Property Restitution Only Certain Jews Are “Victim Enough” To Qualify Boum

The Holocaust and North Africa, by Aomar Boum (ed.) 2018

Holocaust Industry: The Built-in Inequities in Suffering-Compensation and Property-Restitution Claims. Which Victims Were “Victim Enough” to Qualify? Only Jews Collectively? Only Certain Jews? Why Not Muslims? Victimhood Competition in Detail

This book presents a lot of information, and I focus on items of broad-based relevance.

HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY BENEFITS ONLY THE JEWS—AND THEN ONLY CERTAIN JEWS. NOW MUSLIMS SPECIFICALLY EXCLUDED

This work effectively continues the discussion, started by Slyomovics in her book HOW TO ACCEPT GERMAN REPARATIONS. (See my review.) Slyomovics had pointed out that some Jews object to North African Jews getting financial compensation because the North African Jews, unlike European Jews, did not go through the Holocaust. (More on this below).

The editors specify that, “And yet the question of whether the Jews of Tunisia are ‘victim enough’ (paraphrasing Memmi) to be deemed survivors of the Holocaust or Shoah remains a murky one, crystallizing the paradox outlined by the editors of this volume.” (p. 287).

But wait, it gets even better. Now we hear the argument that North African Muslims, who had suffered under racism and colonialism just like the North African Jews, are openly not “victim enough” to be even considered for compensation. Author Schroeter writes, “However, the German reparations are predicated on the idea of a UNIQUE DEBT that Germany owes to the Jews; colonialism and colonial violence, of which Muslims were also the victims, is not a criterion.” (p. 24; Emphasis added).

On the other hand, more and more Jews, no matter how tenuous their connection to the Nazis and the Holocaust, are claiming a right to compensation. For instance, the editors write, “Lawyers are also representing Jews from Iraq, justified by the 1941 Farhud, the rioting and plunder that came in the wake of a pro-Nazi coup that left 179 Jews dead: it has been claimed that the Farhud was the direct result of Nazi incitement.” (p. 263).

All this is priceless! It is yet another indicator of the arbitrariness of victimhood hierarchies, and is further evidence of the fact that the Holocaust Industry is a racket, as pointed out long ago by Norman Finkelstein. Moreover, the Holocaustspeak comes thick and fast. That is why, for example, we never hear of any UNIQUE DEBT, by the Germans, to non-Jewish victims, least of all the Poles!

THE HOLOCAUST-PROVOKED VICTIMHOOD COMPETITION IS IN FACT, TO A VERY CONSIDERABLE DEGREE, A ZERO-SUM GAME

Omer Bartov discusses how various nations have recently been publicizing their sufferings in competitive imitation of the Jews’ Holocaust. (pp. 208-210). However, Bartov inadvertently alludes to the fact that, whatever the increased attention to non-Jewish genocides, this, by itself, is not going to end Holocaust supremacism (my term). Bartov comments, “In other words, everyone wanted to have their Holocaust too. Yet, on the other hand, the Holocaust came to be seen as an obstacle and an irritation, because no one could quite match its ferocity and totality, and, once invoked, it always seemed to diminish the horrors suffered by others, as had indeed been the argument in the immediate aftermath of the war.” (p. 209). No kidding.

Clearly, as long as the (false but widely-believed) meme exists about Jews uniquely targeted for total annihilation, and the special status that this “fact” supposedly confers to the Holocaust, the non-Jewish genocides will always remain secondary even were they somehow to obtain the same publicity as the Jews’ Holocaust. More on this below.

THE VICTIMHOOD COMPETITION SURROUNDING THE HOLOCAUST EVEN PITS JEWS AGAINST OTHER JEWS!

Omer Bartov quips, “Nor can the competition of victimhood be found only in Eastern Europe or among scholars of comparative genocide, imperialism, and colonialism: it has also played a major role in debates over the State of Israel and among its citizens. The survivors arriving in Israel after the war were not uniformly greeted with love and empathy.” (p. 209).

Lia Brozgal comments, “From the works cited here, we might extrapolate a certain anxiety about placing the suffering of the Tunisian and European Jews in the same discursive space: Tunisian Jews, after all, were not deported and exterminated en masse. Historians who have written about the Jews of Tunisia have shied away from the vocabulary of catastrophe, as though calling these faraway victims ‘survivors’ of the Holocaust or the Shoah would somehow mitigate the tragedy of Europe.” (p. 182).

TUNISIAN JEWS, UNDER NAZI GERMAN OCCUPATION, WERE NOT TARGETED FOR ANNIHILATION

The cornerstone argument used to justify Holocaust supremacism (the presumed special significance of the Holocaust over all other genocides) is the oft-repeated claim that the Nazis everywhere targeted the Jews for complete destruction, and that this never happened for any other genocide. (Actually, even was it true, it would not follow that an inferred total genocide is one iota more significant than “only” a partial genocide.)

Nazi rhetoric did speak of the extermination of all the Jews. However, rhetoric (especially political rhetoric) is not the same as reality, and actions speak louder than words. There were quite a few groups of European Jews that the Nazis fell far short of completely destroying, even though they could have done so with minimal cost or effort.

Enter the Tunisian Jews. This part of North Africa was under direct Nazi German occupation for 6 months of 1942 and 1943. (Schroeter, p. 24). So what happened to the Jews? Not much, as it turns out. “The Jews of North Africa were spared the horrors of the European extermination camps and thus have been largely excluded from histories of the Holocaust that focus on the destruction of European Jewry.” (Schroeter, p. 22; See also Hatimi, p. 118).