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Jewish World Review Dec. 15, 2006 /24 Kislev, 5766 Why is the guy who is gunning for a new Holocaust belittling the last one?
By
Caroline B. Glick
So why is the guy who is gunning for a new Holocaust belittling the last one?
First of all, by doing so he empowers those Germans and friends of Germany who
carried it out. By denying the Holocaust Ahmadinejad turns the Nazis into victims
and so provides a space for them to express themselves after a sixty year silence.
Indeed, in Germany neo-Nazism is a burgeoning political and social force that
proudly parades its links to Iran.
The German fascist party NPD's followers demonstrated in support of Iran at the
World Cup in Germany last spring. This week, Der Spiegel reported that attacks
against Jewish children have increased markedly in recent years. Jewish children and
their non-Jewish friends have been humiliated in anti-Semitic rituals unheard of
since the Nazi era. "Jew" has become one of the most prevalent derogatory terms in
use in Germany today.
Iran's adoption of Holocaust denial as an official, defiant policy gives legitimacy
to this striking phenomenon. This is especially the case since Iran is blaming the
Jews for silencing these poor fascists. In his same letter to Merkel Ahmadinejad
wrote, "The perpetual claimants against the great people of Germany are the bullying
Zionists that funded the Al Quds Occupying Regime with the force of bayonets in the
Middle East."
Ahmadinejad of course does not limit his efforts to the Nazis. He is also setting
the cognitive conditions for the annihilation of Israel for the international Left
by presenting Israel's existence as a direct result of the Holocaust. As Iran's
Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki said this week, "If the official version of the
Holocaust is thrown into doubt, then the identity and nature of Israel will be
thrown into doubt."
In short, Iran views Holocaust denial as a strategic propaganda tool. By downgrading
the Holocaust, Iran mobilizes supporters and paralyzes potential opponents. Its
coupling of the last Holocaust with the one it signals daily it intends to carry
out, wins it support among the Nazis and the Sunnis alike. Its presentation of the
Holocaust as a myth used to exploit Muslims wins its support in the international
Left which increasingly views Israel as an illegitimate state. So by denying the
Holocaust Iran raises its leadership profile both regionally and globally.
Indeed, even if the Left doesn't buy into Holocaust denial, it can still agree with
Iran's conclusion that Israel has no right to exist. As Mottaki explained, "If
during this [Holocaust denial conference] it is proved that the Holocaust was a
historical reality, then what is the reason for the Muslim people of the region and
the Palestinians having to pay the cost of the Nazis' crimes?"
Inevitably, those who hold this view come to believe that Israel has no right to
defend itself. After all, if Israel is but an illegal European colony on stolen Arab
lands, then any act of self-defense that Israel takes is by definition an act of
aggression. So from this perspective, all Israel can do is give away land an accept
that it must pay for all the pathologies of the Arab world.
The view that every problem in the region is somehow or another bound up in Israel's
stubborn refusal to disappear is clearly reflected also in the policy prescriptions
of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group, in former president Jimmy Carter's
anti-Semitic attacks against Israel and in the position paper authored by professors
Steve Walt and John Mearshimer about the so-called "Israel Lobby," (which is due to
be published as a full-length book ahead of the 2008 presidential elections).
And so, by framing its Holocaust denial around an interpretation of the Arab world's
war against Israel propounded by radical leftists and foreign policy "realists" of
the soft-Right, the Iranians enable them to find a comfort level with what Iran is
doing today. This comfort was displayed by the new US Defense Secretary Robert Gates
in his Senate confirmation hearing where he justified Iran's nuclear weapons program
by claiming that it was a deterrent measure in response to the fact that Pakistan,
Russia, the US, and Israel all have nuclear weapons. Gates of course served on the
Baker-Hamilton commission and no doubt supports its recommendation that Israel be
forced to give the Golan Heights to Syria and Judea and Samaria to Hamas.
Not only does Iran's Holocaust denial attract potential supporters, it also confuses
and so neutralizes potential opponents who neither like nor dislike Jews and are too
confused to understand the threat Iran poses to the US.
Although it has not for a moment desisted from its calls of "Death to America," its
vision of a world without America or its threats to attack Europe, Iran has made
Israel the focus of its propaganda. In so doing it has provided cover for "realists"
like Mearshimer, Walt and James Baker who claim that the war is really just between
Israel and the Muslims and that the only reason that the US finds itself caught in
the middle is because of its support for Israel. That support, in turn, is the
result of Jewish subversion of Washington through the so-called all powerful "Israel
lobby," which Carter claims as he sells his latest screed no politician will risk
bucking up against.
This view, now emerging into the mainstream political debate in the US has already
won the debate in most of Europe. There the view is that European Muslims are only
attacking their non-Muslim countrymen because states like the US and Micronesia have
yet to abandon Israel.
For Merkel, the centerpiece of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's trip to Germany Tuesday
was her furious denunciation of the Iranian conference. "I would like to make it
clear that we reject with all our strength the conference taking place in
Iran….Germany will never accept this and will act against [Holocaust denial] with
all the means that we have." The Germans even organized a conference of their own in
Berlin this week where everyone indignantly expressed their indignation at Iran.
Merkel's breathless furor is an example of the final problem that Ahmadinejad has
created for his opponents by adopting Holocaust denial as a central plank of Iran's
foreign policy. Bluntly stated, he gives people a way to be perceived as being
against Iran without actually doing anything to stop Iran from getting nuclear
weapons.
Merkel and her fellow Germans have spent an inordinate amount of time over the past
three years condemning the Nazi Holocaust. This week they even organized a special
Holocaust condemning conference in response to the Iranian Holocaust denying
conference.
Yet over the same time period, they have conducted negotiations with Teheran as part
of the EU-3 that have enabled Iran to continue its nuclear progress; obstructed US
efforts to levy sanctions on Iran; and maintained active trade relations with Iran.
Merkel's government has continued the practice of providing loan guarantees to
German firms doing business with Iran. In 2005, German-Iranian trade stood at about
$5 billion.
Now, after three years of disastrous negotiations with the mullahs, Germany has
finally come around to supporting the European draft sanctions resolution against
Iran being debated in the UN Security Council. The problem is that the proposed
sanctions are so weak that they will have no impact on Iran's ability to move on
with its nuclear bomb program.
The obvious fact that the sanctions will have no impact on Iran has not made a dent
in Merkel's refusal to support military action against Iran under any circumstances
- a refusal she reiterated while standing next to Israel's Prime Minister on
Tuesday.
Olmert was apparently too busy admitting that Israel has nuclear weapons only to
take back his admission hours later, absurdly praising Russian President Vladimir
for his opposition to the "nuclearlization of Iran" which Putin is actively
promoting, and promising to give Judea and Samaria to Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas
to take issue with Merkel's statement. And that is a pity, because by taking issue
with it, he would have gone far towards destroying the effectiveness of Iran's
Holocaust denial strategy.
Were Israel to base its diplomatic, military, informational, and economic policies
on a single-minded commitment to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear capabilities,
it would succeed. Unfortunately, under the Olmert government Israel is doing nothing
of the kind on any level.
On the public diplomacy level, were Israel to take concerted action against Iran's
Holocaust denial program, it could destroy the program and so enact a positive
change in the public discourse on Iran. Merkel's stated refusal to support military
action against Iran's nuclear facilities was an ideal opportunity to launch such
action. If Olmert had reacted in disgust to Merkel's statement and announced that it
was unacceptable, he would have stood the Iranians' propaganda on its head.
Imagine what the impact would have been if Olmert had rejoined, "Excuse me, but it
is quite possible that at the end of the day a military strike against Iran will be
the only way to prevent Iran from acquiring atomic bombs and so committing another
Holocaust. Given this, your blanket opposition to the notion of military strikes
constitutes Germany's effective acceptance of another Holocaust. Shame on you Angie.
Shame on Germany."
Such a statement would have changed the entire dynamic of the international
discourse on Iran.
If we are willing to do what is necessary, Israel can prevent the next Holocaust. It
is unforgivable that Olmert and his ministers are not doing what needs to be done.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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