Israel's own version of Holocaust denial
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BBC's Pro-Israeli Bias
w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
Last update - 12:36 13/06/2008
By Bradley Burston
Imagine, if you will, a Jewish state founded as a refuge and last resort, that one day declares the act of seeking refuge a felony.
Imagine, if you can, a law that would allow the expulsion, without any judicial process, of refugees so desperate to reach that state, that they would hazard their very lives and those of their children to do so. Imagine, impossible as it may be, that a Jewish state that is home to hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors, could decide not only to imprison African refugees for five years, but to make those fleeing genocide in Sudan subject to prison sentences of at least seven years.
Such are the outlines of a bill that has already sailed through a preliminary Knesset vote. So callous is the language of the bill, so cruel its provisions toward Africans now fleeing a host of dangers, that the Prevention of Infiltration Act of 2008 may be said to constitute a whole new form of Holocaust denial. It is a denial grounded in the belief of many Israeli Jews that we are so well versed in the lessons of the Holocaust - and so often ingenuously compared to the Nazis - that we are incapable of treating others the way the wartime world acted toward its doomed Jews.
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BBC's Pro-Israeli Bias
w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
Last update - 12:36 13/06/2008
By Bradley Burston
Imagine, if you will, a Jewish state founded as a refuge and last resort, that one day declares the act of seeking refuge a felony.
Imagine, if you can, a law that would allow the expulsion, without any judicial process, of refugees so desperate to reach that state, that they would hazard their very lives and those of their children to do so. Imagine, impossible as it may be, that a Jewish state that is home to hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors, could decide not only to imprison African refugees for five years, but to make those fleeing genocide in Sudan subject to prison sentences of at least seven years.
Such are the outlines of a bill that has already sailed through a preliminary Knesset vote. So callous is the language of the bill, so cruel its provisions toward Africans now fleeing a host of dangers, that the Prevention of Infiltration Act of 2008 may be said to constitute a whole new form of Holocaust denial. It is a denial grounded in the belief of many Israeli Jews that we are so well versed in the lessons of the Holocaust - and so often ingenuously compared to the Nazis - that we are incapable of treating others the way the wartime world acted toward its doomed Jews.
--MORE--