Holocaust historian says massacre of Egyptian protesters is desirable
The saturation of the Holocaust has been used as an effective weapon in support of violence, torture and murder against the Palestinians. Even though Palestinians certainly had no part of any crimes against Jews during the Second World War, the Holocaust is incessantly invoked to justify mass terror and murder against the Palestinian people. Recently this was shown by Elie Wiesel’s support of the murder and maiming of thousands of Palestinian men, women and children in Gaza. Now, we have a Holocaust historian and former Israeli kibbutznik, “Professor David Cesarani, floating the idea of there being a tiananmen
Square-style massacre in Egypt as a way of quelling potential post-Mubarak anarchy. Are academics such as Cesarani really interested in defending human rights by their writing on the Holocaust when they support the violence and inhumanity by the Jewish supremacist state? You be the judge.
There has been no outrage. No Twitterstorm, no blog-based apoplexy, no heated radio phone-ins. Perhaps talking about the massacre of Egyptians is normal these days.
Professor Cesarani was asked by Michael Portillo about the ‘moral dilemma’ of how to deal with what comes after Mubarak. “What if it’s worse than Mubarak? Should it be crushed?”
Professor Cesarani said that if one takes the “wholly pragmatic view,” then ‘the outcome of a tiananmen Square-style crackdown is desirable and is predictable.’ Because, he said, ‘if you allow this popular democratic movement to run on unchecked, you cannot predict what’s going to happen. But you can predict probably that after a short, sharp, massive clampdown at huge human cost, there will be a sullen stability.’
Portillo was startled. ‘”Quite a lot of people would be quite shocked to hear what you said – that a Tiananmen-style outcome would be desirable.”
Cesarani responded that, “he West is no longer weeping that much over tiananmen Square because we’re doing a lot of business with China. So, many business interests would say, quietly, that, perhaps, well the way in which the Chinese managed their transition was preferable.”
Another panellist, Matthew Taylor, former adviser to Tony Blair and now chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts, later described Cesarani’s comments on tiananmen Square as ‘”ncredibly brave” and said: “In a way, I can see his argument.”
David Cesarani is professor of history at Royal Holloway, University of London, England. He advised the British government office responsible for “Holocaust” memorial day and was a member of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office delegation to the Intergovernmental Taskforce for “International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research.” He is the editor of The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation (1994) and Bystanders to the Holocaust: A Re-evaluation (2002) and the author of Justice Delayed: How Britain Became a Refuge for Nazi War Criminals (1992).
