...the Palestinians and the Arabs are paying "penance" for the Holocaust...But who pays the penance? The penance is being paid by the Arabs, by the Palestinians. I once met a German ambassador who said Germany is guilty of two wrongs. One was what they did to the Jews. And now the suffering of the Palestinians." Israel is mistaken to think it can achieve security through force, he said. "The lesson that Israel must learn from the Holocaust is that it can never get security through fences, walls and guns," Tutu said.
Two points.
The first, as I have expanded on several times at this blog, the Arabs of Mandate Palestine and specifically the Mufti, bear a direct responsibility for the Holocaust. Not only for what they did (the Mufti broadcast radio propaganda for Hitelr, raised a battalion for the Waffen SS and intervened to halt rescue attempts for Jewish children) but for their political pressure on Great Britain during the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 which caused Gt. Britain to issue the 1939 White Paper which doomed European Jewry.
The second, the furtherance of this corrupt idea that since Germany did what it did to the Jews, the Jews are doing what the Nazis did to Arabs, is a perversion of history and implies that Arabs can do to Jews what the Nazis did to them. And this is what is going on in European capitals, like in Sweden, for example.
In any case, I thought this would be a proper observation, from Yehuda Avner's article, to be included in his forthcoming book:
...The head of the delegation, Frank Lautenburg...asked if the prime minister would care to elaborate on...that the prime minister had had a serious quarrel with the German chancellor, and that, as a consequence, relations between the two countries were strained.
BEGIN...leaned across the table from the front edge of his chair and gazed into Lautenburg's eyes with great earnestness. "It is true, Frank," he said. "I reprimanded Helmut Schmidt in public."
"What had he done? What had he said?"
"He had gone to Saudi Arabia, and he had said in a public statement that Germany had obligations to various peoples, among them the Palestinians, but he made no mention of the Jews.
"I was beside myself with astonishment. Could it be, I said to myself, that he, of all people, had failed to make mention of Germany's obligation to the Jews - and in Saudi Arabia, of all places? So, yes, I told him what I thought of him in public."
"And how did he respond?"
"He demanded an apology, but I refused. I publicly told him that he had shown arrogance and callous disregard of the Jews exterminated by his people in World War II. And I counseled him to take an example from his predecessor, Chancellor Willy Brandt. I told him to do what Brandt did: to go to Warsaw. I told him to go to the site where the Jewish ghetto once stood.
"Go down on your knees, Mr. Schmidt, I told him. Go down on you knees and beg forgiveness of the Jewish people for what your countrymen perpetrated under the Nazi regime against my people, at a time when you, Mr. Schmidt, remained steadfast to the personal oath you had given to Adolf Hitler, as a soldier in the Wehrmacht."
And here's the official version:-
I will not apologize to Mr. Schmidt, either publicly or privately, whatever the conditions he puts.
Mr. Schmidt traveled to Saudi Arabia some time ago. During and after his visit he made some incredible statements, astonishing from every point of view, and particularly so from the standpoint of the head of government of a nation which bears historic responsibility for the extermination of six million Jews, amongst them a million and a half little children. Mr. Schmidt mentioned Auschwitz and said that he acknowledges the obligation of Germany towards a number of peoples - but the Jewish people was not listed amongst them. Mr. Schmidt spoke of Germany's obligation towards the Palestinians and said not a word of Germany's obligation towards the Jewish people.
In reaction to all those statements I said in a speech that according to a report I got, Mr. Schmidt, as a lieutenant in Hitler's army, was among the viewers of a film showing the hanging by piano wire of German officers who had rebelled against the National Socialist regime.
My friend, Dr. Gideon Hausner, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Committee, pointed out to me that Lieutenant Schmidt had not participated in the screening of the above film, but he had been invited to and participated in a trial presided over by the infamous Nazi judge Freisler.
I chose to rely upon the information given me by Dr. Hausner, and, accordingly, I informed Bundestag member, Mr. Blumenfeld, that I will not hesitate to admit the error concerning the film. However, participation in the above mentioned Nazi trial is of itself a most grave event in the biography of one of the tens of thousands of German officers during the Holocaust.
I will not apologize to Mr. Schmidt. Rather, I counsel him, speaking as a free man who fought for the continued existence and the liberation of the Jewish people, that he take an example from his predecessor Mr. Brandt, visit Warsaw, go to the site where the Jewish ghetto once stood, go down on his knees and ask the forgiveness of the Jewish people and of all nations loving justice and liberty for what his countrymen perpetrated under the National Socialist regime against my people at the time when Mr. Schmidt remained faithful to the personal oath he had given to Adolf Hitler as a soldier and officer in his army.
More here.
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