`Schindler's List', a good decision
The Malaysian Cabinet made the right decision in lifting the ban on Schindler's List.
Since the film is about the atrocities of the Nazis against the Jews of Poland during the Second World War, the Film Censorship Board had no moral basis for banning it. As the Cabinet statement noted, "Common humanity demands our sympathy for the victims of atrocities irrespective of race, nationality or religion."
Unfortunately there are some Moslem zealots in Malaysia who are often reluctant to extend their compassion to the suffering of the Jews in history. They forget that Islam and Moslem societies had centuries (until the Zionist annexation and occupation of Palestine) shown a great deal of kindness and hospitality to Jews. Every time there was a pogrom in Christian Europe, there were Jews who would seek refuge in Moslem lands -- from Morocco and Palestine to Egypt and Turkey. It was a Moslem Ruler, the righteous Caliph Omar ibn-Khatab who re-opened the gates of Jerusalem to the Jews in 638 A.D. after their expulsion from the sacred city in 73 A.D. And indeed, in Baghdad, Granada and Constantinople, amongst others, Jewish culture and traditions flourished within an atmosphere of great tolerance and harmony. In any case, how can Islam be antagonistic to the Jews per se when the Holy Koran itself shows so much reverence to the whole line of Jewish Prophets?
What Islam, Moslem and even people of other religions including some Jews are opposed to is the ideology of Zionism, which in its contemporary expression justifies blatant discrimination against Palestinians and legitimizes the annexation and occupation of Palestinian land. It is sad that Zionists in Israel and elsewhere -- some of them children of the victims of Nazi atrocities -- are directly or indirectly responsible today for causing so much pain and suffering to the Palestinian people.
This is perhaps one of the three things that Malaysians should keep in mind when watching Schindler's List. The victims have become the suppressors. However strong one's sympathies for the victims of Nazi oppression no human being who cherishes truth and justice can ignore the magnitude of cruelty inflicted by the Zionist usurpers upon the sons and daughters of a civilization which has been so magnanimous to the Jewish people.
Malaysians should also remember that the Nazism which perpetrated terrible injustices upon the Jews embodied the ugliest traits of racism and fascism -- traits which continue to bedevil humanity to this day. Serbian 'nationalism' for instance both these vicious elements and its 'ethnic cleansing' program in the Balkans today is reminiscent of the Nazi program. This is why Schindler's List should, if anything, strengthen our resolve to ensure that justice is done to the Bosnians. Indeed, as some analysts have observed what is happening in Bosnia-Herzegovina reveals striking similarities to the holocaust that the Jews endured.
What this also means is that THE HOLOCAUST is not the only holocaust in history. There is a pronounced tendency amongst Zionists and Jews in general to portray their sufferings in the past as the ultimate in human suffering. Zionists have, in a sense, established a monopoly over terms such as 'holocaust' and 'crime against humanity'. They keep on reminding the rest of humankind that there was this one terrible crime against humanity that has no parallel and no precedent in the annals of human history. And yet this is grossly unjust to so many of the other victims of 'man's inhumanity against man'.
Wasn't the brutal annihilation of almost 90 million native Indians in the Americas and the Caribbean within a 100 years of Columbus' voyage a far greater holocaust? And what about the holocaust that visited the native populations of Australia and new Zealand? Isn't murder of no less than 50 million Asians and Africans at the height of European colonialism a much worse crime against humanity? By the same token, wasn't the enslavement and elimination of millions of Africans during the European slave trade also an abominable crime against humanity? Because so many other people have also suffered a great deal, it is only right that we place the pain of the Jews in proper perspective. This is what those who will be watching Schindler's List should try to do.
CHANDRA MUZAFFAR
Just World Trust (JUST)
Penang, Malaysia