Free The Holocaust Industry by Norman Finkelstein

even convicted
    Lewis of denying genocide. But Lewis denied the Turkish genocide of Armenians during World War
    I, not the Nazi genocide of Jews, and Lewis is pro-lsrael. 52 Accordingly, this instance of holocaust
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    denial raises no hackles in the United States. Turkey is an Israeli ally, extenuating matters even
    further. Mention of an Armenian genocide is therefore taboo. Elie Wiesel and Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg
    as well as the AJC and Yad Vashem withdrew from an international conference on genocide in Tel
    Aviv because the academic sponsors, against Israeli government urging, included sessions on the
    Armenian case. Wiesel also sought, unilaterally, to abort the conference and, according to Yehuda
    Bauer, personally lobbied others not to attend. 53 Acting at Israel's behest, the US Holocaust Council
    practically eliminated mention of the Armenians in the Washington Holocaust Memorial Museum,
    and Jewish lobbyists in Congress blocked a day of remembrance for the Armenian genocide. 54
    To question a survivor's testimony, to denounce the role of Jewish collaborators, to suggest that
    Germans suffered during the bombing of Dresden or that any state except Germany committed crimes
    in World War II — this is all evidence, according to Lipstadt, of Holocaust denial. 55 And to suggest
    that Wiesel has profited from the Holocaust industry, or even to question him, amounts to Holocaust
    denial. 56
    The most "insidious" forms of Holocaust denial, Lipstadt suggests, are «immoral equivalencies»: that
    is, denying the uniqueness of The Holocaust. 57 This argument has intriguing implications. Daniel
    Goldhagen argues that Serbian actions in Kosovo «are, in their essence, different from those of Nazi
    Germany only in scale." 58 That would make Goldhagen "in essence" a Holocaust denier. Indeed,
    across the political spectrum, Israeli commentators compared Serbia's actions in Kosovo with Israeli
    actions in 1948 against the Palestinians. 59 By Goldhagen's reckoning, then, Israel committed a
    Holocaust. Not even Palestinians claim that anymore.
    Not all revisionist literature — however scurrilous the politics or motivations of its practitioners — is
    totally useless. Lipstadt brands David Irving "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust
    denial" (he recently lost a libel suit in England against her for these and other assertions). But Irving,
    notorious as an admirer of Hitler and sympathizer with German national socialism, has nevertheless,
    as Gordon Craig points out, made an "indispensable" contribution to our knowledge of World War II.
    Both Arno Mayer, in his important study of the Nazi holocaust, and Raul Hilberg cite Holocaust
    denial publications. "If these people want to speak, let them," Hilberg observes. "It only leads those of
    us who do research to re-examine what we might have considered as obvious. And that's useful for
    us. 60
    Annual Days of Remembrance of the Holocaust are a national event. All 50 states sponsor
    commemorations, often in state legislative chambers. The Association of Holocaust Organizations
    lists over 100 Holocaust institutions in the United States. Seven major Holocaust museums dot the
    American landscape. The centerpiece of this memorialization is the United States Holocaust Memorial
    Museum in Washington.
    The first question is why we even have a federally mandated and funded Holocaust museum in the
    nation's capitol. Its presence on the Washington Mall is particularly incongruous in the absence of a
    museum commemorating crimes in the course of American history. Imagine the wailing accusations
    of hypocrisy here were Germany to build a national museum in Berlin to commemorate not the Nazi
    genocide but American slavery or the extermination of the Native Americans . 61
    It "tries meticulously to refrain from any attempt at indoctrination,"