UN denies Holocaust to appease terrorists

September 4, 2009
By Naomi Lakritz
Calgary Herald
Original source: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/denies+Holocaust+appease+terrorists/1961940/story.html

The ironies never cease. This week marks the 70th anniversary of the day Nazi tanks rolled into Poland and the Second World War began. And this week, the United Nations' Relief Works Agency--an agency that is part of an organization created precisely because of that war--declared that the murder of six million Jews and five million other undesirables . . . is not a human rights issue. The words are those of Karen Abu Zayd, commissioner-general of UNRWA, who was justifying the omission of mention of the Holocaust in a human-rights curriculum used in UN-run schools in Gaza.

It's been a very busy week for revisionism. Even as Polish President Lech Kaczynski marked the war's anniversary by carrying candles to the graves of Polish soldiers, Hamas terrorists were denying the Holocaust and Abu Zayd was appeasing them in her best Neville Chamberlain style. Days earlier, Kaczynski told hundreds of people who gathered to mark the 65th anniversary of the day the Nazis liquidated the Lodz ghetto: Today, when we pay homage to those who perished, those who survived and those who displayed the greatest bravery in saving their Jewish neighbours, we must remember it is here in Europe that the genocidal Nazi ideology was born.

But the genocidal fanatics of Hamas shouted louder and Kaczynski's words were carried away on the wind, like dandelion seeds, falling everywhere but on the ears of those who needed most to hear them.

Instead, Hamas spiritual leader Younis al-Astal declared that to teach the children in Gaza about the Nazis and the Holocaust is a war crime because it involves marketing a lie and spreading it. Right on, Younis. It's far more important for you to poison these children's souls with hatred, just the same as if you injected them with the germs of a fatal disease. It's more important to encourage them to worship a culture of death and to blow themselves up in the name of some twisted sense of glory, rather than teach them how to work toward evolving into a more democratic, prosperous society that lives in peace with its Israeli neighbours.

Scurrying to do al-Astal's bidding, Abu Zayd dismissed the 11 million deaths to which the flickering candles Kaczynski carried had poignantly paid homage, as not a human rights issue. What part of the term human rights do the deaths of those millions of souls not encompass, Ms. Abu Zayd? Human?Or rights? Seconding her with equally mealy-mouthed and appeasing words was another UNRWA spokesman, Chris Gunness, who said the Holocaust was excluded on the basis of age appropriateness and then, in an apparent attempt to be rid of the pesky issue, added that the curriculum's elements remain under review and under evolution. Age-appropriateness? These are Grade 8 students. In Canada, they'd be reading Anne Frank's diary, but in Gaza they're too young to learn about the Holocaust? Yet another UNRWA official in Gaza, John Ging, threw in his two cents worth: There is no intention to integrate materials and topics that are inconsistent with the desire of Palestinian society.

The Chamberlainism doesn't get much uglier than that, does it? What disgusting tripe issuing from United Nations officials who ought to be holding others to the highest ideals of respect for human rights and history, not kowtowing to terrorists who have stated, both aloud, and in their organization's charter, that their goal is to kill Jews.

Yet, there is a persistent din of voices in Europe --persistent enough to help drown out Kaczynski's three most crucial words, we must remember--who are advocating that western nations talk to Hamas. In July, Britain's parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee urged engagement with Hamas moderates--an oxymoron, if ever there was one, given the content of Hamas's charter. And Alistair Crooke, who heads an NGO called Conflicts Forum, which is headquartered in Beirut, complained that Hamas is demonized by being lumped in with genuine extremists.

Quoted in the June 9 EU Observer, Crooke said: If you talk with any Hamas leader, they say '. . . We believe the Qur'an sets out principles by which a human being should live and we try to find a practical way in which to conduct our policies based on these principles.' That's not dogmatism. That's not irrationalism. It's not in any sense extremism. If it's not extremism to want to kill all the people living in the country next door to you, then what is?

This is all part of the horribly misguided western idea that if we just make nice with the terrorists, they'll gratefully return the favour. There is an utter failure to recognize that if these people were capable of thinking and talking in civilized, rational ways, they would not be terrorists. There's no talking to terrorists, but the western mindset, reared in the tradition of civil discourse, can't grasp that.

Would somebody please hand President Kaczynski a microphone? He's having trouble being heard above the crowd.

nlakritz@theherald. canweSt.coM