http://www.israelwire.com/New/990809/9908099.html
Monday, August 09, 1999 4:49
ZOA criticizes US Holocaust Museum for
promoting book accusing Israel of
"ethnic cleansing"
(IsraelWire-8/9) The United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum is praising
and promoting a new book that contains
eight anti-Israel essays, including
one that falsely accuses Israel of
engaging in "ethnic cleansing" against
the Palestinian Arabs states the
Zionist Organization of America.
The book, Crimes of War: What the
Public Should Know," is edited by Roy
Gutman and David Rieff and has just
been published by W.W. Norton. The US
Holocaust Museum held a public
symposium about the book on July 20.
The Museum's press release about the
symposium praised the book as "a
timely A-to-Z guide for journalists
and the general public".
In a letter to Museum chairman Miles
Lerman and executive director Sara
Bloomfield, Morton A. Klein, National
President of the Zionist Organization
of America, urged them to dissociate
the Museum from the book, and make
clear that the Museum not only does
not endorse the book, but publicly
condemns it for spreading anti-Israel
propaganda.
Klein wrote: "As a child of Holocaust
survivors, I am deeply pained that a
Museum dedicated to the memory of the
Jews murdered by the Nazis is praising
and promoting a book that falsely
accuses Israel of "ethnic cleansing"
and other barbaric war crimes. The
Museum's stamp of approval on the book
follows the Museum's invitation to
Yassir Arafat-whose official media
denies the Holocaust occurred-- and
the Museum's attempt to hire as its
research director John Roth, who
compared Israel to the Nazis and the
Palestinian Arabs to Holocaust
victims. The US Holocaust Museum was
established to never forget the
unspeakable crimes against Jews, not
to serve the political agenda of those
who defame the very country that has
been a salvation and refuge for the
Jews."
Among the articles in the book are:
"Case Study: Arab-Israeli War," by
Benny Morris, who accuses Israel of
carrying out "a variety of ethnic
cleansing," "atrocities," and
"massacres," during the 1948 war and
in subsequent wars, and says that
Israeli soldiers fighting Palestinian
Arab terrorists during the Intifada
were "acting like death squads."
One of Morris's examples of a Jewish
"massacre" of Arabs is the battle of
Dir Yassin, even though there is no
evidence any massacre took place
there. In fact, Arab eyewitnesses who
spread the "atrocity" stories in 1948
admitted last year that their claims
were deliberate fabrications.
(Jerusalem Report, April 9, 1998)
Morris served a jail term in 1988 for
refusing to serve with his army unit
beyond Israel's pre-1967
borders.[Jerusalem Post, September 18,
1988] (Such refusals are opposed by
virtually all Israelis, including even
the far-left Meretz Party.)
Morris's books have been criticized by
leading scholars in the field. Dr..
Shabtai Teveth of Tel Aviv University
has written that Morris's books
contain "distortions, omissions,
tendentious readings, and outright
falsifications" and Morris "ignores
essential facts and background
material necessary to a proper
understanding of the historical scene"
(Commentary, September 1989) Even
Professor Robert O. Freedman, a Peace
Now activist and president of
Baltimore Hebrew University), has
written that some of Morris's work
"reflects an anti-Israeli
left-of-center bias," and that Morris
sometimes relies on sources that "have
clear anti-Israeli biases." (American
Historical Review, April 1993)
An article by Roger Cohen, Berlin
bureau chief of the New York Times, on
"Ethnic Cleansing" which includes
Israel among the practitioners of
ethnic cleansing on the grounds that
it engages in "mass deportation" of
"Palestinians from occupied
territories." (In fact, Israel has
only deported a small number of
Palestinian Arabs, and only because of
those Arabs' involvement in
terrorism.)
"Civilians Illegal Targeting of," by
Joel Greenberg of the New York Times,
who claims that the late Prime Minster
Yitzhak Rabin's strikes against
terrorist bases in Lebanon in July
1993 were war crimes. Greenberg served
a jail term in 1983 for refusing to
serve with his army unit in southern
Lebanon [Moment, May 1984]
"Collective Punishment," by Daoud
Kuttab, which describes the Nazis'
collective punishment techniques, and
then proceeds to describe Israeli
anti-terrorist tactics, implying that
the two are comparable. Kuttab even
implies that Israel is worse than the
Nazis, when he emphasizes that the
Israeli presence in Judea-Samaria and
Gaza "differs from almost anywhere
else because it has continued for more
than one generation."
The ZOA release adds that Kuttab is a
Palestinian Arab extremist who in 1995
urged Arab-Americans to "try and help
get Sirhan Sirhan [assassin of Robert
F. Kennedy] released." On August 5,
1983, Kuttab wrote an article in the
Jerusalem Post in which he justified
the use of Arab violence against
"Israeli occupation soldiers."
Essays accusing Israel of committing
war crimes by being too tough in
dealing with Intifada rioters
("Command Responsibility," by Nomi
Bar-Yaakov); by deporting small
numbers of Arab terrorists
("Deportation," by Roy Gutman); by
holding terrorists in administrative
detention ("Due Process," by Gideon
Levy); by attacking terrorist sites
situated in civilian areas in Lebanon
("Indiscriminate Attack," by Roy
Gutman and Daoud Kuttab); and by
implementing the court-ordered
dismantling of terrorists' homes
("Property: Civilian, Destruction of,"
by Amira Hass).
An essay on "Child Soldiers" (by Anna
Cataldi) that makes no reference to
the PLO's widespread use of
Palestinian Arab chilDr.en as
participants in violent Intifada
attacks on Israelis, and an essay on
"Death Squads" (by Jean-Marie Simon)
that makes no reference to the PLO
death squads that murdered over 1,000
fellow-Arabs during the Intifada.
