Holocaust-deniers say that the Holocaust didn’t exist even though, according to historian Hans Müller, Hitler proudly told the Pope’s representative, Archbishop Berning, on 26 April 1933, “I am doing what the Church has done for 1,500 years. I am simply finishing the job.” Furthermore, Hitler, in the privacy of his bunker (as transcribed there by the lawyer Heinrich Heim during Hitler’s Table-Talk), concluded, on 21 October 1941, a lengthy tirade against Jews, with: “By exterminating this pest, we shall do humanity a service of which our soldiers can have no idea.”
So, too, and just as clearly, today’s Israelis and their supporters are in reality-denial by denying that Israel today perpetrates at least ethnic cleansing, if not outright genocide, to clear the Gazans from Gaza. South Africa’s legal case against Israel actually quotes many of Israel’s top leaders, including Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that the Gazans don’t belong in Gaza and won’t be allowed to stay there — that their being there is itself a crime against Israel. Netanyahu actually said, citing the Torah, that God Himself authorized this to be done; and, so, it must be done.
The talk-show host and Washington Post columnist Hugh Hewitt headlined in that newspaper on 31 October 2023, “Does Israel have a right to exist?” and started by saying that he automatically excludes as guests on his show anyone who rejects the official account of 9/11 or else rejects the Republican position on the Cold War, and that he now will add to that list anyone who denies that Israel has a right to exist. He said:
I’ve never even considered that I would ask someone, “Did the Holocaust happen?” I’ve never knowingly had a Holocaust denier on the air, just as I’ve never had on a proponent of white supremacy. It’s pretty easy to build walls against such pollutants entering the airwaves under my jurisdiction. But now I will have to add the basic question about Israel’s nationhood.
He added that only anti-Semites — Jew-haters — deny Israel’s “right to exist”:
In the past three weeks, it has become painfully clear that hundreds of thousands of Americans and Europeans marching in demonstrations across campuses and in the streets of major cities do not accept the state of Israel’s legitimacy. That view is radical and dangerous. And it can no longer be considered so marginal that it need not be discussed in polite society. Instead, the view is one that must be exposed and its believers obliged to explain themselves.
And at that point he changed his tune to becoming: Now I want to expose those people, instead of to exclude them from speaking on my show: He went on to emphasize that to question Israel’s “right to exist” is unacceptable because Hamas denies Israel’s right to exist, and Hewitt assumed that whatever Hamas believes, has to be labelled as false, and that Israel is targeting for killing ONLY Hamas, and NOT the Gazans, but that any Gazans who die in this war are okay to be killed, because of Israel’s necessity to exterminate Hamas, which necessity justifies anything that Israel does in order to eliminate Hamas. In other words: the end justifies the means — ANY means.
He closed by saying:
We in the media should not silence the Israel deniers, but we would perform a public service if we invited them to reveal themselves. As with those who presume to address 9/11 without a basic grounding in the facts, or who deny the reach of Soviet espionage, when Israel deniers begin to spew, the audience deserves fair warning.
So: he closed his defense of Israel’s right to exist, by saying that “the audience deserves fair warning” that a kook is a kook. And throughout his article he was aiming to make his appeal to Republicans, against Democrats.
Throughout, Hewitt’s focus isn’t on verifying what is true and what is false, but instead on who is ‘us’ and who is ‘them’. And he was equating Holocaust deniers with everyone who supports Palestinians against Israelis; and equating anti-Israel with anti-Jew — he was implying that only anti-Semites are against Israel: that to be against Israel is to be against Jews (as-if ALL Jews support or endorse Israel against the Palestinians).
The way to reality-denial is to personalize — argue ad-hominem — INSTEAD of to present evidence — argue ad-rem. And that was Hewitt’s entire case for answering Yes to his titled question, “Does Israel have a right to exist?”
I wrote on March 9 “Should Israel Exist?” as a logical analysis of this question, given the clear fact that Israel is either ethnically cleansing or else genociding the Gazans. As regards the broader HISTORICAL argument concerning that question, the case is open-and-shut that Israel should never have been created in 1948. So: to Hewitt’s question, of whether Israel has a right to exist, I would answer “No.” The historical record is clear and unequivocal that Israel had no such right, any more than that any thief has a right to the property that he or she has stolen.
Historically speaking, the war between the Israelis and the Palestinians was started by that enormous theft of not only land but a hidden number of lives from the Palestinians. This war did not begin on 7 October of 2023 when Israelis say that their war against ‘Hamas’ (but really all Gazans) started, but instead back in 1948. However, like all thieves do, Israelis lie in order to ‘justify’ themselves. As regards the October 7 attack by Hamas, I have headlined on 11 March 2024 “What You Didn’t Know About Hamas’s October 7th Attack”, which introduces and links to a highly informed discussion about that attack. Apparently, Israel lies massively about that event, too, so as to ‘justify’ whatever they do to the Gazans. However, in any case, this war certainly didn’t start on 7 October 2023 like Israel alleges it did.
The post The Awesome Reality-Denial by Israel and Its Supporters first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.