German professors: 'Nazis helped establish Israel'
The more things change, the more they stay the same.Twenty-five German professors have signed a letter in which they argue that the Nazis helped to establish the State of Israel, that Germany has therefore paid its debt to the world, and should be 'neutral' as between Israel and the Arabs. You can't make this stuff up.
25 German professors co-signed a manifesto calling on Germany to stop giving Israel "preferential treatment," because, among other reasons, the country "helped" establish Israel by expelling Jews from Germany during the rule of the Third Reich. Approximately 160,000 Jews who were expelled from Nazi Germany ended up in the British mandate of Palestine and strengthened the Jewish presence here at the expense of the Arab population, they claimed.Read the whole thing.
Visiting in Israel as guests of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) and the Academic College of Netanya, four German professors were debating their claims with Israeli academics who opposed them.
They claimed that approximately 160,000 Jews who arrived in mandatory Palestine enlarged Jewish control of the land from just six percent during the British mandate to approximately 60% after the War of Independence. Additionally, the Germans said their country has "paid off" its debt to the Jewish people by the sums it had given the Israeli government and survivors until today.
They admitted that the Holocaust was, nevertheless, an indelible stain in Germany's history.
The professors called on the German government to improve its relations with Arab countries by adopting an "evenhanded" approach to both Israelis and Arabs.
The debate was initiated by Dov Ben Meir, one of the heads of the Center for Strategic Dialogue at the college and formerly chairman Knesset. Prof. Moshe Zimmerman, an expert on German history, was also sitting on the Israeli side.
Ben Meir published his own counter-manifesto, rebuking the Germans' claims one by one.
Ben Meir is one story. Moshe Zimmerman is another. Here's one example:
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, wants Hebrew University to take action in response to statements made by the chair of the institution's German Studies department, Prof. Moshe Zimmerman, who likened Israel Defense Forces soldiers and other Israeli authorities to Nazis.More examples here. He's perfect company for these German professors.
In a letter sent to Hebrew University President Prof. Menachem Magidor, Foxman writes that while every professor has the right to express his or her opinion, the university administration is obliged to consider taking action when certain opinions cross the line and are damaging to the institution and the Jewish people.
Foxman decided to intervene in the matter after it was repeatedly brought to his attention by another university lecturer, Dr. Yaacov Bergman of the School of Business Administration. Bergman urged Foxman to adopt the same approach he took in the case of Colombia University, when he demanded that the Ivy League school take action against lecturers there who had likened the IDF and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to Nazis.
Foxman did not ask for specific steps to be taken against Zimmerman, but he urged the university administration to take a stand on the matter.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:14 PM
9 Comments:
I'm surprised to read that Professor Zimmerman was sitting on the Israeli side--which doesn't necessarily mean he was taking Israel's position. Professor Zimmerman calls the children of Hebron Hitler Youth, compares the Torah to Mein Kampf, and refuses to let soldiers who have called up on reserve duty to fight Arab terrorists to make up lost time. If you don't believe me, just Google Professor Zimmerman and find out all about this cretin.
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In other words, the Nazis did the Jewish people a favor. It just staggers the human mind to imagine what that might be when Israel is missing six million Jews who might have put Israel's existence beyond all doubt.
I am of mixed German-Jewish stock but my position should be clear: I think the German professors' position is intellectual bunk not to mention morally offensive. I don't have to spell out the reasons why in fact the Shoah nearly destroyed the Zionist project. And that doesn't mean I absolve the British of their complicity in making the Shoah possible by denying the Jews a refuge in Palestine at a time when they need it most to escape annihilation
Maybe they can be blamed for global warming then with the crematoria.
As Simon Weistenthal said, forgiveness belongs to the six million. It is not for us to forgive nor is it for us to forget.
The Europeans are looking for anyway they can to justify supporting the next shoah. Sickening.
They can't help themselves.
It's in their Aryan blood.
I was criticized last night on a blog when I wrote 'Never forgive, never forget' re the nazi atrocities, when people were throwing the Shoah in with anything else that happens, thus cheapening it.
Neo-nazis are on the rise in Europe, over 60 years after the end of WWII.
It seems that the Germans of today feel that they are absolved of responsibility. In doing this, they only, for me, reinforce my feelings that they have not changed all that much, but are now just more careful in what they say.
J. Lichty has summarized my feelings on this.
Never forgive. Never forget
NY Nana - as long as Jews exist, anti-semitism will remain around.
Since Jews insist on maintaining their own differences, no one who wants a uniformity of viewpoint, be it neo nazis, leftists and Islamofascists, can truly accept them.
This all the moreso applies to the Jewish State - as long as Israel insists on being Jewish, she will face ostracism. For awhile, Israel basked in world sympathy as long as the Jews remained weak and powerless. When that changed after the Six Day War, the former sympathy changed into hostility.
I would say to Lichty that Europe's distance from Israel is attributable to a combination of native antisemitism, the hatred of Jews among the continent's Muslim arrivals and a need for Middle Eastern oil. With the decline of Christianity and the old European culture and the rise of post-modernism and Islam, the climate in Europe is likely to worsen for Israel in the coming decades.
All of which points to one inescapable answer: to survive, Israel will have rely on herself.
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