ICYMI: Will Britain’s new definition of antisemitism help Jewish people? I’m sceptical | David Feldman

2017/01/20 Leave a comment

David Feldman on the risks of the expanded IHRA definition (the examples section) and its lack of recognition of the linkages to other forms of prejudice, discrimination and hate:

The text also carries dangers. It trails a list of 11 examples. Seven deal with criticism of Israel. Some of the points are sensible, some are not. Crucially, there is a danger that the overall effect will place the onus on Israel’s critics to demonstrate they are not antisemitic. The home affairs committee advised that the definition required qualification “to ensure that freedom of speech is maintained in the context of discourse on Israel and Palestine”. It was ignored.

The IHRA definition has been circulating for over a decade and has already been buried once. It is almost identical to the European Union monitoring commission’s working definition, formulated in 2005 as part of the global response to the second intifada in the early 2000s. The definition was never accorded any official status by the EUMC and was finally dropped by its successor body, the Fundamental Rights Agency.

The definition has been resurrected just as we are moving to new times. David Friedman, who will soon become President Trump’s ambassador to Israel, has denounced the “two-state” solution. The prospect of continued Israeli dominion over disenfranchised Palestinians, supported by a US president whose noisome electoral campaign was sustained by nods and winks to anti-Jewish prejudice, is changing the dynamic of Jewish politics in Israel and across the world.

In this new context, the greatest flaw of the IHRA definition is its failure to make any ethical and political connections between the struggle against antisemitism and other sorts of prejudice. On behalf of Jews it dares to spurn solidarity with other groups who are the targets of bigotry and hatred. In the face of resurgent intolerance in the UK, in Europe, the United States and in Israel, this is a luxury none of us can afford.

Source: Will Britain’s new definition of antisemitism help Jewish people? I’m sceptical | David Feldman | Opinion | The Guardian

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ADL and Wiesenthal Center don’t seem to agree on anti-Semitism in America | Bloggish | Jewish Journal

2017/01/09 Leave a comment

Interesting contrast (ADL’s approach the more reasonable one):

Shortly before the New Year, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, both human rights organizations dedicated to fighting hate speech, each put out the top 10 list of anti-Semitic incidents in 2016 (the Wiesenthal Center’s list also included anti-Israel incidents – more on this below).

The two lists are starkly different, and that difference is worth paying attention to.

Numbers one through four on the ADL list are all related to the election, apparently arising from the Donald Trump moment and the new life it gave to the seedier elements of American xenophobia.

On the Wiesenthal Center list, this type of anti-Semitism is featured just once, coming in at number five with Richard Spencer’s memorable tryst at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. Number one on this list is the failure of the Obama administration to veto a recent United Nations resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The difference is notable because in theory, it shouldn’t exist. These two organizations are not identical, to be sure. The Wiesenthal Center is Los Angeles-based, for one, and incorporates Holocaust memory to a greater extent in its mission.

But both have at their core the same goal of fighting anti-Semitism. The overlap is great enough to cause some amount of institutional rivalry.

“ADL is always a little bit worried that the center in L.A., the Wiesenthal Center, will steal its thunder,” Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University told me in November. “So they always have kind of one eye on the Wiesenthal Center.”

Why, then, do two organizations with the same ideals come to vastly different conclusions about where to look for the most troubling incidents of anti-Semitism?

I brought this question up during a recent interview with Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Wiesenthal Center. He pointed out to me that the lists were in fact not the same and that his organization, unlike the ADL, had included “anti-Israel incidents” as a criterion. That’s why the U.N. resolution ended up at the top of the Wiesenthal Center list without appearing at all on the ADL list.

Fine. But that doesn’t explain the massive discrepancy between, on the one hand, nearly half of a top 10 list being dedicated to right-wing anti-Semitism, and, on the other, a single item buried halfway down.

It’s easy to chalk this up to politics. Critics of Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL CEO, like to point out that he came to the job from a post in the Obama administration. In their mind, he’s a left-wing actor that has turned the ADL into a basically partisan operation.

But I take Greenblatt at his word when he told me that during the campaign trail “I said what I said and we did what we did because it was consistent with ADL’s historic role.”

Greenblatt, it seems to me, is too smart to nakedly put his politics on display. If he really were a leftist shill, he’d probably be smarter about hiding it, anyway. I’m guessing – and we can only guess as to people’s intentions – that both lists reflects a real concern about where anti-Semitism exists in America today.

The net result is that we have two lists that tell us more about the organizations that generated them than they do about anti-Semitism.

Source: ADL and Wiesenthal Center don’t seem to agree on anti-Semitism in America | Bloggish | Jewish Journal

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Anti-Semitism Is on the Rise From Both Sides. Just Not How You Think. – Forward.com

2016/12/20 Leave a comment

J.J. Goldberg on left and right-wing antisemitism and the political divide:

In effect, the walls of mutual hostility and suspicion that cut through the American body politic — and, in slightly different form, through the Jewish community — have left much of the public believing that anti-Semitism is a unitary problem that exists over there, on the other side, while they are unable to see the parallel problem on its own side. The denial is not just shortsighted but also dangerous. Both strains of anti-Jewish ideology have been responsible for multiple deadly attacks specifically targeting Jews and Jewish institutions on U.S. soil over the past quarter-century, since the uptick began. In fact, according to my own research via FBI data and online newspaper archives around the country, the two strands, far-right and anti-Israel, are both implicated in roughly the same number of such attacks during that period.

The line separating sharp, activist opposition to Israeli policy from hatred of its existence isn’t always easy to see. Nor is it hard and fast. Fifty years of the Israeli military ruling over millions of Palestinians without citizenship or political rights are generating a time bomb of Western-liberal frustration. Palestinian activists exploit the frustration to pressure Israel and advance their cause. It all becomes devilishly complicated: There’s hatred of Israel because of what it is. There’s also hatred fanned by what Israel does.

At the same time, there’s an element of right-wing American anti-Semitism that is not prejudice but actual policy opposition to the social agenda of the Jewish advocacy community. American Jews have worked in an organized fashion for the past century to promote a set of broadly liberal principles, including pluralism, minority rights, church-state separation and international engagement. Significant strains of conservatism object to some or all of those principles. Some conclude that the Jewish community is their adversary. Others avoid mentioning Jews, fearing they’ll be accused of anti-Semitism.

Here, too, the line between hatred of Jews and opposition to Jewish policy is not impermeable. There are conservative critics of Israeli policy who bridle at the taboo on open criticism and let their disagreements morph into hostility. Like Israeli self-defense, Diaspora Jewish hypersensitivity is sometimes capable of fanning the very hostility it is meant to deter.

Source: Anti-Semitism Is on the Rise From Both Sides. Just Not How You Think. – Opinion – Forward.com

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UK – Anti-Semitism: Official definition ‘will fight hatred’ – BBC News

2016/12/13 Leave a comment

Sharp contrast to the US Congress’s proposed definition that explicitly included criticism of Israel rather than the more focussed definition of IHRA (their working definition of antisemitism also includes examples where criticism of Israel may cross over to antisemitism):

The government plans to adopt an international definition of anti-Semitism to help tackle hatred towards Jews.

Police, councils, universities and public bodies can adopt the wording, Theresa May will say in a speech later.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which the UK belongs to, created the definition.

It calls anti-Semitism a “perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.”

Prime Minister Theresa May will argue that a clear definition means anyone guilty of anti-Semitism in “essence, language or behaviour” will be “called out on it”.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance hopes its definition, agreed this year, will be adopted globally.

It defines anti-Semitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.”

It adds: “Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

Legally binding

Downing Street said anti-Semitic behaviour could be overlooked because the term is ill-defined, with different organisations adopting their own interpretations.

The IHRA – which is backed by 31 countries, including the UK, USA, Israel, France and Germany – set its working definition of what constituted anti-Semitic abuse in May.

The group said having a “legally binding working definition” would give countries the “political tools” to deal with anti-Jewish hate crime.

Conservative MP and special envoy for post-holocaust issues, Sir Eric Pickles, told the BBC that the new definition “catches up with modern anti-Semitism”.

“I think it’s important not to conflate Jewish people with Israel,” he said. “That actually is the point in the definition.”

‘It is unacceptable’

Police in the UK already use a version of the definition. However, it will now also be used by other bodies, including councils.

Mrs May will say: “There will be one definition of anti-Semitism – in essence, language or behaviour that displays hatred towards Jews because they are Jews – and anyone guilty of that will be called out on it.”

She will add: “It is unacceptable that there is anti-Semitism in this country. It is even worse that incidents are reportedly on the rise.”

Source: Anti-Semitism: Official definition ‘will fight hatred’ – BBC News

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Warsaw’s Populist Right Whitewashes Holocaust History – The Daily Beast

2016/12/12 Leave a comment

More disturbing news about Poland:

Katarzyna Wielga-Skolimowska was given 24 hours to clear out her office, until the end of the month to vacate her flat, and is forbidden to talk to the press about any of it.

The elegant redhead, who is credited for her knowledge of architecture and theater, was abruptly fired from her job as director of the Polish cultural institute in Berlin last week. Did her programs have “too much Jewish content,” as Israel’s Haaretz headlined bluntly? The Forward in the United States made that a question: “Was Polish Culture Institute Director Fired for Too Much ‘Jewish-Themed Content’?”

As various theories circulate in Berlin about why, one thing is clear—that this is the latest attempt of Poland’s radical nationalist government to revamp its image abroad, not least by playing down any Polish role in the Holocaust. A law proposed last summer, for instance, would make it a crime to use the phrase “Polish death camps” for, say, Auschwitz, which was a Nazi death camp in occupied Poland.

“Everything points to the fact that the dismissal [of the Polish Institute Director] was politically motivated,” Berlinische Galerie director Thomas Köhler tells The Daily Beast. “Her contract would have ended next year. This was clearly intended as a punishment—It’s really bad form.”

Together with other leading culture fanatics in the capital, Köhler signed a protest letter that expressed “dismay“ and “irritation“ at the sudden dismissal. Cilly Kugelmann, who directs the Jewish Museum in Berlin, initiated the letter.

Last year, the Polish Institute screened “Ida,” an Oscar-winning Polish film about a Catholic woman who discovers she is the Jewish child of Holocaust victims. But while showing the film may have gone down well in Berlin, it could have been another strike against Wielga-Skolimowska for Warsaw.

Since Poland’s Law and Justice Party won elections in 2015, the Warsaw government has been going to great pains to “recalibrate many of the ways in which Poles think, talk and learn about their own history.” And to some, it looks like Law and Justice wants to whitewash a lot of the country’s history, even the Shoah, by appealing to nationalist pride.

The way in which “Ida” was broadcast on public television in Poland this year has provided one ground for such suspicion. The film that had won best film prize at the Polish Film Academy in 2013 was this time accompanied by a 12-minute clip in which three critics tore into it, warning about supposed historical inaccuracies.

In October, Wielga-Skolimowska received a damning internal evaluation by the newly appointed Polish ambassador to Berlin, Andrzej Przylebski. Among other things, he warned her, “not to overdo the emphasis—particularly in Germany, which should not receive the role of mediator—on the importance of Polish-Jewish dialogue as the main example of intercultural dialogue which takes place in Poland.“

So this week, the left-leaning Berlin paper TAZ chose the provocative title “Warsaw Purges in Berlin” to report on Wielga-Skolimowska’s dismissal. Two other papers followed suit and claimed that Wielga-Skolimowska was fired for over emphasizing Jewish topics. The theme, as noted, was picked up by the Israeli press. And the Polish embassy was not happy. Both the Berliner Zeitung and the Tageszeitung received a letter demanding a correction.

Law and Justice is not generally considered an anti-Semitic party, not least because it is very pro-Israel. And according to political scientist Janusz Bugajski, despite Poland’s shady new attitude to historical accuracy, there is also “sensitivity that Germany is still evading a full accounting of World War II war crimes and that Poles as a nation are depicted as anti-Semites.”

In his evaluation, Ambassador Przylebski also accused Wielga-Skolimowska of having done a bad job inviting guests and choosing topics. “The blind imitation of nihilistic and hedonistic trends does not lead to anything good in terms of civilization.” he wrote, rather mysteriously and apocalyptically. “Poland must resist this.”

Wielga-Skolimowska is the 14th out of 24 Polish Institute directors around the world to be fired this year, and the reasons vary. Vienna was forced to stop working with an Austrian journalist and writer after he criticised “Law and Justice” in his articles. But the director in Madrid already had to go for not focusing enough on Chopin.

“The Polish government is really celebrating national pride now,” Köhler muses, “and you can understand that: the country has a nasty history. But I expect that now they’ll be doing a very conservative backwards program, with uncritical writers, artists, and Chopin evenings. I don’t know if I’ll still feel like going.”

Bugajski, the political scientist, notes that Ambassador Przylebski, at the very least, seems to be “repeating the kind of language that communists used against ‘decadent Western bourgeois art.’  He adds, “It just shows you that politicians should not try to be culture critics.”

Source: Warsaw’s Populist Right Whitewashes Holocaust History – The Daily Beast

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Europe’s Jews have reason to fear today’s political climate: Saunders

2016/12/05 Leave a comment

Interesting column by Doug Saunders:

To understand this, it’s worth following the work of Yascha Mounk, a Harvard University scholar. Mr. Mounk made headlines this week with a new study, co-authored with Roberto Stefan Foa at the University of Melbourne, which found that voters in most European countries and the United States are increasingly less likely to believe it is “essential” to live in a democracy. This effect is stronger among younger people and right-wing voters.

For Mr. Mounk, this is part of a larger phenomenon. Two years ago, he published Stranger in My Own Country, a memoir of his life as a young German Jew. It noted that the Christian Europeans around him, while professing liberal tolerance, were continuing to treat Jews such as himself as different, other or outside. In an essay titled “Europe’s Jewish Problem,” he linked these observations to the rise of the new right-wing populist movements.

“Europe’s political climate is more hostile to Jews now than at any time since the second intifada,” he wrote. But he concluded that it wasn’t Muslim anti-Semitism leading the trend; rather, it was the far larger populations of Christians. As he noted, the number of Spanish citizens who express unfavourable views of Jews is almost 50 per cent; Muslims make up less than 3 per cent of Spain’s population and aren’t growing fast. So “a European anti-Semite remains far more likely to be Christian than Muslim.”

The larger problem, he concluded, is “the tendency of wily politicians to play Jews and Muslims against each other for purposes of their own.”

A recent large-scale survey of French attitudes toward Jews by political scientist Dominique Reynié found that anti-Semitism in general is declining, but the country’s Muslims do indeed have higher rates of anti-Jewish beliefs than the general population. What really stood out, though, were the many people who support Marine Le Pen’s National Front party: They were even more likely than Muslims to agree with Jewish-conspiracy claims such as “Jews use their status as victims of the Nazi genocide for their own interest” or “the Jews are responsible for the current economic crisis.” And they were almost equally likely to support statements such as “there is a Zionist conspiracy on a global scale,” at rates twice as high as the general population. Muslims make up only 7 per cent of the population of France, but Ms. Le Pen commands at least one-fifth of the population, and her support is rising fast.

These parties and movements, Mr. Mounk concluded, attract those who are hostile toward both Muslims and Jews. “The very same revival of nationalism that has been fuelled by their invocation of Jews [as foils for their politics],” he wrote, “can, in this way, quickly turn into anti-Semitism.” And that, combined with a growing group of voters who don’t care about democracy, is something that Europe ought to fear.

Source: Europe’s Jews have reason to fear today’s political climate – The Globe and Mail

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Didn’t Slam Anti-Semitism On the Left? Don’t Expect Credibility When You Slam It On the Right: Lipstadt

2016/11/28 Leave a comment

Deborah Lipstadt, the Holocaust scholar and subject of the film Denial, about her libel trial with Holocaust denier David Irving, expresses it well:

For American Jews, particularly those aligned with the new administration, to remain silent is to send a signal that anti-Semitism and racism can be tolerated — and injected into the heart of American politics. Expediency, or tactical thinking, can have its place. But in this case, it is completely trumped by the need for honesty — and a bit of backbone.

The established leadership (with the exception of ADL) failed this first test regarding the Trump administration. Only after an outcry from many quarters — including from the editor of this publication — did they begin to issue somewhat lukewarm condemnations.

Yet it’s not only anti-Semitism from the right, but also anti-Semitism from the left, that should have been met with steel, not mush. The protesters from the left end of the political spectrum have also failed a test. Let’s hope they’ll do some soul-searching, too. Sadly, given the tenor of recent events, Jewish organizations from all ends of the political spectrum will probably have other opportunities to stand up. Let’s hope they do. Far more than just their already wounded credibility is at stake.

Source: Didn’t Slam Anti-Semitism On the Left? Don’t Expect Credibility When You Slam It On the Right. – Opinion – Forward.com

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Is the Mainstream Media Normalizing Neo-Nazis? – The Daily Beast

2016/11/23 1 Comment

Valid criticism:
The Los Angeles Times stands criticized for normalizing the white supremacist National Policy Institute, after a tweet that read, ‘Meet the new think tank in town: The ‘alt-right’ comes to Washington.’

When the Los Angeles Times’s social media team tweeted a link to a story about last Saturday’s celebratory post-election gathering in Washington of racists, anti-Semites, and white nationalists, the reaction—at least by some—was collective outrage.

“Worthless @latimes covers resurgent neo-Nazi movement as if it was a new boy band,” one of dozens of aggrieved readers tweeted after the paper touted the story on the benignly yet deceptively named National Policy Institute with the cheeky tweet, “Meet the new think tank in town: The ‘alt-right’ comes to Washington.”

“This tweet by the @latimes is beyond offensive,” liberal radio host Roland Martin posted on Twitter. “Calling these white nationalists a ‘think tank’ is atrocious.”

Another critic, actor Adam Shapiro, who was in the cast of Aaron Sorkin’s Steve Jobsbiopic, objected to the respectful attention the Times’s coverage of the conference accorded National Policy Institute president Richard Spencer, who is credited with coining the term “alt-right” for his fellow twenty- and thirty-something clean-cut millennials who would rather not be tagged as xenophobic thugs.

“WTF?! Why are you glamorizing this guy, @latimes? This is not a think tank. It’s a hate group,” Shapiro tweeted in response not only to Lisa Mascaro’s story—which quoted Spencer as hailing “the alt-right as an intellectual vanguard”—but also to an accompanying video in which the telegenic and articulate white nationalist was given four unchallenged minutes to reasonably explain his dream “to influence politics and influence culture” to restore white people of European descent to unquestioned power and social dominance, adding, “I think we have an amazing opportunity to do that with Donald Trump.”

Another tweeter, technology reporter Jack Smith IV, posted: “What ‘normalization’ ACTUALLY looks like: the @latimes running straight uploads of Richard Spencer sermons without qualification.”

In fairness, Mascaro’s story—which eventually carried an altered headline, dropping the “think tank” idea in favor of “White nationalists dress up and come to Washington in hopes of influencing Trump”—did point out that “the formally dressed men more resembled Washington lobbyists than the robed Ku Klux Klansmen or skinhead toughs that often represent white supremacists, though they share many familiar views.”

But unlike more unsympathetic accounts of the gathering in The New York Times and The Daily Beast, it made no mention of partygoers, including former MTV host Tila Tequila, jubilantly giving the Nazi salute and engaging in other less than democracy-friendly behavior.

Still, the LA Times story also quoted Heidi Beirich, of the anti-hate group nonprofit, the Southern Poverty Law Center, as warning against the “mainstreaming” of pernicious ideologies that the National Policy Institute represents.

“I don’t want anything to normalize the National Policy Institute,” she told The Daily Beast. “I think there has been a tendency in the press to not understand what the alt-right is—which is white supremacy. And I think we’re letting haters basically rebrand themselves to sounds less threatening—and that is very disappointing. I worry about that.”
Source: Is the Mainstream Media Normalizing Neo-Nazis? – The Daily Beast

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When The ADL Promotes Anti-Semitism | The Daily Caller

2016/10/03 Leave a comment

Over reach:

Earlier this week, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) added the cartoon character and internet meme Pepe the Frog to its “Hate On Display” database, saying it promoted “anti-Jewish, bigoted and offensive ideas.” The announcement gained major media coverage, from The New York Times to The Washington Post to TIME Magazine.

But the symbol was previously unknown to the vast majority of Americans, largely limited to the youthful-skewing hardcore followers of Internet message boards.

Thanks to the ADL, though, all of America’s anti-Semites have a new, cuddly mascot to use in their attacks on Jews.

Last year, the decade-old amphibian was one of the most popular symbols on the social networking site Tumblr. Pepe the Frog has been associated with bigotry for less than a year, as the “alt-right” gained strength during the presidential election. Those who present Pepe as anti-Semitic generally hide behind anonymous names like mashr445, and it can be impossible to tell if they are junior high school girls, an automatic computer program, or even disgruntled Jews. When anti-Semites use their own names, then I get nervous.

 Since historically the character has only rarely represented hateful ideas, the ADL’s categorization is like calling white sheets racist. Yes, the KKK has used white sheets to terrorize blacks and when they do, it’s terrible. But white sheets themselves are hardly a hate symbol. Yet the ADL also lists (I’m not kidding) the numbers 12, 13, 14, 18, 28, 38, 43, 83, and 88 as hate symbols. (Watch out for those bigoted pianos with their 88 keys.)

What’s the upside here for the ADL? What does it think it’s achieving by disseminating information about bigoted use of a cartoon character by a fringe segment of American society? How are their press releases and databases going to save a single Jew from being harassed, fired, or assaulted for his faith?

They won’t. But they will raise money for the ADL.

The organization’s very raison d’être is fighting anti-Semitism, so they can’t continue to replicate themselves without a perception of widespread – and growing – prejudice against Jews. That’s why their 2014 survey of global anti-Semitism was designed to encourage anti-Semitic answers  and even beliefs among respondents. It’s why the organization will try to squelch any dialogue or artistic expression that doesn’t meet its checklist of approved modes of discourse about Jews, Israel, race, sexual orientation, and more.

But this time they’ve gone too far. In order to get its name in the papers, the ADL is aiding and abetting America’s Jew-haters in a concrete way by handing them Joe the Camel of anti-Semitism on a silver platter. The swastika is so darned angular and abstract, whereas Pepe the Frog would make for good temporary tattoos, stuffed animals, or trading cards.

The Pepe episode is a great example of how reckless “educational efforts” by anti-tolerance organizations can be counter-productive. I remember a shocking display at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles that invited participants to match the hate slur to the group being targeted, including some fairly obscure ones. I literally added new spiteful terms for Asians and lesbians to my lexicon. Why is that a good thing?

In an almost certain parody of that exhibit, the 2002 South Park episode “The Death Camp of Tolerance” has the boys visit the Museum of Tolerance and walk through the “Tunnel of Prejudice,” in which voices shout things like “Queer” and “Chink” and “Heeb.”

Most of the fourth-graders are understandably startled by the put-downs – save crudely bigoted Cartman, who calls the exhibit “awesome,” and hops up and down: “I want to ride again! I want to ride again!”

No matter how lucrative, publicizing new ways to persecute Jews is rarely a good idea. The ADL should have plenty to do coping with the anti-Semitism that already exists in the broader society without taking a minor phenomenon and making it mainstream.

Source: When The ADL Promotes Anti-Semitism | The Daily Caller

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The danger in Poland’s frontal attack on its Holocaust history: Jan Grabowski

2016/09/23 Leave a comment

Worrisome:

Last year’s presidential and parliamentary elections in Poland gave power to a right-wing, nationalistic and populist party, called Law and Justice. The ensuing changes on the political scene were nothing short of dramatic—and deeply troubling. Those who thought that the constitution was the supreme law of the land, were in for a nasty surprise: the new Polish government, with the help of the president, immediately started to dismantle and muzzle the Constitutional Court (an equivalent to the Canadian Supreme Court), the only remaining obstacle to its complete control of the state. The court is now paralyzed, and its most important verdicts are simply ignored by the authorities.

Elsewhere, the journalists of the state radio and television have been purged and those less sympathetic to the new regime were fired. Not surprisingly, the European Parliament took a dim view of the dismantling of democracy in one of its member states and repeatedly expressed its deep and growing concern over the situation in Poland.

However, the departure from democratic practices also goes hand in hand with a frontal attack on Polish history. “Who controls the present, controls the past,” wrote George Orwell, and the Polish authorities seem to have taken Orwell’s words to heart.

Earlier this month Zbigniew Ziobro, the Polish minister of justice, introduced new legislation intended to “defend the good name of the Polish nation.” The new set of laws, already approved by the cabinet, would impose prison terms of up to three years on people “who publicly and against the facts, accuse the Polish nation, or the Polish state, [of being] responsible or complicit in Nazi crimes committed by the III German Reich.” In the governmental narrative, the recently approved law is a penalty for those who talk about the “Polish death camps” of the Second World War. In reality, however, the new law, with its ambiguous and imprecise wording, is meant to freeze any debates which might be incompatible with the official, feel-good, version of the country’s own national past.

 This “feel good” narrative, which the new Polish authorities espouse, is, however, based on historical lies and revisionism masquerading as a defence of “the good name of the Polish nation.” Just a few weeks ago Anna Zalewska, the Polish minister of  education, declared herself unable to identify the perpetrators of the notorious 1946 Kielce pogrom. It is a matter of very public record that in 1946, in Kielce, in the center of Poland, one year after the end of the war, an enraged mob, incited by tales of blood libel, murdered close to 50 Jewish survivors of the Holocaust; women, men and children. Unfortunately, the minister was unable to admit that much. “Historians have to study the issue further,” she said, before finally declaring “it was perhaps anti-Semites.”

Her words were echoed Jaroslaw Szarek, the new chief of the Institute of National Remembrance, a state institution that aspires to be the guardian and custodian of Poland’s national memory. He flatly denied Polish involvement in, and responsibility for, the communal genocide in Jedwabne in 1941. Again, it is a matter of historical record that in July 1941 Polish citizens of Jedwabne herded hundreds of their Jewish neighbours into a barn and then set the barn on fire, burning their neighbours alive. The new law will, quite likely, make further debates surrounding these unpleasant events unlikely.

It so happens that the list of “unpleasant” historical themes, which could soon become a topic of interest to the police and to state prosecutors, is long. For instance, in the face of the new legislation, historians who argue that certain segments of Polish society were complicit in the extermination of their Jewish neighbours in the Second World War will now think twice before voicing their opinion. What about those who would like to study the phenomenon of blackmailing of the Jews, known in Polish as shmaltsovnitstvo? What about those who would like to talk about the role of the Polish “blue” police who collaborated with the Germans in the extermination of the Polish Jewry? What about those who want to shed light on the deadly actions of the Polish voluntary firefighters involved in the destruction of Jewish communities? Or on the involvement of so-called “bystanders,” who might have been much more involved in the German policies of extermination than had previously been thought?

Those are but a few of the who questions that have not yet been tackled by historians. Now, it’s the minister of justice and his prosecutors will probably decide what is a historical fact and what is not.

In the light of the clear message sent by the authorities, the new law, which should be adopted by the Polish parliament any day now, becomes a clear and present threat to the liberty of public and scholarly discussions. It is also a dramatic departure from the democratic principles and standards which govern the laws of other members of the European Union. Finally, introducing prison terms for people who dare to tackle some of the most difficult questions of the country’s past puts Poland right next to Turkey, infamous for its laws against “slandering of Turkish identity,” which is a code word for denying the Turkish responsibility for the Armenian genocide.

Unfortunately for Polish authorities—and fortunately for those involved in the study of the past—the history of the Holocaust, which is at stake here, is not the property of the Polish government. The history of the destruction of the European Jewry is, actually, the only universal part of the national history of Poland, one which resonates in the minds and hearts of people around the world. Any attempt to muzzle debate and to stifle academic research into the various aspects of the history of the Shoah can, should and, hopefully, will be seen as a form of Holocaust distortion, or Holocaust denial—something to be vigorously protested by the international community.

Source: The danger in Poland’s frontal attack on its Holocaust history – Macleans.ca

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