Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Polluting the historical truth - Dan Margalit



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.

There is no need to intervene, or, God forbid, stop the Van Leer Institute's symposium from taking place, as it is the prerogative of its organizers to do harm.


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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