Spitting on the Ashes

One of the most disgusting and absurd charges levelled against Israel is the charge of genocide. It is made particularly reprehensible by the term "Palestinian holocaust". The soldiers of the IDF are often slandered as "occupiers", "racists" and of course "Nazis". It is not uncommon to hear comparisons between Israel's defensive actions and the sadistic tortures of the Nazis. Unfortunately, in a world without a moral compass, any brutal act of anti-semitism can be legitimized.

The Holocaust was unique in the annals of human history. Never before had mass murder been perpetrated so methodically and bureaucratically, and on such a widespread scale. The Germans used state-of-the-art technology to exterminate the Jewish people. Trains ran like clockwork from as far north as Norway and as far south as Greece to transport Jews to their deaths in death camps in Poland. The murder of the Jews served no political purpose, was not to gain their property and was not to settle an old tribal feud. It was a goal, equal, if not more important than winning the war against the Allies. In the last days of the War, when Hitler was given the choice between diverting trains to send supplies to the front or shipping Jews to the gas chambers, he chose the latter, despite the harm that he did to German soldiers. Half of the world conspired to murder every single Jewish man, woman and child while the other looked on in silence, deaf to the plight of the suffocating and burning Jews. Jews were brutalized in every way imaginable, thrown into cattle cars, chocked in gas chambers, subjected to sadistic medical experiments and then burnt in the ovens and crematorium, turned into bars of soap or had their skin made into lampshades. There is no parallel between the Holocaust and any other episode of racism, massacre or genocide in all of history.

Taking a page write out of Goebbel's playbook, "Palestinians" and Arabs leaders now whine about a "Palestinian holocaust" (all the while plotting their own Final Solution to the Zionist Question). It is so evil as it turns the victims into the perpetrators. This strategy seeks to eliminate any sympathy the world still feels about its role in the Holocaust by pointing out that the Jews are no better, and besides, the same thing is happening to the "Palestinians". Israel turns in to the embodiment of evil, the state that emerged out of the Holocaust only to continue the Nazi legacy of hatred. This charge is so dangerous and hideous that it desecrates the memory of the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis by trivializing their suffering. Suddenly, everything is a Holocaust. When Israel shoots back at those who fire rockets from Gaza, this is a "Final Solution". When Israel stops weapon shipments into Gaza, it is a "concentration camp". Jews settling in Judea and Samaria is lebenspraum and IDF soldiers protecting them are SS officers. And when everything is a Holocaust, nothing is a Holocaust. The uniqueness of the Nazi genocide against the Jewish people is cheapened as Holocaust terminology become common place, and they are used against Jews by those who support Hitler's goals.

It has been claimed that Gaza is the new Warsaw Ghetto. According to the lies, Israel has forced millions of innocent "Palestinians" into the tiny area of Gaza, shut it off from the world, cut off food and water supplies and is essentially reinacting the Nazi liquidation policies. Only in a mad world can this comparison hold. When the Nazis stormed in to Poland, Jews compromised over a third of the population of Warsaw. In 1940, over 440 000 Jews were confined into an area that was 4.5% of the size of Warsaw and surrounded by high walls with guards. Jews were given 253 calories per day, 8% of what Germans were allotted. 300 000 Jews went from the train depot at Umshlagplatz to their deaths in the gas chambers of Treblinka and Belzec. Finally, on January 18, 1943, the 56 000 Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto decided to resist the Germans rather than go to their deaths. For over three months, these Jews held out. The final attack came on Passover 1943 when the Germans systematically burnt down the Ghetto, and any Jew they could find, liquidatting the Ghetto and blowing up the Great Synagogue on May 16, 1943. The situation in Gaza cannot even be equated. In 1967, Israel liberated Gaza from Egyptian occupation, in a defensive war in which it was attacked by 6 neighbouring countries. It brought with it increased living standards. Slowly, Jews began to return to Gaza and built new life where there was only squalor and destruction. In the summer of 2005, Israel decided to withdraw the 7 000 Jews living in Gaza and give the Arabs a chance at self-determination. Instead, they voted in a terrorist organization and began to rain rockets down on Israeli cities. Like any sane nation, Israel has cut off (mostly) weapons supplies and other non-essential goods going in to Gaza in the hopes of stopping the rockets. Some Palestinian civilians have been killed in collateral damage as Israel has tried to stop terrorists, yet this can be expected in war. Arab terrorism is not resistance but aimed at the destruction of Israel, at killing and maiming as many innocent Jews as possible. Since the creation of Israel, the Arabs have fought against it and tried to destroy it to no avail. There is no Israeli policy of extermination towards the Arabs and such a charge is as libelous as claiming that Jews use Christian babies' blood for the Passover matzot.

60 years after the Holocaust, as the survivors are dying out, many are beginning to forget its terrible legacy of anti-semitism and hatred. Anti-semitism has proven to be one of the most virulent forms of hatred on Earth and seems to change forms to suit every age. Once upon a time, Jews were christ-killers and enemies of G-d. In the modern era, Jews were said to be of an inferior race. Now, anti-semitism poses as anti-Zionism, with all the traditional stereotypes involved. Israel is said to control the world, to wield demonic power and is dehumanized constantly by its foes. Attacks and slander against it cannot go unchallenged. We cannot let our cries of 'Never Again' ring hollow. Hatred towards Israel and Zionism will not be tolerated. It is our duty to ensure that the Final Solution to the Zionist Question is never implemented by our peace-loving and tolerant Islamic neighbours.

Cross-posted from For Zion's Sake