Saturday, April 02, 2005

ISRAEL AND THE HOLOCAUST -- IT IS TIME TO FORGET THE MYTH

Israel and the Holocaust - it is time to forget the myth

04/02/2005

Ami Isseroff

Many people hold the view that Israel was created because of the Holocaust. It is a view that is impossible to prove or disprove, because you cannot re-run the film of history without the Holocaust and see what would have happened.

Americans are correct in believing that the Holocaust helped to win US and world support for the UN partition plan in 1947. The 250,000 Jewish Displaced Persons in Europe and the Holocaust figured largely in the public debate and in the Report of the Anglo American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine of 1946. However, that does not mean that there would never have been a state of Israel were it not for the Holocaust, or that the world did not previously recognize the right of the Jews to a national home (though not necessarily a state). The right of the Jews to a national home was declared in the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine given to Great Britain.

However, as historian Tom Segev points out in his book about the British Mandate, "One Palestine Complete," Zionists had envisioned European Jews as the mainstay of the Jewish state. Mass immigration of European Jews was prevented first by the Russian revolution, then by the British White Paper of 1939, and finally by the Holocaust.


The myth of the state that was born from the Holocaust has again been challenged by Sever Plocker, writing in the mass circulation Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth. .... More at http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000346.htm where you can comment.


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