Zgram - 9/21/2001 - "Lessons of Holocaust Compensation"

[Ingrid Rimland]

Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

September 21, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Believe it or not, some of us are still in the Revisionist mode.  It is
somewhat difficult to return to the pedestrian aspects of that discipline,
with so much else going on and relevant to our struggle, but much has
changed in the last ten days - and as that bird said through gritted beak
while carrying a bit of straw to help rebuild the huge, destroyed
cathedral: "...one does what one can."

Here is the almost forgotten-in-the-havoc Dr. Norman Finkelstein, still
doing his scholarly thing and keeping us abrest of the abuses of the
Holocaust Lobby - with a nice politically incorrect touch on behalf of the
Palestinian as well.

As you read this, just remember that Dr. Finkelstein, otherwise a very
shrewd observer of the antics of his tribe, hangs on to the "gas chamber"
myth with white knuckles.

[START]

Lessons of Holocaust Compensation

  From: Naseer Aruri ed., Palestinian Refugees and their Right of Return
(London: Pluto Press, 2001).

Lessons of Holocaust Compensation

Norman G. Finkelstein

  Soon after the Nazi Holocaust, Jewish organizations and the government of
Israel negotiated substantial compensation agreements with Germany. In the
past decade, new compensation agreements have been negotiated with Germany
as well as with other European governments. These agreements constitute an
important precedent for Palestinian material claims against Israel.

 In the early 1950s Germany entered into negotiations with Jewish
institutions and signed a series of indemnification agreements.1 With
little if any external pressure, it has paid out to date some $60-80
billion. The German government sought to compensate Jewish victims of Nazi
persecution with three different agreements signed in 1952. Individual
claimants received payments according to the terms of the Law on
Indemnification (Bundesentsch=E4digungsgesetz). A separate agreement with
Israel subsidized the absorption and rehabilitation of several hundred
thousand Jewish refugees. The German government also negotiated at the same
time a financial settlement with the Conference on Jewish Material Claims
against Germany, an umbrella of all major Jewish organizations including
the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, Bnai Brith, and
the Joint Distribution Committee.

 The sums paid out by the postwar German government significantly affected
Jewish life. During the first ten years of the agreement (1953-63), the
Israeli historian Tom Segev reports:

      the reparations money funded about a third of the total investment in
Israel's electrical system, which     tripled in capacity, and nearly half
the total investment in the railways, buying German diesel engines,
cars, tracks, and signaling equipment. Equipment for developing the water
supply, for oil drilling, and for     operating the copper mines ... was
bought in Germany, as well as heavy equipment for agriculture and
construction - tractors, combines, and trucks.2

 Germany earmarked the Claims Conference monies (approximately one $1
billion in current values) for victims of Nazi persecution who were not
adequately compensated by the German courts. As it happened, the Claims
Conference used the monies mostly for other purposes, for example,
subsidizing Jewish communities in the Arab world and Jewish cultural
institutions such as the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Israel.

 Beginning in the early 1990s mainly American Jewish organizations
cooperating with Israel opened a new round of 'Holocaust compensation'
negotiations with various European countries. The first target was
Switzerland.3 The Swiss stood accused of directly and indirectly profiting
from the Nazi persecution of Jews. Acting at Israel's behest, the World
Jewish Restitution Organization mobilized officials at the federal, state
and local levels in the United States to press Switzerland for Holocaust
compensation. A senior official in the Clinton administration, Stuart
Eizenstat, conscripted twelve federal agencies for this initiative. A major
international conference was convened in London. The House and Senate
banking committees held multiple hearings. Class action lawsuits against
Switzerland were filed in American courts. State and local legislatures
across the United States implemented economic boycotts. In the end,
Switzerland agreed to pay some $1.5 billion in compensation.

 For our purposes, the merits of the case against Switzerland (dubious at
best) are less important than the legal and moral precedents it set. The
chairman of the House Banking Committee, James Leach, maintained that
states must be held accountable for injustices even if committed a
half-century ago: 'History does not have a statute of limitations.'
Eizenstat deemed Swiss compensation to Jewry 'an important litmus test of
this generation's willingness to face the past and rectify the wrongs of
the past.' Although they couldn't be 'held responsible for what took place
years ago,' Senator Alfonse D'Amato of the Senate Banking Committee
acknowledged that the Swiss still had a 'duty of accountability and of
attempting to do what is right at this point in time.' Publicly endorsing
the Jewish demand for compensation, President Clinton likewise reflected
that 'we must confront and, as best we can, right the terrible injustice of
the past.' 'It should be made clear,' bipartisan Congressional leaders
wrote in a letter to the Secretary of State, that the 'response on this
restitution matter will be seen as a test of respect for basic human rights
and the rule of law.' And in address to the Swiss Parliament, Secretary of
State Albright explained that economic benefits Switzerland accrued from
the plundering of Jews 'were passed along to subsequent generations and
that is why the world now looks to the people of Switzerland, not to assume
responsibility for actions taken by their forbears, but to be generous in
doing what can be done at this point to right past wrongs.' Noble
sentiments all, but nowhere to be heard - unless they are being actively
ridiculed - when it comes to Palestinian compensation for the dispossession
of their homeland.

 In negotiations with Eastern Europe, Jewish organizations and Israel have
demanded the full restitution of or monetary compensation for the pre-war
communal and private assets of the Jewish community.4 Consider Poland. The
pre-war Jewish population of Poland stood at 3.5 million; the current
population is several thousand. Yet, the World Jewish Restitution
Organization demands title over the 6,000 pre-war communal Jewish
properties, including those currently being used as hospitals and schools.
It is also laying claim to hundreds of thousands of parcels of Polish land
valued in the many tens of billions of dollars. Once again the entire US
political and legal establishment has been mobilized to achieve these ends.
Indeed, New York City Council members unanimously supported a resolution
calling on Poland 'to pass comprehensive legislation providing for the
complete restitution of Holocaust assets', while 57 members of Congress
(led by Congressman Anthony Weiner of New York) dispatched a letter to the
Polish parliament demanding 'comprehensive legislation that would return
100% of all property and assets seized during the Holocaust'.

 Testifying before the Senate Banking Committee, Stuart Eizenstat deplored
the lax pace of evictions in Eastern Europe: 'A variety of problems have
arisen in the return of properties. For example, in some countries, when
persons or communities have attempted to reclaim properties, they have been
asked, sometimes required ... to allow current tenants to remain for a
lengthy period of time at rent-controlled rates.' The delinquency of
Belarus particularly exercised Eizenstat. Belarus is 'very, very far'
behind in handing over pre-war Jewish properties, he told the House
International Relations Committee. The average monthly income of a
Belarussian is $100.

 To force submission from recalcitrant governments, those seeking Jewish
restitution wield the bludgeon of US sanctions. Eizenstat urged Congress to
'elevate' Holocaust compensation, put it 'high on the list' of requirements
for those East European countries that are seeking entry into the OECD, the
World Trade Organization, the European Union, NATO and the Council of
Europe: 'They will listen if you speak ... They will get the hint.' Israel
Singer, of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, called on Congress to
'continue looking at the shopping list' in order to 'check' that every
country pays up. 'It is extremely important that the countries involved in
the issue understand,' Congressman Benjamin Gilman of the House
International Relations Committee said, 'that their response ... is one of
several standards by which the United States assesses its bilateral
relationship.' Avraham Hirschson, chairman of Israel's Knesset Committee on
restitution and Israel's representative on the World Jewish Restitution
Organization, paid tribute to Congressional cooperation. Recalling his
'fights' with the Romanian prime minister, Hirschson testified: 'But I ask
one remark, in the middle of the fighting, and it changed that atmosphere.
I told him, you know, in two days I am going to be in a hearing here in
Congress. What do you want me to tell them in the hearing? The whole
atmosphere was changed.'

 'Were it not for the United States of America,' Eizenstat aptly observed
in his paean to Congress, 'very few, if any, of these activities would be
ongoing today.' To justify the pressures exerted on Eastern Europe, he
explained that a hallmark of 'Western' morality is to 'return or pay
compensation for communal and private property wrongfully appropriated.'
=46or the 'new democracies' in Eastern Europe, meeting this standard 'would
be commensurate with their passage from totalitarianism to democratic
states.' Yet, judging by the claims of Palestinians, it would seem that a
main US ally has yet to make the transition.

 Apart from the moral link joining Jewish claims against Europe, on the one
hand, and Palestinian claims against Israel, on the other, a direct
material link potentially joins the respective demands. When Israel first
entered into negotiations with Germany for reparations after the war, the
Israeli historian Ilan Pappe reports, Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett
proposed transferring a part to Palestinian refugees, 'in order to rectify
what has been called the small injustice (the Palestinian tragedy), caused
by the more terrible one (the Holocaust)'.5 Nothing ever came of the
proposal. A respected Israeli academic, Clinton Bailey, recently suggested
using part of the funds from the Holocaust settlements with Switzerland and
Germany for the 'compensation of Palestinian Arab refugees'.6 Given that
almost all survivors of the Nazi holocaust have already passed away, this
would seem to be a sensible proposal.

 One cautionary note should be entered. Elsewhere I have documented that
Jewish organizations misappropriated much of the monies earmarked for the
Jewish victims of Nazi persecution.7 It would be regrettable should monies
earmarked for the Palestinian victims of Israel's establishment also end up
in undeserving hands. Indeed, if only to avert yet another injustice
befalling the refugees, it is vital that Palestinians set up accountable
democratic institutions.

                                                Notes

                 1. For background, see especially Nana Sagi, German
Reparations (New York, 1986), and                 Ronald W. Zweig, German
Reparations and the Jewish World (Boulder, 1987).

                  2. Tom Segev, The Seventh Million (New York, 1993), p.
241.

                  3. For details, see Norman G. Finkelstein, The Holocaust
Industry (New York, 2000),                 chapter 3.

                  4. Ibid.

                  5. Ilan Pappe, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict,
1947-51 (London, 1992), p. 268.

                  6. Clinton Bailey, 'Holocaust Funds to Palestinians May
Meet Some Cost of Compensation',                 International Herald
Tribune; reprinted in Jordan Times (20 June 1999).

                  7. Finkelstein, Holocaust Industry.

[END]

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

Thought for the Day:

"When we challenge the allegations of holocaust supporter's with forensic
evidence or pointing out absurdities of the claims we are denounced as
'holocaust deniers'. The reciprocal, then is fair for us, to denounce them
in  retaliation as 'Truth deniers.'"

(Letter to the Zundelsite)