Free The Holocaust Industry by Norman Finkelstein Page B

the Gypsy representatives' "deep
    suspicion" of the council, "fueled by clear evidence that some council members viewed Rom
    participation in the museum the way a family deals with unwelcome, embarrassing relatives." 70
    Second: acknowledging the Gypsy genocide meant the loss of an exclusive Jewish franchise over The
    Holocaust, with a commensurate loss of Jewish "moral capital." Third: if the Nazis persecuted Gypsies
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    and Jews alike, the dogma that The Holocaust marked the climax of a millennial Gentile hatred of
    Jews was clearly untenable. Likewise, if Gentile envy spurred the Jewish genocide, did envy also spur
    the Gypsy genocides In the museum's permanent exhibition, non-Jewish victims of Nazism receive
    only token recognition. 71
    Finally, the Holocaust museum's political agenda has also been shaped by the Israel-Palestine conflict.
    Before serving as the museum's director, Walter Reich wrote a paean to Joan Peters's fraudulent From
    Time Immemorial, which claimed that Palestine was literally empty before Zionist colonization. 72
    Under State Department pressure, Reich was forced to resign after refusing to invite Yasir Arafat, now
    a compliant American ally, to visit the museum. Offered a subdirector's position, Holocaust theologian
    John Roth was then badgered into resigning because of past criticism of Israel. Repudiating a book the
    museum originally endorsed because it included a chapter by Benny Morris, a prominent Israeli
    historian critical of Israel, Miles Lerman, the museum's chairman, avowed, "To put this museum on
    the opposite side of Israel - it's inconceivable." 73
    In the wake of Israel's appalling attacks against Lebanon in 1996, climaxing in the massacre of more
    than a hundred civilians at Qana, Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit observed that Israel could act with
    impunity because "we have the Anti-Defamation League . . . and Yad Vashem and the Holocaust
    Museum." 74
    Footnotes:
    1 Boas Evron, "Holocaust: The Uses of Disaster," in Radical America (July - August 1983), 15.
    2 For the distinction between Holocaust literature and Nazi holocaust scholarship, see Finkelstein and
    Birn, Nation, part one, section 3.
    3 Jacob Neusner (ed.), Judaism in Cold War America, 1945 - 1990, v. ii: In the Aftermath of the
    Holocaust (New York: 1993), viii.
    4 David Stannard, "Uniqueness as Denial," in Alan Rosenbaum (ed.), Is the Holocaust Unique?
    (Boulder: 1996), 193.
    5 Jean-Michel Chaumont, La concurrence des victimes (Paris: 1997), 148 - 9. Chaumont's dissection
    of the "Holocaust uniqueness" debate is a tour de force. Yet his central thesis does not persuade, at
    least for the American scene. According to Chaumont, the Holocaust phenomenon originated in
    Jewish survivors' belated search for public recognition of past suffering. Yet survivors hardly figured
    in the initial push to move The Holocaust center stage.
    6 Steven T. Katz, The Holocaust in Historical Context (Oxford: 1994), 28, 58, 60.
    7 Chaumont, La concurrence, 137
    8 Novick, The Holocaust, 200 - 1, 211 - 12. Wiesel, Against Silence, v. i, 158, 211, 239, 272, v. ii, 62,
    81, 111, 278, 293, 347, 371, v. iii, 153, 243. Elie Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea (New York: 1995),
    89. Information on Wiesel's lecture fee provided by Ruth Wheat of the Bnai Brith Lecture
    Bureau."Words," according to Wiesel, "are a kind of horizontal approach, while silence offers you a
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    vertical approach. You plunge into it." Does Wiesel parachute into his lectures?
    9 Wiesel, Against Silence, v. iii, 146.
    10 Wiesel, And the Sea, 95. Compare These news items: Ken Livingstone, a former member of the
    Labour Party who is runnmg for mayor of London as an independent, has incensed Jews in