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Jewish World Review July 29, 2002 / 20 Menachem-Av, 5762
http://www.jewishworldreview.com |
Suffering the stones and arrows of blood libel is nothing new to Jews.
Butone Big Lie of the modern
age has persisted that is especially cruel and destructive--intentionally
so, of course--that Israel has behaved like Nazi Germany, and that various
Israeli leaders, from Ben Gurion to Sharon, are "another Hitler."
If the simile of evil were spewed only from some crackpot Aryan website,
octogenarian Bavarian Nazi, addled Berkeley Stalinist, or obscure Islamic
radical, it would be comic. But it is increasingly a mainstream broadcast.
It strikes from hundreds of signs at the UN conference on racism in South
Africa, to many left and right wing commentary journals, European newspaper
opinion and editorial pages, cosmopolitan intellectuals and, of course, from
a thousand "respectable" voices in the Arab and Muslim world--including
those here in the United States.
The sadism behind such defamations needs no subtle psychoanalysis to
explain. But as a war historian, I think the defamation raises a larger
question. Israel is increasingly surrounded by enemies better and better
armed by American taxpayers and motorists, and soon to wield weapons of mass
destruction. As it becomes clear that the ranks of "moderates" in the Arab
and Muslim world are pita-thin, and Israelis are repeatedly murdered just
for the crime of being living Jews, isn't it time to ask what it would mean
if Israel and its leaders had made the slander a reality?
First, a bit of sanity. Ironically, it is the connection between Islam, the
Palestinians and the Nazis that is more fertile fodder for conspiracy
theorists. Indeed if I were as much of a Palestinian hater as their
political and intellectual leaders hate Jews I could make the irrefutable
statement that Adolf Hitler was the godfather of the Palestinian people. It
was he who gave haven to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who in turn learned
everything about nationalism from the Third Reich. And didn't Hitler say
that Islam was the only religion he respected?
It was the Nazis, too, who raised Muslim Waffen-SS divisions in the Balkans
and eastern Europe and trained them with anti-Jewish tracts. It was
Nazi-inspired Iraqis who, during the war, enacted a pogrom in Baghdad that
killed 100s of Jews in days. Didn't Arab movie audiences react with cackles
and clapping at newsreels of the death camps? Is it not the Arabs who have
subscribed to their own plan for ethnic cleansing, refusing to accept any
Jews living in Hebron as an intolerable provocation? And is not the Arab
world successfully judenrein?
In fact, scholars could spend years detailing the exact parallels between
Nazi ideology, symbolism, slogans, and racial theory and that of the PLO.
And of course, it is our good friends the Egyptians and Saudis who hid Nazi
war criminals, worked with the ODESSA, and still keep "The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion" in print. Didn't the official newspaper of the House of Saud
just assure its readers that Jewish women use children's blood for Purim
pastries? The average Arab newspaper smells no different than a run of Der
Sturmer.
But let's take the original accusation about Israel being like Nazi Germany
seriously, and play a deadly game of historical "what if."
If in 1948, 1956, 1967 or 1973 Israel had exterminated every Muslim man,
woman, and child who lived between the Sinai and the Jordan, then there
would be no Palestinians left to terrorize the Jewish state. Today Israelis
would shop, marry, and play unmolested.
And being "Hitlerian", the bloodthirsty Golda Meirs and Begins and Rabins
would have been uncompromisingly expansionist. Certainly, Hitler did not
believe in surrendering an inch of territory his armies seized. So Israel
would not only have blitzed the Sinai and Golan Heights but would have also
driven victoriously to Tunis and Basra. Yesterday Gaza, tomorrow the world,
right?
Also, a Nazi Israel would make a non-aggression pact with other superpowers
and swallow up the inferior states, smash and kill all the inhabitants, and
laugh at any concept of peace. A great Jewish empire would sit atop buried
mounds of Arab skulls and Persian Gulf oil; in fact, there would be no
living Arabs today, rather than the 100 million that seem to have survived
on 99% of the land in the Middle East, despite Israeli aggression.
None of this, of course, has happened. Millions of Palestinians live in
Israel with a better standard of living and more civil freedoms than their
brethren in any Arab nation. The sum total of Israeli genocide is to shoot
at terrorists. Indeed, crowds of Arab youths throw stones precisely because
they know they will not be rounded up, marched to a pit, and executed. And
what of those massive funerals for the Hamas "martyrs," full of young men
boasting their willingness to die for their cause? Wouldn't a Nazi/Israeli
general drop a nice fat cluster bomb into their shouting mouths?
And of course, a Haifa Hitler would have not failed to use those hydrogen
bombs Israel has been building for 30 years--yet, we see no mushroom clouds
over Cairo or Baghdad. (In contrast both Syrian and Iranian leaders have
vowed that the moment the get the bomb, they will use it on the Jewish
state.)
Yes, if Israelis had been Nazis there would be no Palestinian problem and
Israel would be a green and pleasant land. Unfortunately Jews seem to have a
suicidal moral consciousness even when in positions of power. The Jews did
not act like Crusaders, or Jihadists or the SS, and every day they pay a
price for their restraint in their own children's blood.
Still I have to warn all those who insist on gleefully calling Israel a Nazi
state: one day the Jews may cry to the heavens (or the opposite direction)
in exasperation and declare, "If only!" Be careful what you wish for, you
just might get it.
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07/11/02: The Lie of the Land
Should Israel go Nazi?
By David D. Perlmutter
JWR contributor David Perlmutter is an associate professor of mass communication at
Louisiana State University and a senior fellow at the Reilly Center for
Media & Public Affairs. He is the author of, among others,
Visions of War : Picturing Warfare from the Stone Age to the Cyber Age. Comment by clicking here.
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