago as a refuge for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust.