2/7 Joel Kovel - Holocaust & Israeli Ethnic Cleansing

In 1948, not long after the terrible events of the second world war around 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and refused the right to return afforded them (and all human beings) by International Law. 60 years later this process of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians is still going on, with Israel's immiseration of them aimed at forcing them to capitulate, accepting Israel's racist terms for their existence in the region, or to leave.

Many Jewish people are extremely angry at what first Zionists and then Israel have done in their name and Joel Kovel, Jewish American scholar, activist and author of 'Overcoming Zionism', is one of them. Here he looks at the relationship between the terrible European crime of the Holocaust and its subsequent politicisation and use as the 'trump card' of Israel and her supporters in silencing effective criticism (at the political level) of Israel's crimes. Joel gives his thoughts on a number of the absurd claims those involved make to defend the indefensible: the idea that the holocaust was a wholly unique and terrible event bearing no relationships to other terrible events, and that this somehow takes away the right of anyone--particularly Europeans--to tell Israel what she may or may not do; and that anti-semitism is a wholly unique and innate hatred, unrelated to any other form of racism or bigotry, for which there is no solution other than for 'Jews' to live apart. The Zionist's collaboration with the Nazis, so revealing of the true nature of Zionism, is also covered. Part 2 of 7 , recorded at The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (www.scottishpsc.org.uk) Day School on Palestine, St Augustine Church, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh, 26th Jan '08.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• israel
• palestine
• kovel
• zionism
• ethnic
• cleansing
• peace
• muslim
• middle
• east
• racism
• politics
• apartheid
• nazis
• gaza
• holocaust