Under Left-Wing Gov, Yad Vashem covers up the Islamic role in the Holocaust

T. Belman. Greenfield puts the blame squarely on Bennett. When the coalition formed, I thought with Bennett, Shaked and Saar, among others from the right, in the government, that they would steer the government on a right wing path. Oh, how wrong I was.

Veteran tour guide Shalom Pollack refused to back down when Yad Vashem removed photo of Jerusalem Mufti meeting Hitler from its walls. 

By Daniel Greenfield, INN

Mufti Amin al Husseini und Adolf HitlerBundesarchiv, Bild 146-1987-004-09A / Heinrich Hoffmann / CC-BY-SA

Would the appointee of a coalition government that includes Islamists really be expected to do anything else?

Some background to this story (first made public through Arutz Sheva in this article, ed.).

Israel’s current government is a leftist-Islamist coalition that includes some former conservatives “out front” as stalking horses. One of those is serving as the current prime minister. Another was Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope party. Dani Dayan, a former consul general and Yesha council leader ran on the New Hope party list. The only purpose of the New Hope party was to tear away enough conservative votes to create this leftist hybrid government. Now it’s expected to be wiped out in any future elections.

Netanyahu was going to appoint Effi Eitam, a truly great man, to head Yad Vashem, Israel’s national holocaust museum. Prime Minister Bennett rewarded Dani Dayan for his treason by appointing him instead. And Dayan is doing what he’s told.

Some noted that Yad Vashem was no longer displaying a photo of Hitler and the Mufti of Jerusalem.

The Mufti of Jerusalem had met with Hitler and repeatedly urged the extermination of the Jews. The Mufti had organized his own campaign to massacre Jews in Israel.

After repeated protests, Dayan made it clear that the omission was not an accident, but intentional.

In a statement, Dayan claimed that,

“Attempting to pressure Yad Vashem to expand the exhibit on the Mufti in the Holocaust History Museum is tantamount to forcing Yad Vashem to partake in a debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is alien to its mission. For Yad Vashem to expand an exhibit for reasons not related to the Holocaust might even legitimize Holocaust distortion by others with nefarious intentions. Yad Vashem will continue to defend the historical truth of this dark chapter of our not-too-distant past, without falling prey to any political agenda.”

It’s Dayan who is politicizing the Holocaust. Telling the truth means displaying historical context even when it’s politically incorrect.

Declaring that Yad Vashem won’t participate “in a debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is alien to its mission” (a strange claim considering that the goal of the conflict is another Holocaust) is itself an admission that the photo was removed for political reasons.

The bottom line is that the coalition government doesn’t want the picture there and foreign governments visiting Yad Vashem don’t want to have pictures taken around it. This is a craven cover-up of the Islamic role in the Holocaust, not a defense of history.

Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) head Morton Klein blasted the decision.

“After years of pressure and a recent op-ed by a longtime tour guide at the site attacking the museum’s stance, Dayan addressed the issue on Thursday, claiming the notorious Mufti’s role in the Holocaust was ‘marginal,’ his meeting with Hitler having ‘a negligible practical effect on Nazi policy,’ and thus the famous image depicting him with Hitler ‘was never displayed’ in the museum.

“Dayan said the museum would not fall prey ‘to any political agenda,’ while warning that demands to expand focus on the Mufti are tantamount to forcing the museum to ‘partake in a debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,’ and may even ‘legitimize Holocaust distortion’ by others.

“’As a child of Holocaust survivors born in the displaced persons camp in Germany who lost most of my family to Hitler, I find it really appalling for Dani Dayan to actually be censoring out a part of Holocaust history at the major Holocaust museum in an attempt to appease the Palestinian Arabs,’ Klein said.

“He also accused the museum of seeking to placate ‘a Palestinian Authority that pays Arabs to murder Jews, names school streets and sports teams after Jew killers, promotes hatred and violence in every aspect of their culture, and has refused offers of statehood, clearly showing the issue is not land, but Israel’s destruction.’

“’Appeasement always fails, and it’s obviously failed with the Palestinian Authority who won’t even sit and negotiate [with Israel], let alone act in a civilized manner,’ he said. ‘This is just an atrocious mistake.’”

But a mistake that Israeli lefties and their hired help who pretended to be on the right insist on repeating.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism.