Give Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad credit. He makes no bones about his hatred of Israel. In his latest attack, reported in YNET, he warned: "Just as (Israel) was created, it can be dismantled."
Denying Israel's legitimacy, he charged that "for 60 years, they have told lies and tried to defraud nations in order to create the germ called the Zionist regime" and added, "Zionism contributes nothing other than aggression, mass murder, terror and threats."
At the Durban 2009 anti-racism UN Conference in Geneva, Ahmadinejad's threats and denigration of the Holocaust led to a walkout and/or boycott of most European nations, the US and Canada. But that did not top some of his 180-strong entourage from also publicly castigating Israel as a Nazi, apartheid regime, with even Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Lauraete Elie Wiesel verbally attacked as a "Zionazi."
Never mind the mental gymnastics needed for Iranian Holocaust deniers to accuse Israel of being Nazis -- casting victims as victimizers is a powerful, emotive and effective propaganda tool.
The "Israel as Nazi" canard was first introduced by the Soviet Union's propaganda machine four decades ago to curry favor with Arab states who were trying to do away with Israel long before the question of a Palestinian state was ever raised. In 2009, it has gained new traction and believers far beyond the Mullah-controlled Iran. It was the mantra of pro-Hamas demonstrators from London to Los Angeles, and was delivered to thousands of emails near you ever since the Israeli incursion into Gaza last winter.
Now, two students at UC Santa Barbara have raised their voices in protest after their Sociology Professor sent them an unsolicited digital visual hate spam comparing Israelis to Nazis.
Many critics, myself among them, have labeled that email anti-Semitic.
But when exactly does critique morph into hate?
Human rights icon Natan Sharansky points to 3 "D"s to help identify when legitimate criticism crosses over to anti-Semitism: Double Standard, Deligitimization and Demonization. The cut and paste visual hit job characterizing Israel and Israelis as Nazi-like not only denigrates the 6 million Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide, but also clearly meets the standards of each of the 3 "D"s.
All this has led Sol Lieber, an 85 year old survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the Majdanek and Auschwitz Death Camps to offer to pay for this professor to travel with him to Auschwitz to (re)learn the differences between the Holocaust Kingdom and the Palestinian/Israel conflict.
For the rest us, this much should be clear: There is nothing wrong with criticizing Israeli policies; quite the contrary, as the Middle East's only democracy, Israel's actions generate healthy debate and even denunciation every day from within and without its borders.
But those who knowingly choose to mis-characterize Israel's self-defense as "Nazi" are factually and historically wrong and morally repugnant.
Real democracies don't dehumanize, deny basic human rights and brutally repress millions of people within the lands they occupy.
The knee-jerk that to criticize Israel (what is the new Zionist buzz word, "de-legitimize"?) is anti-semitic is the most intellectually dishonest canard on the scene today. Those who deny that Israel has engaged in sometimes fast (1948) sometimes slow, methodical (now) ethnic cleansing are the Holocaust deniers of the 21st century.
Most Jews do not behave like rabid-Zionist and it is past time the took the lead and ending the shameful practices of the IDF and their settler allies.
Real
Or the ones who failed to acknowledge the Cambodian genocide, when about a third of the country's population was exterminated. Or even the Bosnians who still live in miserable conditions ever since Yugoslavia was dismantled and they were persecuted.
Before looking at the few thousand Palestinians who have died in the past decades (many armed terrorists among them), as a result of the Arab refusal to accept Israel's existence, look at these much more urgent issues. Then someone might believe your true goal is human sympathy rather than the utmost double standard.
To say that critics of Israel's policy in Palestine are irrelevant because they didn't raise their voices for the aforementioned is wrong for two reasons: You are looking at this from a sequestered point of view. People HAVE spoken out on these other issues, just not in the same breath as criticizing Israel. And there is a concerted and overwhelming whitewashing campaign for Israel's policy in Palestine, therefore requiring that voices be raised in protest.
You are trying to create an argument for a double standard where none exists.
Also, in 67, two weeks after the war, Israel offered all occupied lands in return for peace with its neighbors. All Arab countries refused. That's when the occupation began. In order to secure deep borders with reluctant and aggressive neighbors, Israel started its occupation, which unfortunately got out of hand and is now led by Jewish extremists.
However, we must always look at the history to understand the present.
And I believe that someday Jews, Muslims, Christians and non-believers can all find a way to live together in Israel and the entire region.
I am on the side of all humanity. Sometimes I might be perceived as leaning to one side just as I perceive things out of balance in the Palestine/Israel conflict.
I am against anyone killing or hurting anyone. And tired of even my own recriminations.
If the extremists (who unfortunately seem to be in power) would leave off the vision of an ethnically pure Biblical fairy tail Kingdom of Israel then we would not have to listen to all of these offensive comparisons with the Nazis who had their vision of teutonic purity and a Mein Kamf fairy tail Thousand (sic) Year Reich.
Jews who don't like this comparison will behave differently and show the world the many good things about Judaism.
By simply arguing that Israel is not legitimate, this is anti-semitic, since no other country in the world has its existence so frequently questioned.
Finally, demonizing Israel as a blood-thirsty State that enjoys killing innocent children is remniscent of the medieval anti-semitism that has constantly updated itself.
I was not sure of who this was and what his story was, so i looked him up. He does not sound like a human rights icon.
Sharansky takes what many of his critics call a hardline position towards the Palestinians, arguing that there can never be peace between Israel and the Palestinians until the latter rid their society of terrorist groups like Hamas and of anti-Semitism. His critics see an incompatibility between his ardent Zionism and his commitment to the struggle for universal human rights and democracy.
In a recent Ha’aretz interview, he maintained the “Jews came here 3,000 years ago and this is the cradle of Jewish civilization. Jews are the only people in history who kept their loyalty to their identity and their land throughout the 2,000 years of exile, and no doubt that they have the right to have their place among nations—not only historically but also geographically. As to the Palestinians, who are the descendants of those Arabs who migrated in the last 200 years, they have the right, if they want, to have their own state... but not at the expense of the state of Israel.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natan_Sharansky
He never said Palestinians should not have a State of their own. He only expressed, and rightly so, that a Palestinian and an Israeli state cannot be mutually exclusive, they have to exist side by side.
When you attack Sharansky personally (without valid arguments, I must say), it seems to me you cannot come up with any argument against his ideas, so you try to invalidate his points by attacking him.
Shimon Peres on Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia University (2007): "I think that Columbia University made a mistake ... With Hitler there was a dialogue. [British Prime Minister Neville] Chamberlain went to talk to him. What did it help? It helped cover the fact that Hitler prepared concentration camps and death camps," Peres told Reuters
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/907285.html
Geez....Natan, how big is that double standard?
The history of Native Americans from the beginning of European colonialism to present is a more apt and less hysterical analogy. Israel doesn't want to wipe the Palestinians off the map, it simply wants to engulf and control more and more of the Palestinian territories until the Palestinian people become politically and culturally marginalized, either living in controlled ghettos or assimilated into the general population, never to return as a political movement of consequence.
Think of the Palestinian territories as the equivalent of American indian reservations. Also consider the historical characterization of Native American attacks on colonial settlers as unprovoked, underhanded acts of outright war by a group of savages trespassing on land rightfully bestowed upon the colonists by god.
I drew the comparison between the Palestinians and Native Americans to illustrate precisely your point. I don't believe the Israeli mission is the actual extinction of the Palestinian people; the political costs are too high. Rather, the better solution (relatively speaking, of course) would be for Israel to absorb as much contiguous territory as possible and in the process scatter the Palestinian diaspora across the Middle East.
Regardless of continued cultural identity, it's very difficult if not impossible for small, geographically scattered groups to have the same impact as a centralized national group in their own territorial area. For example, I would contrast the political influence wielded by Italian-Americans over the Italian government vs. the political influence of actual Italians residing in Italy. The cultural identity may be similar but there is virtually no Italian-American influence over policy decisions of Italy as a country. A more apt example might be that of Transylvanians and Armenians: unique cultural identities no longer geographically anchored and therefore disempowered.
He laid some serious charges against the founders of Israel and yet he considered himself an ardent Zionist.
Do you think that Israel's bombing of the
Danish Center for Torture Rehabilitation
shows a brutal restraint by the IDF?
What exists today is a culture of learned victimhood that has bred a moral hazard of entitlement.
"Never again" has morphed into "After what they've done to us."
It is as though bigotry is a virus that mutates and passes in different forms throughout generations.
Zionists? yes.
Same ideology based on US versus THEM and a superiority complex that enables the fanatics to ruin a great 60+ year old social experiment? BINGO.
Prove me wrong.
Zionism is a political ideology. It is not a religion, race, nor ethnicity. It is a political ideology built on an idea of exclusivity in a way that vaguely resembles Naziism, and that's why it's sometimes compared. It is based on the canard that all non-Jews are anti-semites, and therefore Jews must divest from non-Jews and create an exclusive country free from non-Jews where they can live in peace. Unfortunately, the native inhabitants were non-Jews. They were ethnically cleansed out of their homes and villages, and those village names were changed from Arabic names to Hebrew names. The new flag (Star of David) was raised, and that symbol, in itself, excluded non-Jews.
Equating Zionism to Naziism is NOT anti-semitic. You may not appreciate the comparison. You may find it distasteful, appalling, and even provocative, but it is NOT anti-semitic.
Zionists want people to think that anti-Zionists are attacking Jews, so they can be dismissed as bigots, and to distract from Israel's outrageous actions. Zionists are usually the ones trying to paint others with the Nazi paintbrush, so they're naturally upset when people start to see them wearing the jackboots.
Icon indeed, you should add "for the Israelis". His only concern is for Israeli human rights and has turned a blind eye to the plight of the Palestinians.
"But those who knowingly choose to mis-characterize Israel's self-defense"
Does "self-defense" include the theft of Palestinian land and the illegal building of settlements? All with the approval of every Israeli government for the last 20 years. Doesn't sound like self-defense more like self aggrandizement.
It's time for some balance.
BTW, the claim of Israel as the only Middle East democracy conveniently overlooks democratically-elected Hamas.
Hamas may have been elected, but after they got elected, they overthrew their own elected government (the PA) in Gaza and set up a brutal dictatorship, which completely took away the legitimacy it won by winning elections. Also, the way they govern Gaza is totally brutal and dictatorial, there is no democracy there anymore.
Tehran hosts 'world's biggest bookshop'
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=93597§ionid=351020105
(Note that Hebrew books are on sale)
Chicago Uni. digitalizing Persepolis tablets
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=93597§ionid=351020105