The Tehran Holocaust Conference: It's Implications

A friend asked me to post my views on the long-term effects of the Holocaust deniers conference in Tehran.
My response falls into two parts. (1) I believe that the conference will have no impact whatsoever on scholarly opinion in the West regarding the historicity of the Holocaust, though some scholars may find it useful to rebut the most outrageous assertions made in Tehran. For the most part (except as I will explain below), I believe the impact on Western public opinion will be negligible. (2) However, the effects in the Islamic world are likely to be more complicated and potentially dangerous. There's already an element of Holocaust denial in Arab propaganda, and the proceedings of the Tehran conference will provide ammunition to use for propaganda purposes. Moreover, it seems to me quite possible, even probable, that what was said at Tehran will find its way into the curriculum of Islamist schools and might even be accorded some respectability in "intellectual circles" in the Muslim world. This may find an echo in Muslim communities in the West, especially in Europe, and will also provide quotable material for Skinheads, neo-Nazis and White Supremacists whose websites occupy a certain niche on the Internet.

I don't have any basis for guessing how it will affect public opinion in countries like Japan and Argentina where anti-Semitism (without Jews in the case of Japan) already has a troublesome audience. Thus, at one level, the Tehran conference merely confirms what "we" already know about the Iranian regime. However, at a deeper level, we do need to be concerned about the audience the conference might reach.

One hopes therefore that Holocaust scholars in the West will take the Tehran conference seriously enough to formulate a succinct response that could be jointly signed by a number of well-known Holocaust scholars and published jointly by -- for example -- the principal Holocaust museums in the world, including the U.S. Holocaust Museum and Yad Va'Shem in Israel. And since there are countries in Europe where Holocaust denial is a crime, one hopes that the Iranian president might actually be indicted for his role in setting up the conference and for the assertions he has repeatedly made.

One side note: We are all familiar with the ridiculous (but quite serious) assertions that some Islamic scholars have made regarding the Temple Mount in Jerusalem -- denying that there was ever a Jewish Temple on that site, denying that the Jews have any historic connection to a site which Muslims also claim as holy. That ought to serve as a reminder that assertions you and I dismiss as absurd can have serious consequences in communities that adopt a different historical narrative than we do in the West.

More on the Baker-Hamilton Report

I read every word in the Baker-Hamilton report this weekend and what struck me above all was how many of the recommendations were of the "wave of the wand" variety -- i.e., policies that might make sense if they could be accomplished magically but that are utterly unachievable under present circumstances. A very large percentage of the recommendations, well over 50 percent in my opinion, were of this kind. For all the publicity the report received and despite its bipartisan unanimity, the report in its totality is a wish list, not a strategy. The message this conveyed to me is that Baker, Hamilton and their colleagues really don't know how to save the situation in Iraq. They did not say so directly, of course, but I felt after reading the report that the members of the Commission believe that war in Iraq is already lost. Just as the White House and the Pentagon can be faulted for failing to plan what to do after "victory," the failing of the Baker-Hamilton Commission is that it does not say how the United States should deal with the situation in the Middle East now that we have failed to achieve our objectives in Iraq.

Jimmy Carter's New Book

Until George W. Bush came along, I thought Jimmy Carter was the worst president in my lifetime -- yes, worse than Richard Nixon who opened the door to China, managed the economy well and approved major environmental legislation. Of course, he engaged in illegal acts that were the product of his paranoia. Strange bird, Nixon. I knew him slightly while he was vice president. Carter's redeeming qualities as president were few. He presided over the worst period of inflation in recent history, accomplished next to nothing and received credit he was not due for the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. People have conveniently forgotten that when Anwar Sadat suggested bilateral negotiations between Israel and Egypt, the first reaction of the Carter Administration was to oppose them. Carter and his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezsinski, wanted multilateral negotiations that would have brought Russia to the table. Egypt, of course, was struggling hard under Sadat to escape the Soviet orbit, and Sadat understood, though Carter/Brzezinski did not, that including Russia would have been a dreadful mistake. It is true, to pay the Georgia simpleton his due, that once Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat began talking, he played a useful mediating role. But Carter (and Brzezinski) never understood Israel's problems, and Carter's current book demonstrates conclusively that he has no grasp whatsoever of the situation upon which he so freely pronounces. Of all the outrages in this book, the worst is his assertion that he knows better than Bill Clinton what went on in the three-way discussions between Arafat, Barak and Clinton. Dennis Ross, who was in the middle of the negotiations, has conclusively rebutted Carter's assertions. Carter has an undeserved reputation as a statesman. It is certainly true that he is a better ex-president than he was as president -- and I have sometimes been willing to concede that he is well-meaning. But in this case, he is neither informed nor well-meaning. His notions about the situation between Israel and its Arab neighbors are both ill-informed and, in my view, malicious.

The Baker/Hamilton Report

It comes as no surprise that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has again been thrust into the center of how to deal with the deteriorating situation in the Middle East. That is, of course, a central thesis of the wing of Middle Eastern studies associated with the name of Edward Said and completely opposite to the views expressed by Bernard Lewis and his disciples. The problem with the Baker-Hamilton thesis is that the obvious outcome -- a two-state solution, renunciation of the "right of return" by the descendants of the Palestinians who fled in 1948, and adjustments of the 1948 armistice line to reflect changes on the ground -- is unacceptable by the rejectionists, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Jihadists headquartered in Syria. Jimmy Carter has (unfortunately, but not unexpectedly) joined the ranks of those willing to place the blame on Israel. But until the international community is prepared to acknowledge straight-forwardedly and without condition Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, none of this advances the ball one inch. Indeed, it impairs the likelihood of a satisfactory settlement. [For those who came at this this issue without much background, it is necessary to understand that Jimmy Carter's reputation for having engineered the peace treaty between Israel and Eygpt is completely undeserved. The undeniable fact is that Carter and his principal foreign policy aide, Brzezinski, were taken aback by Anwar Sadat's desire for bilateral negotiations with Israel. Carter/Brzezinksi wanted multilateral negotiations (including the Soviets) which would have been a disaster. Once their notion was blasted out of the water by both Sadat and Begin, it's true that Carter played a useful role in mediating between Sadat and Begin during negotiation of final terms on the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt -- but it's important to remember that his initial instinctions (and Brzezinski's) were entirely wrong.] Neither Carter, nor Jim Baker, nor Lee Hamilton fully understands the dynamic of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. As a result, their prescriptions are quite wrong -- and dangerously so.