On the reaction to Orla Guerin’s BBC report on Auschwitz
JVL Introduction
BBC’s International Correspondent Orla Guerin has been attacked for daring to mention Palestine in a programme devoted to the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
Her words have been described, variously, as crass, insensitive, deeply offensive, upsetting, unnecessary, particularly ugly in the days before Holocaust Memorial Day, foul, sickening and utterly appalling.
And yet, as Robert A.H. Cohen points out:
“The undeniable truth is that Palestinians are part of the post Holocaust story too. Their history and current situation cannot be separated from Auschwitz any more than the Jewish story can. In fact, they have become the same story because the Palestinians paid the price for Europe’s failures and the rest of the world’s indifference.”
This article was originally published by Patheos on Sun 26 Jan 2020. Read the original here.
Orla Guerin’s report shows what’s wrong with Holocaust remembrance
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Wonderful article. Thank you, Robert.
No-one with least bit of sensitivity can ignore what this highly intelligent and articulate article implies – that suffering connects everyone and that everyone has a degree of responsibility in how they respond to it.
THEY, the Palestinians, suffer and die, because THEY, the Jews, suffered and died. But then again, would it have all played out much the same if Hitler and the Nazis had never come to power AND the Holocaust had never happened. I think it almost definitely would have done.
It’s interesting – as a consequence of what Robert Cohen says in the above piece – to ponder how the international community and people in general would have felt about ALL that has happened to Palestine and the Palestinians IF the Holocaust had never happened.
I wonder if it is true that Holocaust comparisons to Israel are designed to be deliberately provocative to Jews. I would have thought the target of these attacks would have been Israel and its supporters, a wholly different thing. Indeed this otherwise excellent article says the the Palestinian people are themselves victims of the Holocaust. That, surely, is bound up with not only the Nakba, but also with their current treatment by the Israel state?
Excellent analysis… relates a lot to a talk given by Jeff Halper of ICAHD in Euston last night: As with the land from the Jordan to the Sea, no ‘Arabs’ can be allowed into the Zionist narrative. As the ‘victim-colonisers’ – Israel, with its nine nuclear submarines and the fourth major military force on the planet – can share nothing with the natives that they have colonised. These are Halper’s words, not mine. Lucky he’s not in the Labour Party. His feet wouldn’t have even touched the ground before his expulsion.