[Vision2020] The 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht!

[Tom Hansen]

FYI, Visionaires -

The person that submitted the posting below is no more J ford than I am.

Isn't it funny (sick, really) that privatejf35 (who claims to be the REAL 
J Ford) materializes within 24 hours of No-'man's extinction.

Hmmm.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

> 
> Elie Wiesel noted that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at
th> e recent United Nations General Assembly calling for the destruction of
Isr> ael demonstrates that the world has learned nothing from the 
Holocaust.
The>  upcoming 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht on November 9 and 10 
provides
a> n occasion to grapple with the question of whether, in the current
decade> , the Jewish people are reliving the 1930s. 
> To answer that one has to look at issues such as genocide and hate
promotio> n, appeasement of totalitarians, Western leadership and so on. 
The
corr> ect answer must then be: "Yes, but only in certain aspects." The
existenc> e of the State of Israel is the main difference between the two 
decades.
In>  the 1930s the Jews were an incoherent, leaderless group, with no
tools>  to defend itself against enemies. Today there is a Jewish state, 
which
i> s threatened by substantial parts of the Muslim world and others, but is
> not helpless. 
> There is furthermore no country today like Nazi Germany with systematic
sta> te-promoted anti-Semitism and state-sponsored violence against its 
Jewish
c> itizens. There is, however, an explicitly genocidal anti-Semitic power
> - Iran, which proclaims that it is out to annihilate the Jewish state
and>  is developing an atom bomb to do so. Extermination policies have 
mutated
a> s a result of technological development. 
> There are few Jews within the borders of Iran. Its allies and the
countries>  it might invade have even fewer. Iran aims mainly at Israelis. 
It
instrume> ntalizes its own Jews for political purposes and was at the 
origin of the
a> ttack against Jews in Buenos Aires. In the 1930s Germany, ruled by
Hitler> , together with its future allies and the countries it would 
invade,
ha> d many millions of Jews within their borders, and they were an easy
targe> t. Today Israel can probably prevent attacks and certainly 
retaliate. 
> Israel also has an ally in the United States, and other states are
willin> g to support it to varying degrees. This is radically different 
from the
st> ructural disarray of the Jews in the 1930s and the unwillingness of any
nat> ion to help them. That became fully clear at the 1938 Evian 
Conference,
w> here no major country was willing to commit to receiving Jewish 
refugees. 
> While widespread anti-Semitism - disguised as anti-Israelism - has made a
m> ajor comeback in this decade, it has not been turned anywhere into
discri> minatory legislation. Another major departure from the 1930s is 
that the
ra> dical improvement in international communications impacts on societies 
in
s> o many ways that it is difficult to analyze which one is most 
important. 
> YET OMINOUS similarities between the 1930s and now do exist. First of
all> , there is totalitarianism. Leading Holocaust scholar Prof. Yehuda 
Bauer
> has said, "In Islam there are major forces which are mentally prepared -
> given the power - to carry out genocide against all others... Islamic
radic> alism is the desire for a global utopia, to be achieved through 
violent
m> eans, which aims at global dominance. This is equally true for National
S> ocialism and communism. Every universal utopia is murderous and every
radic> al universal utopia produces radical murderers." 
> As in the 1930s, Western leadership is weak and little aware of looming
d> angers. British prime minister Neville Chamberlain was reviled for his
appe> asement of Nazi Germany for decades. Nowadays a rehabilitation of
Chamberla> in is indirectly on its way, as more and more revisionist 
historians
clai> m that World War II could have been avoided and that Churchill was a
warmon> ger. 
> Today, many in the West favor both external and internal appeasement of
r> adical Muslims. In foreign policy, Europe is pushed toward appeasement
be> cause it possesses little military force. Domestically, it seeks to
placa> te its resident Muslim extremists through proposals that Shari'a be
allowed>  to operate within the framework of national legal systems. 
> Some appeasement movements and motifs are the same as in the 1930s.
Pacifis> ts have frequently been of use to totalitarians. Moral 
relativists,
feari> ng to be judgmental, are another type of appeasers. There is also a
paral> lel between those in the 1930s in Western Europe who felt guilty 
about the
> severe conditions of the Versailles peace treaty regarding Germany and
thos> e who nowadays feel guilty toward the Third World for the sins of
coloniali> sm. Similarities also abound between those who were willing to 
sacrifice
Cz> echoslovakia for an illusionary peace and those who want to pressure
Israel>  to make concessions to the Palestinians on the false assumption 
that once
> this conflict is solved, Western relations with the Islamic world will
im> prove permanently. 
> ONE PHENOMENON that may be unique to our time is what can best be called
"h> umanitarian racists." One finds many of these in NGOs, whose number has
e> xploded in recent decades. Left-wing politics, the media and the
academic>  world are also hotbeds of this poorly recognized form of racism.
Humanitar> ian racists believe, to varying degrees, that only whites must 
be held
> accountable for their acts, whereas Third Worlders or non-whites are
main> ly victims. By diminishing non-whites' responsibility for their 
criminal
de> eds, one is in effect ranking them somewhere between "real" humans and
an> imals, which live by their urges. The behavior of the NGO gathering at
th> e 2001 UN Durban Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination and
Xen> ophobia made humanitarian racism visible internationally. 
> Humanitarian racism can often be discerned in the debate on the
Palestinian> -Israeli conflict, where it consists of systematically 
ignoring the
crimi> nal character of large parts of Palestinian society, such as its 
many
pro> moters of genocide and its education of children to become "martyrs"
throug> h murdering Jews. 
> In a globalized society, the forces of radical Islam, genocide
promotio> n and appeasement of totalitarians are increasing - as are those 
in
opposit> ion to them. Their relative strengths will determine whether the
similarity>  of our world to that of the 1930s will grow or decline. 
> The writer is chairman of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center 
for
> Public Affairs. 
> _________________________________________________________________
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