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Beyond the Facts
A painful
absence of balance
By Alan=
Dershowitz
The Times
September 21, 2005
ON THE DAY of Simon Wiesenthal’s death, Sir Iqba=
l
Sacranie, the Secretary-General of the Muslim C=
ouncil
of Britain, could be found in The Guardian proposing the abolition of
Holocaust Memorial Day because it is offensive to Muslims.
Sacranie and his allies propose Genocide Day, a
holiday devoted to recognising, among other
genocides, the “mass murder of Muslims in Palestine”.
The double bigotry reflected in this proposal should be evident to all peop=
le
of good will. First, I can understand why commemoration of the Holocaust sh=
ould
be offensive to those Muslims and others who supported Nazi victory over
Britain and Nazi genocide against the Jews and others.
And there were many such Muslims, led by the leader then of the Palestinian
people Haj Amin al-=
Husseini, who urged Hitler to extend the final soluti=
on
beyond Europe’s borders to Jewish refugees who had reached Palestine.=
Secondly, there has been no genocide against the Palestinian people. When
Palestinian bombers target Israeli civilians, Israel refrains from targeting
Palestinian civilians in turn. Many Palestinian civilians have died during =
the
many Arab-Israeli wars and intifadas of the past
several decades. But that number is dwarfed by the number of Palestinians a=
nd
Arabs killed by Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Iran during the same period.
During its occupation Israel provided social security, built and supported
schools, and maintained vehicle, water and electrical infrastructures for
residents of the West Bank and Gaza. The Egyptian and Jordanian occupations
that preceded Israel were far less benign, but of course no one accused tho=
se
Arab countries of genocide.
This is not to justify Israel’s occupation. Even though it was the Ar=
ab
offensive in 1967 that created the Israeli occupation, when the Six-day War
ended I argued in favour of Muslim self-determi=
nation
and partition of Israel and Palestine. Opposition, though, should be ground=
ed
in facts and tempered by fair-mindedness.
The Israeli occupation is not a genocide, and th=
ose
who would conflate the two are more interested in demo=
nising
the Jewish state than in achieving Palestinian statehood and a just peace,
based on compromise, between the two nations.
Alan Dershowitz is a professor of law at Har=
vard.
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