Holocaust denial and revisionism receives great attention in the Arab media. MEMRI has documented this in several previous Special Dispatches.[1] The frequency with which this material appears - particularly in officially controlled media - indicates that it is not an isolated phenomenon but that it reflects prevailing ideas throughout the Arab world and is a key component of some of the official ideologies in the Arab world.
Following are excerpts from an article, entitled "Holocaust!!!?? Again," by Mohammad Daoud appeared in the English language daily Syria Times, an official paper of the Syrian government, on September 6, 2000.[2]
"History has not witnessed a people who have mastered lying, dodgery, and myth making such as the Israelis."
"Their most famous myth is that of the so-called Holocaust."
"Since the invention of this word, they have been living on it and blackmailing the whole world."
"Due to this alleged Holocaust, the Palestinian people were and still are exposed to inhuman practices by the Israelis."
"Many European intellectuals and historians have recently broken the silence, revealing the truth of the so-called Holocaust. As a matter of fact, this Holocaust exists only in the minds of terrorists like Yitzhak Shamir, Ovadia Yosef and others."
Zionist Collusion
"Research by the Jewish writer Morgenstern, which was published by some Israeli papers in the early 1970s, has shown that the Zionists leaders' goals were never to save Jews from the death camps."
"Morgenstern revealed that the chairman of the 'Salvation Committee' and member of the presidency of the Jewish Agency, Jrenbour, stated that the money of the Jewish National Fund must be dispensed forth with to carry out the Zionist project in Palestine. Furthermore, [he stated] there is no need to spend money to save Jews from Nazis...!"
"In some cases Zionists did not allow chosen emigrants to enter Palestine. They sentenced those emigrants to death without hesitation. Then they waged a huge propaganda campaign to play on the blood of their victims."
"To illustrate this, when the ship "Patria" reached Haifa harbor in 1942 its cargo was hundreds of Jewish emigrants. But the British officials would not allow them to disembark [instead] offering them passage to Madagascar. The Zionists, having failed in their quest to persuade the British authorities, blew up the ship with all the emigrants on board. In the wake of that blast, they launched a hostile propaganda campaign, alleging that the emigrants carried out a mass suicide pact similar to the pact the Zionist gangs made with the passengers of the ship 'Struma' ship which met the same fate."[3]
"One of the best known and most notorious Gestapo Zionist agents was Dr. Rudolf Kastner the [Hungarian] permanent envoy of the World Jewish Council...."
"German writer Julius Madir affirmed that there is a long list of Zionist leaders who strongly collaborated with Nazis. Their names fill 16 pages. Amongst those were a number of top officials in 'Israel' for example, Chaim Weizman, Mosche Sharet, David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Shamir and others."
"The most important Nazi friends of the Zionists were Kurt Becher and Adolf Eichman..."
"The [Jewish] terrorist organization 'Irgun' also expressed its desire to take part in the battles on Germany's side."
Use of Gas Chambers
"In this respect, there is also a celebrated French thinker who exposed the Zionists lies and deception. French Historian Henri Rocques who wrote a doctoral thesis at Nantes University in 1977 in which he tried to deny the existence of gas chambers at the Nazis concentration camps. Mr. Rocques has already published several studies and articles in French papers in which he documents this subject."
"He was under great pressure from a savage media campaign in France accusing him of being a Nazi, anti-semite, and a far right extremist."
"French Higher Education Minister, at that time, issued a decision abolishing the discussion of Rocques' doctoral thesis and consequently banning him from receiving the doctorate degree."
"Not only this, a French court convicted the historian and fined him 100,000 French Francs...."
"It is crystal clear that the extermination camps existed in all Nazi camps. ...Bodies of prisoners and German officers were exposed for cleansing. There was a great need for health reasons for de-lousing procedures in concentration camps as there were huge gatherings of prisoners."
"The Germans were afraid of diseases and infestation of lice. Actually typhoid, cholera and malaria were attacking some camps, so burning bodies was the best way to prevent the further spread of epidemic diseases."
"As for gas chambers, Rocques added, no one doubts that they existed at concentration camps, but there are grave doubts that they were used to kill. Apparently, these gas chambers only existed for purification... clothes and personal tools were put in [them] to sterilize them..."
"German soldiers returning home from the Russian front were stopped at specific gathering places where their clothes and tools were put in gas chambers for fear of disease..."
"From all these crystal facts, we strongly believe that gas chambers were not used for burning of Jews...."
[1] See MEMRI Special Dispatches:
- No. 89: An Arab Voice Rejects Holocaust Denial April 28, 2000.
- No. 85: {{nodeurl-}} April 11, 2000.
- No. 82: …[Pope] Wojtyla Free Us From the Jews - An Interview With the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem About the Pope’s Visit March 29, 2000.
- No. 77: Anti-Semitism in the Egyptian Media; Part I: Holocaust Denial March 16, 2000.
- No. 71: Holocaust Denial in the Syrian Media February 2, 2000.
- No. 33: Gas Chamber Denial in the Palestinian Media May 20, 1999.
See also MEMRI Monograph The Schools of Ba'athism: A Study of Syrian Schoolbooks. Chapter 2, "Delegitimating Zionism, pp. 7 - 16. 2000.
[2] Syria Times may not have transliterated all of the names accurately. MEMRI corrected them wherever possible.
[3] The "Struma" sank in the Black Sea.
