The run-up to International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Friday has produced some excellent articles drawing parallels between the Holocaust and the threat posed by an Iranian nuclear bomb. But there’s another parallel that’s equally disturbing: the world’s indifference to the relentless incitement to genocide of both Hitler and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The Holocaust-denying Ahmadinejad never misses an opportunity to call for “wiping Israel off the map.” Since there’s no way to eradicate Israel without also slaughtering a large number of its 7.8 million inhabitants, that is a blatant call for mass murder. Yet he has never, for instance, been declared persona non grata by the EU or investigated for incitement to genocide by the International Criminal Court; indeed, he has been feted in many parts of the “enlightened” West, from lecture invitations at Columbia University to joint press conferences with a fawning Swiss foreign minister, Micheline Calmy-Rey.
But as Prof. Shlomo Avineri pointed out this month, even more troubling is the silence of world Jewry on this issue – a stark contrast to its activism over, say, Soviet Jews.
“Through demonstrations outside Soviet embassies, embarrassing questions about freedom of emigration at all news conferences of Soviet leaders in the West, and in dozens of other ways,” Avineri noted, Jewish activists turned the Soviets’ refusal to let Jews emigrate into a burden on the regime. But they haven’t done the same with Iran, even though there’s “no reason why demonstrations should not be held outside Iranian embassies in any place in the world, why Iranian ambassadors should not be accompanied at every appearance or trip by demonstrators carrying placards with ‘Holocaust deniers – out!’”
Partly, this may be due to a widespread sentiment that words matter less than deeds – which explains why Jewish groups have been active in trying to persuade Western governments to take stronger steps against Iran’s nuclear program. Yet ignoring Ahmadinejad’s calls for genocide is a grave mistake, for two reasons.
First, history amply proves that when tyrants declare their intention to slaughter the Jews, they often mean exactly what they say. Hitler, who made his intentions crystal clear in Mein Kampf 14 years before World War II began, is only the most famous example. Nor is this unique to Jews: Most genocides begin with incitement; that’s precisely why incitement to genocide is a prosecutable international crime that has already produced several convictions, especially in connection with the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
But beyond that, Jews worldwide should be concerned with the desensitization effect: By consistently advocating genocide without eliciting any serious condemnatory response, Ahmadinejad is gradually turning “kill the Jews” into acceptable public discourse.
Last week, Adam Kirsch wrote a chilling analysis for Tablet of how “Jews control America” rhetoric has moved from the fringes to the respectable mainstream of American discourse in just a few short years. It takes longer to mainstream calls for mass murder. But if left unchallenged, Ahmadinejad’s calls for genocide will eventually become mainstream as well.
Judging by the degree to which he has not become a pariah, his rhetoric is already acceptable to far too many “enlightened” Westerners.
Commentary Magazine needs to practice what it preaches in this regard. Frankly, no subject should take higher priority in the pages of major Jewish publications — and the top-prioritization status of this matter that Israel’s own prime minister assigns should be a if not the key barometer of urgency and importance. Yes, I understand the concerns that John Podhoretz and others on-staff may have about appearing bizarrely obsessed with the Iran threat, and about monotonic coverage that diminishes the potential contributions of those same staffers. Yes, I recognize that, accordingly, Commentary is a business enterprise obligated to decide on coverage topics and ordering as (at least in part) a publication business decision, and that it is not merely a PR campaign conduit. But unfortunately these are not ordinary times, and the crescendo of the Iran threat is peaking such that standard modes for selecting and prioritizing coverage need to be set aside, both as a fundamental moral choice and as a pragmatic strategy to marshal public attention, support, and action in countering the threat. Personally, I have always been deeply affected by the admonishment Rabbi Josef B. Soloveitchik wrote to the US Jewish community in “Kol Dodi Dofek” (a/p/a “Fate and Destiny”), in which he said that: a) the community should have been absolutely screaming at the top of its lungs to stop the Holocaust given the solid intel it had obtained about the Final Solution’s ongoing operations; and b) the same US Jewish community now, as a consequence of its Holocaust failure and abdication, has a responsibility to raise its voice relentlessly on behalf of the (then-new) State of Israel. Commentary and all its readers of good conscience should likewise turn up the volume and emphasis “to eleven” now.
Since no one spoke up in the 1920's and 30's when Hitler SAID he would exterminate the Jews, no one is going to speak out now. This is not accidental, it's intentional. And lest we forget that the famous press conference by Rabbi Stephen Weiss in 1942 demonstrating factual evidence of the Nazi extermination of up to 1 million Jews by that date had been relegated to page 10 or 11 of the New York Times where it sank w/o comment. Again, this is not accidental. Were Iran ever to successfully nuke Israel, have the EU would cheer the other half would stare at its shoes and mutter 'served them right'. The New York Times wouldn't put it on page one but it would print a page one below the fold story of the hardships of a Palestinian family that resulted from it. The UN would declare a world holiday and half the columnists at Huffington Post would be torn between denying it happened and calling it a false flag by the Jews themselves.
How did you turn this into the whole world hates Israel? Muslims and Jews have been at each others throats since Abraham. It is like an out of control family feud the rest of the world is not only forced to watch, but participate in. We don't want anybody destroyed. We want Muslims and Jews to knock it off and live in peace so we can live in peace with Muslims and Jews. The United States has way more skin in the game than either the Muslims or the Jews. Don't mistake our frustration for hatred. You would be way off the mark.
And yet you're making my point. Let's not take the maniacs seriously because of course no one could be as evil and crazy as that. Pish posh and have some more cheese.
My bad. Must not have been paying attention to the context.
Jews are a bit light-minded willy nilly -the result of permanent persecution and often grave future. nToday`s Israelis don`t discuss Iranian bomb every minute. How many Jews read the 1942 NyTimes terrible article and who acted accordingly? Nothing changed to the better.
nThe arc of the Iran story is so redolent of the 1930′s British appeasers (not just Baldwin and Chamberlain, but a genuine broad-based political consensus, except for Churchill) that both stories can be told in the same words. n nStage One: “(Germany/Iran) may be arming for war, but it is not strong enough to threaten peace anywhere. The real danger is posed by our ally (France/Israel).” n nStage Two: “(Germany/Iran) may be arming for war and getting stronger every day, but they are not irrational. They may threaten the peace, but their fear of our ally (France/Israel), backed by their fear of us, will be sufficient to deter them.” n nStage Three: “(Germany/Iran) is a threat to peace. They are already too strong for us to stop them militarily. We must rely on diplomacy to make the best deal with them we can.” n nIn the 1930′s, inflated and premature fears of German military power paralyzed French and British action when it might have succeeded, and put off the showdown until Hitler was actually ready. Excuses for inaction have always been plentiful. n nAgain we tread the same shameful path. n n
It was reported by Eric Trager on this page over 2 years ago (5/1/2009) that Defense Secretary Gates, obviously speaking at the president’s direction, had announced that the US has no military ability to destroy the fast-developing Iranian nuclear program. All we would do would be “send it further underground.” n nSo, the penultimate obstacle to Iran’s holocaust plan was preemptively removed 2 years ago. And nobody but the Israelis and Iran seemed to have noticed. Unless the US (presumably under new leadership) reassesses its capabilities, Israel is on her own. The 7 million Jews living in the Iranian crosshairs are now deciding if they have any alternative to “learning to live with an Iranian bomb” as many put it. They may decide that “sending Iran’s nuclear program further underground” is not a bad idea, if you keep doing it.
The lesson to be learned is this: After six million Jews were wiped out in the Holocaust. – when someone says they want to kill you, take them seriously. How many Fogel family slaughters do we need? How much more Jewish blood needs to be spilled for "peace?" So don't try and deny us the right that every human being and nation has – that is to defend ourselves. Don't ask us to commit suicide because you're "frustrated." This is what the peace process is – it's suicide pure and simple. There is no peace process because there is no peace partner. If the Arabs had wanted peace we'd have had it by now.