Matory No Scholar

An anthropology pofessor at Harvard published an op-ed in the Daily Crimson entitled: Israel and Censorship at Harvard.

Most of it is ranting and irrational and I chose to respond to just one claim:-

Professor J.L. Matory asks (rhetorically?) "But is it anti-Semitic to ask why the Palestinians should pay the price for the ghastly crime of the Germans?" ("Israel and Censorship at Harvard", Sept. 14) and the answer must be a qualified 'no'.

The Arabs of the Palestine Mandate (1922-1948), who referred to themselves as "Southern Syrians" in the early years of that period, were early supporters of Hitler and his Nazi regime. In their anti-Zionist propaganda, they exploited and copied crude Nazi racist literature, slogans and symbols. They adapted to the Aryan ideology, claiming racial kinship. When the Grand Mufti El-Husseini was forced to flee the region during World War II, due to his Islamic terrorism policy, he traveled to Berlin, met the Fuhrer and offered his services to the Nazi cause on behalf of the extermination purposes of German actions. He broadcast pro-Nazi messages over German radio and raised military units composed of Muslims, mainly in Bosnia, to fight in the Waffen SS. Two of his aides were parachuted back into the Mandate for purposes of spying, sabotage and murder by poisoning water supplies.

More importantly, the Arab terror campaign of 1936-1939 which killed hundreds of Jewish civilians as well as British Army and Police forces and, incidentally, some 2000 Arab rivals from the more moderate camp as well, led to the infamous British White Paper policy of 1939. The British closed the gates of immigration to the Jews of Europe. This stranded millions of Jews to the fate that eventually overtook them: shootings in pits, starvation in concentration camps and incineration in the crematoria. The Nazi crimes could not have been so enormous or so horrific without this development in the Palestine Mandate.

In perspective, it may be that the Arabs of the Palestine Mandate, in their support for the Mufti and their participation in the terror of the 1930s, did indeed contribute indirectly to the German crimes of the Holocaust. This aspect of the Israel-Arab conflict also deserves protection from censorship or, at the very least, the too common ignorance the conflict

Yisrael Medad
Shiloh,
ISRAEL

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Information about the content of my letter can be researched here as well as in this film clip