Don't mention the Holocaust, or criticise Israel

Last week, British historian David Irving was sentenced to 3 years imprisonment in Austria on charges of Holocaust denial, just before London Mayor Ken Livingstone was suspended from office and ordered to pay £80,000 in court fees for comparing Oliver Finegold, a Jewish Evening Standard reporter, to a concentration camp guard.

Heinous as Irving's views are, they are not criminal, and he should not have been imprisoned. Likewise, Livingstone should not have been suspended for his "insensitive" comments.

Millions in the Western world asked why so many Muslims made such a fuss over the cartoons of Mohammed. People should be free, they said, to voice their opinions. But the imprisonment of Irving and Livingstone's suspension make our society's double standards self-evident. It is acceptable to mock Islam but anyone who mentions the Nazi Holocaust or criticises Israel is ostracized and punished.

14 countries have made Holocaust denial a crime. More specifically, to deny that the Nazi Holocaust took place, or that 6 million Jews were not exterminated in the gas chambers, is illegal in those 14 countries.

Whether or not the Nazi Holocaust is unique is a philosophical question. There have been other comparable holocausts, genocides, and war crimes. For example, between 800,000 and 2 million Armenians were massacred in 1915-1916 by the Ottoman Empire. Yet, the Turkish government is to this day supported by the British and U.S. governments in it's denial that the Armenian Holocaust ever occurred. The term 'holocaust' has been hijacked by some to mean the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis and nothing else.

In the years leading up to the Nazi Holocaust, Europe and America had decided to curb Jewish immigration. Hence, there is an overwhelming feeling of guilt, for had Europe and the U.S. allowed the continued movement of Eastern European Jewry onto their soils, then perhaps far less than 6 million Jews would have been killed by the Nazis.

The Nazi Holocaust has since been exploited by some for political reasons. It was evoked during the late 1940s when the creation of a Jewish state was being considered, and the suffering of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust has been used to portray Jews as victims, so that the myth of an Israeli David fighting an Arab Goliath is propagated. This serves to justify the brutality of Israel towards the Palestinians.

Anyone who dares to criticize Israel is called anti-Semitic. Two outstanding Middle Eastern correspondents have received death threats because of their reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Robert Fisk, Middle East for the Independent regularly receives abusive letters about his dispatches from the Middle East. The Hollywood actor John Malkovitch said, during an awards speech in 2002, that he "wanted to shoot Robert Fisk" because of his anti-Israeli opinions.

Even Jews who criticise Israel are called "self-hating Jews." Suzanne Goldenberg, for example, was The Guardian's Jerusalem correspondent, until she started receiving death threats from European and American Jews over her reporting from the Middle East. Goldenberg has now stopped writing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and instead has been posted to Washington D.C.

The Nazi Holocaust is also one reason why many view Israel as a morally superior state which can do no wrong. But Israel's treatment of the Palestinians eats away at the moral fabric of Israeli society and is extremely damaging to the psyche of the Jewish state. The sooner more Jews accept this, the better. It will be very beneficial for both Jews and Palestinians.