by Dan Margalit
It needs to be said explicitly that there is absolutely no connection between the two events, but the nature of such primitive, subliminal and superficial propaganda is that it plants the idea in the minds of the masses, linking two things that bear no actual connection.
The most idiotic
argument among Israel's extreme Left took place in the early 1950s:
Instead of acknowledging that Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union was being
ruled by a gang of murderers, members of the Mapam Party (a Marxist
Zionist political party formed in 1948) had debated at length whether
the compound Marxism and Leninism should be written with a hyphen or
with the conjunction "and."
The hot-tempered,
narrow-minded ideologists stressed that the doctrines of Karl Marx and
Vladimir Lenin were one and the same and not separate teachings. But
then the horrors of the Gulags (Soviet forced labor camps) were
uncovered, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's books, such as "One Day in the
Life of Ivan Denisovich," were published, and the bitter truth was
exposed -- these scoundrels had manipulated hundreds of millions of
innocent victims with false propaganda.
The same kind of
absurdity can be found in the Van Leer Institute's recent initiative to
hold a book-launching symposium titled "The Holocaust and the Nakba:
Memory, National Identity and Jewish-Arab Partnership," prompting a
joint deliberation of the link between the Holocaust and the Nakba (the
Arabic term for the displacement of Palestinian refugees during Israel's
War of Independence). This notion could potentially take root, heaven
forbid.
According to the NRG
news website, the institute director Professor Gavriel Motzkin rejected
the criticism leveled at the symposium by playing dumb and saying that
the institute was not equating the Holocaust with the Nakba. However, he
immediately added the trauma factor as a common denominator for both
events, thus merging them under one verbal roof.
There are no words to
describe how these two events could not be more different, and anyone
who attempts to unite them with either an "and" or a hyphen, is
polluting the historical truth.
What can this be
compared to? A book titled "A Spy Among Friends" by British author Ben
MacIntyre was recently published. The book details the true story of spy
Kim Philby who rose to head Britain's counterintelligence against the
Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War -- while secretly
operating as a double agent and spying for the enemy in Moscow.
Philby became enamoured
with the ideas of communism at the prestigious University of Cambridge,
and, together with Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt,
formed a spy ring that sold secrets to the USSR.
So, what would
Professor Motzkin say if someone were to hold a symposium titled "Van
Leer and Cambridge's Great Betrayal?" That someone would obviously note
that both institutions are distinguished academic establishments from
which acclaimed researchers and professors have emerged, but also a few
rotten apples. And like Motzkin, the organizers would justify their
symposium by saying that by no means are they claiming that the Van Leer
Institute is a breeding ground for traitors.
Even though the
situation at Van Leer does not resemble in any way the atmosphere of
espionage at Cambridge in the 1930s, someone could make the comparison
even though the two instances share no similarities whatsoever.
It needs to be said
explicitly that there is absolutely no connection between the two
events, but the nature of such primitive, subliminal and superficial
propaganda is that it plants the idea in the minds of the masses,
linking two things that bear no actual connection. Then it is only a
matter of time before the "and" or hyphen appear.
Dan Margalit
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=13589
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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