Debating the meaning of "Shoah" and "Ausrottung"

Why is debate over the definition of the word "Shoah" in the context of Gaza encouraged, while debating the word "Ausrottung" in the context of Germany is an "antisemitic" thought crime?

by Michael A. Hoffman II
Copyright ©2008

The worldwide Zionist spin doctorate is out in full force denying that the Feb. 29 statement on radio by Israeli Defense Minister Matan Vilnai calling for the "Shoah" (Holocaust) of Palestinians in Gaza means what is says. This spin is performed in spite of the fact that one day after the call for a Shoah in Gaza was issued, 12 Palestinian civilians were slaughtered by the Israeli army.

Israeli apologists claim that in the context of Gaza, the Israeli official was "only" calling for a "disaster" in Gaza.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz admits however that, "The word 'shoah,' Hebrew for 'holocaust,' is used primarily to describe the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis." (March 1, 2008. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/959601.html)

Even Steven Erlanger of the NY Times conceded as much*: "Mr. Vilnai used the Hebrew word 'shoah,' meaning catastrophe or holocaust, and RARELY USED FOR ANYTHING OTHER THAN the Nazi extermination of the Jews." (March 1, 2008. Emphasis supplied. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/01/world/middleeast/01mideast.html?scp=1&sq=shoah&st=nyt)

Yet much of the western media are denying that calling for a 'Shoah' in Gaza is a Holocaust reference. They're frantically spinning the term to mean something less than genocidal. If they don't succeed, all their calls for the President of Iran to be prosecuted at the World Court for allegedly calling for the destruction of the Israeli regime will be hypocritical, since by the same logic, the Israelis should be prosecuted for calling for genocide in Gaza.

In England, the conservative magazine "The Spectator" went so far as to declare, in an apparent fit of Orwellian delirium, "In Hebrew, the word 'shoah' is never used to mean 'holocaust' or 'genocide' because of the acute historical resonance."

Say what?

It's interesting that the right which Zionist media like the Associated Press accord to themselves in denying the Israeli holocaust against the Palestinians is seemingly axiomatic. Yet in their hubris they regard it as a thought crime for World War II revisionist historians like David Irving to claim that when Hitler used the word "Ausrottung" in connection with the Judaics of Europe, he was not saying he wanted to exterminate them.

Debate about the meaning and context of the word "Ausrottung" is verboten in the western media. They permit only one definition of "Ausrottung" --that it signifies extermination--to be promulgated. Anything else is "antisemitic Holocaust denial." Ah, but as we are witnessing at present, debate about the use of the word "Shoah" is not only permitted, it is practiced and advocated by the major media.

Here the Talmud's double-standard raises its ugly head: one draconian standard for the gentiles and a loophole/exception for The Holy People.

Debate over the definition of the word "Shoah" is encouraged because muddying the waters concerning the exact denotation of "Shoah" benefits the Israelis and gets them off the hook; while debating the word "Ausrottung" is widely regarded as a horrible breach of etiquette and scholarly decorum since this debate would call into question the legitimacy of conformity to the politically correct version of the history of World War II; a version which is enforced by imprisonment of non-conformists in Germany, Canada, Austria and Switzerland, and fines and prosecution in France and Australia.

THE DEBATE ABOUT THE USE OF THE WORD SHOAH

Palestinian Sami Abu Zuhri (in reference to Vilna's declaration):
"We are facing new Nazis who want to kill and burn the Palestinian people."

Reuters via The New York Times, March 1, 2008:
"On Friday, Vilnai warned Gazans they risked a "shoah" if rocket fire did not end. An aide said Vilnai meant 'disaster' rather than 'holocaust,' the word's more common meaning."
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-palestinians-israel.html?hp

AFP, March 1, 2008:
"The minister used the Hebrew term 'shoah' which means 'catastrophe' and in this context does not refer to the 'the Shoah' -- the Holocaust,' (Israeli spokesman) Eytan Guinsburg said on Friday."
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hh-9TDbg0aa65PZLTwd6ObqUJkiw

Amy Teibel, Associated Press, March 1, 2008:
"The Hebrew word "shoah" most often refers to the Holocaust but Israelis use it to describe all sorts of disasters. A spokesman for Vilnai, Eitan Ginzburg, said the deputy defense minister never intended it as a reference to the Holocaust but used the word 'shoah' to denote a disaster."
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jD4YSkDPlclqd9dHvg2f0Ij18zEgD8V4GO2G3

"The Mother of All Mistranslation," The Spectator (UK), Feb. 29, 2008:
"Ye gods. The BBC has put out this story: Israel warns of Gaza 'holocaust' Israeli leaders are warning of an imminent conflagration in Gaza after Palestinian militants aimed rockets at the southern city of Ashkelon. The deputy defense minister said the stepped-up rocket fire would trigger what he called a 'bigger holocaust' in the Hamas-controlled coastal strip. This reported remark by deputy defence minister Matan Vilnai caused widespread shock and absolute horror. For an Israeli minister to use the word 'holocaust' ...when for Jews of all people the 'Holocaust' means one thing: genocide ... was simply beyond belief. It was indeed without any credibility — because Vilnai never said it. It was an appalling mistranslation by Reuters, the source of the BBC story. Vilnai said: 'The more Qassam (rocket) fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger "shoah" because we will use all our might to defend ourselves'. Reuters translated the Hebrew word 'shoah' as 'holocaust'. But 'shoah' merely means disaster. In Hebrew, the word 'shoah' is never used to mean 'holocaust' or 'genocide' because of the acute historical resonance. The word 'Hashoah' alone means 'the Holocaust' and 'retzach am' means 'genocide'. The well-known Hebrew construction used by Vilnai used merely means 'bringing disaster on themselves'.   As a subsequent Reuter's story reported, Vilnai's spokesman said: 'Mr. Vilnai was meaning 'disaster.' He did not mean to make any allusion to the genocide.' Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Arye Mekel, added: 'Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai used the Hebrew phrase that included the term 'shoah' in Hebrew in the sense of a disaster or a catastrophe, and not in the sense of a holocaust.' But this grotesque mistranslation has given Hamas a propaganda gift..." (http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/530786/the-mother-of-all-mistranslations.thtml)

Brian Klug, The Guardian (UK) Feb. 29, 2008:
"A spokesperson for Vilnai has said he was using the word in its general sense and that 'he did not mean to make any allusion to the genocide.' But the very fact that it was necessary to issue this 'clarification' is revealing. The term 'shoah' today, used in a political context, immediately conjures up the Nazi Holocaust. It frankly beggars belief that Vilnai could not have been aware that the word is so freighted...Imagine the outcry if it had been a Palestinian minister, rather than an Israeli one, who had used Vilnai's turn of phrase to refer to Israel's actions. Words matter, partly because escalating language goes hand in hand with escalating violence ...Vilnai says 'we will use all our might,' adding: 'we have no other choice.'

THE DEBATE ABOUT THE USE OF THE WORD AUSROTTUNG

David Irving:
"...there is probably no argument about what the word Ausrottung has come to mean in modern 1990s German usage. What it meant in Hitler's hands in the 1930s and 1940s is however what is germane to this issue. According to the standard Langenscheidt 1967 German dictionary, which suggests translations in descending order of likelihood, Judentum is translated only as: '(n.) Judaism,' while Ausrottung has the entry '(f.) uprooting; extirpation, eradication; extermination, pol. a. genocide.' ... the verb ausrotten and the noun Ausrottung have...many different meanings...

"When used by Hitler ... there is not one example known...where the word ausrotten has exclusively the meaning...namely of liquidate. On the contrary, when used by Hitler ausrotten has on several occasions demonstrably a meaning that can not be liquidate. Three examples:--

"(a) In August 1936 he dictated to his young secretary Christa Schroeder the text of the famous memorandum on the Four Year Plan (printed with commentary by Professor Wilhelm Treue in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 1955, at pages 184 et seq.; quoted by the plaintiff in THE WAR PATH, at page 50). In this Hitler stated that Germany must be rendered capable of waging War against the Soviet Union because 'a victory by Bolshevism would lead not to a new Versailles treaty but to the final annihilation, indeed the Ausrottung, of the German nation'. Clearly Hitler is not saying that the Bolsheviks would liquidate one hundred million Germans: but that they would subsume the nation, take it over, emasculate it -- the Germans would cease to exist as a sovereign world power.

"(b) On November 10, 1938, addressing Nazi editors, he said: 'I have, I must add, often just one misgiving and that is the following: whenever I have a look at these intellectual classes of ours -- sadly, we need them; otherwise one might one day, uh, I dunno, ausrotten them or something' (German Federal Archives file NS.11/28, pages 30--46; and Dr Hildegard von Kotze and Professor Helmut Krausnick (ed.), Es Spricht der Führer, Gütersloh, 1966, at page 281; see too Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 1958, at page 188). Here too, the plaintiff submits, the sense of the verb ausrotten is 'turf them out' because at that time the Nazi blood purges had not begun, apart from Hitler's one murderous fling against the Brownshirts in 1934.

"(c) On July 4, 1942 he described over dinner a conversation he had had with the Czech president Emil Hácha about his threat to expel the Czechs from the occupied territories of Bohemia and Moravia. 'The Czech gentlemen had understood this so well,' he said, 'that they had thereafter attuned their future policies explicitly to the principle that all pro-Soviet Benes intrigues and Benes people had to be ausgerottet, and that in the struggle for the preservation of the Czech national characteristics there could no longer be any neutrals, but those who blew neither hot nor cold were also to be spat out.' (Text in Henry Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier 1941--42 Stuttgart, 1963, at page 435). The context shows that ausgerottet is used by Hitler to denote physical removal and expulsion.

"(d) Even Himmler used the word ausrotten on occasions to mean something other than murder. For example replying on February 21, 1944 to a report from Bormann on abuses in the Lublin concentration camp, Himmler wrote: 'The guilty commandant, SS-Sturmbannführer Florstedt, has been under arrest for two months already. The deplorable conditions are being severely ausgerottet and redressed in rigorous court-proceedings' (National Archives microfilm T-175, roll 53, at page 7290)."
http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/docs/Ausrottung/argument.html

Wikipedia:
"According to a leading authority, Charles D. Provan, 'It is simply not true that the word ausrotten (ausrottung) does not mean to kill. In fact, it denotes 'to kill' from the earliest reference I have been able to find where Adolf Hitler used the word, in a quote (approved by Hitler circa 1923) in reference to the occult philosopher Giordano Bruno executed by the Catholic Church during the Renaissance. Hitler states (this is a paraphrase), 'The Jews are such a rotten and filthy group of people that the only true solution to them is to ausrotten them while they are still in their mother's womb.' There are many other examples of ausrotten (ausrottung) being used to mean 'kill' in German, Christian and even Jewish (Talmudic) literature."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ausrottung

*MARCH 2, 2008. IMPORTANT UPDATE:
Since we first posted this blog entry, the NY Times has edited Steven Erlanger's statement about the word Shoah, to make it favorable to the Israeli position. The Times' revised it to read as follows: "On Friday, using the Hebrew word for the Holocaust, which also means catastrophe, Mr. Vilnai warned Palestinians that they faced catastrophe if the rocket firing continued." (Cf. "46 Killed in Israeli Strikes on North Gaza" by Steven Erlanger and Taghreed El-Khodary, "Published: March 2, 2008" [but on the NY Times website as of Saturday, March 1 at 9:52 pm PT]). http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/world/middleeast/02mideast.html?hp

Hence, we now have a statement of fact from the NY Times that "Vilnai warned Palestinians that they faced catastrophe," and NOT "Vilnai warned Palestinians that they faced genocide." The former becomes the official truth as dictated by the NY Times. Vilnai did not threaten genocide against the Palestinians, according to the NY Times. However, since the use of the word is disputed, how does the Times prove this opinion of theirs and transform it into a fiat -- simply on the "Big Lie" basis of repeating it in their prestigious pages? And how will the NY Times account for the discrepancy between the two statements attributed on the same day to their reporter Erlanger, on the Times' website?

VERSION ONE: "Mr. Vilnai used the Hebrew word 'shoah,' ...rarely used for anything other than the Nazi extermination of the Jews." Erlanger at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/01/world/middleeast/01mideast.html?scp=1&sq=shoah&st=nyt

VERSION TWO:"Mr. Vilnai warned Palestinians that they faced catastrophe if the rocket firing continued."
Erlanger at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/world/middleeast/02mideast.html?hp

On the Times' website, version two is described as "published March 2," which would tend to indicate that this is the version that would be published in the hard copy edition of the Sunday (March 2) NY Times.

Version one was published in the Saturday March 1 printed edition, but version two was not published in hard copy newspaper.

The hard copy Sunday March 2 NY Times makes only the following reference to Matan Vilnai: "The Israeli deputy defense minister, Matan Vilnai, said the military was engaged in 'an enlarged operation and not a major ground operation' of the type Israeli politicians have been pressing for. Mr. Vilnai told Israel Radio that 'we are using mostly air units' and that Israeli forces 'are permanently engaged in Gaza, and what we are doing now is within the scope of such activities." ("Israel Takes Gaza Fight to Next Level in a Day of Strikes, " by Steven Erlanger and Taghreed El-Khodary).

48 hours after the Israeli deputy defense minister said he wanted to exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza his statement is regarded as not worth mentioning in a report on the violence the Israelis inflicted on Gaza almost immediately after he made the statement. Obviously, the NY Times is attempting damage control on behalf of the public relations image of the Israelis. Vilnai's appalling call for genocide in Gaza has, as of March 2, 2008 been mentioned exactly once in the print edition of the New York Times newspaper.

More than 20 years ago Louis Farrakhan called Judaism a "gutter religion." His remark has been recalled and condemned almost constantly ever since. It was an issue as recently as the Democrat's debate at the end of February, when moderator Tim Russert stated to Barack Obama, "The problem some voters may have is, as you know, Reverend Farrakhan called Judaism 'gutter religion." (Transcript, "The Democratic Debate in Cleveland," NY Times, Feb. 26, 2008; http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/us/politics/26text-debate.html?scp=10&sq=Farrakhan&st=nyt)

Just two days after Matan Vilnai said of the 1.5 million Palestinian people living in Gaza that they may be annihilated** ("Shoah") and then dozens are killed in an Israeli pogrom, the New York Times can't recall his threat.

This is how the Israelis are protected from the consequences of their murderous, exterminating racism by the western media, even as their critics are eternally stigmatized. We are here witness to the mechanics of "hasbara" (Judaic propaganda).

** "...'Shoah' (in Hebrew, 'Annihilation')..." (New York Times Oct. 23, 1985).

More Israeli mandates for genocide:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that Gazans cannot be allowed “to live normal lives”; Internal Security Minister, Avi Dichter, believes Israel should take action “irrespective of the cost to the Palestinians”; and the Interior Minister, Meir Sheetrit, suggests the Israeli army should “decide on a neighborhood in Gaza and level it” after each attack.
Source: Jonathan Cook, "Israel Plots Another Palestinian Exodus: The Meaning of Gaza's 'Shoah," Counterpunch.org, March 8, 2008.

For further reference:
THE ISRAELI HOLOCAUST AGAINST THE PALESTINIANS
by Michael Hoffman and Moshe Lieberman
http://www.amazon.com/Israeli-Holocaust-Against-Palestinians/dp/0970378424/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204388368&sr=1-1
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