Israel, the Holocaust and the Survival Lesson

Israel, the Holocaust and the Survival Lesson

Last week's Holocaust Memorial Day, part of that dubious practice in which we assign one day to important events and people, Mothers, Grandmothers, Presidents, Veterans, WW2 and forget them the rest of the time, has come and gone. But the Holocaust itself was long ago co-opted to promote a humanist philosophy of universal tolerance, and in doing so it was universalized and turned into nothing more than another reason we all need to learn to get along.

Some have expressed wonderment that European countries and cities where Muslim persecution and violence is intimidating and driving out Jews at a rate unseen since the 1930's are still going through the farce of holding official ceremonies, nodding at how awful the whole thing was and beaming confidently that it can never happen again. But the humanist hijacking of the Holocaust is only another of the weapons used to promote tolerance toward Muslims, and intolerance toward Jews.

The universalization of the Holocaust was also the dejudaization of the Holocaust, turning the dwindling number of survivors into props in the great international classroom of tolerance, even as rocks are being thrown at their heads by the Muslim beneficiaries of that school of tolerance. All the while the humanist hijackers of the Holocaust who vociferously insist on using the murder of six million Jews as an illustration in their multicultural curriculum, angrily denounce any Jews who actually try to connect the hate toward Jews then and the hate toward Jews now. The same humanists who cynically exploit the Holocaust in their distorted version of history can always be counted on to jump up and denounce Jews for... exploiting the Holocaust.

But the Holocaust does indeed have a very important lesson to teach both Jews and non-Jews. Not the lesson of universal tolerance, but the lesson of the need for individuals and communities to be able to defend themselves.

There are essentially two responses to the Holocaust. The first is the humanist one, which treated the murder of six million as a "teachable moment" in which the world could be led to a great moral awakening that would insure that nothing like it could ever happen again. Ridiculous amounts of Jews and non-Jews in the West accepted it as a given, just as they had accepted it as a given in the 1930's that no such event could ever take place in a civilized country. That faith in human moral evolution was a product of the Enlightenment and for all its pretenses at a higher morality, was based on the arrogant notion that people were becoming progressively more moral, as they became more educated. That correlation was the product of a misplaced faith in culture as morality. The Nazis conclusively demonstrated that technological and cultural sophistication is not indivisible from morality, that one can be a cultured monster after all.

There has been no great moral awakening since 1948. Anti-semitism became slightly less fashionable for a while, but is making a strong comeback. The world has seen genocides happen and done nothing while they happened. The vast array of humanitarian organizations created after WW2 have on the balance done as much harm as good. The UN has shown that not only is it as useless as the League of Nations in serving as either a means of active intervention, or even as a voice of conscience, but that it can actually be turned into a puppet of the killers themselves with very little effort. The multicultural societies of the West have not stopped bigotry, in many cases they have actually fostered it. The great humanist experiment is dead, though its stench is impossible to escape.

Nevertheless Jews in the West have become painfully invested in the humanist answer, because it is so optimistic about human nature and so very comforting. To believe that people coming together will end all evil in a flash of universal understanding is the pseudo-religious impulse inherent in so many political movements. The idea that the Holocaust was a mistake that the world overlooked, but that can be transformed into a positive impulse with enough readings of the Diary of Anne Frank is childishly naive and yet painfully human. But more is asked of adults when confronting human evil, than of 13 year old girls. Because Anne Frank was not murdered by people who killed because they had not read Anne Frank's diary as children. She was killed by people, who in many cases would have been entirely capable of reading her diary, empathizing with it and yet killing her anyway. The inability to understand this is why so many Jews continue to cling to the humanistic promise of a better world, little realizing that the world is simply the environment in which human nature expresses itself. That the environment can be improved, but human nature will remain the same.

And so we come to the second response to the Holocaust, the practical one. This response does not concern itself with all the asinine humanist philosophizing. Instead it strips down the Holocaust to the bare bones as an event in which large numbers of Jews were killed by or for the most part with the cooperation of the authorities, and its solution is to remove the Jews from the jurisdiction of those authorities... and into their own national jurisdiction.

To the humanists, the reason for the Holocaust was intolerance. To the practical minded, the reason for the Holocaust was that Jews were vulnerable and therefore targets. Both were talking about the same thing, but their emphasis was very different. The humanists' prescription for Jews smacked of Stockholm Syndrome, the practical position on the other hand was a matter of simple self-defense.

The State of Israel was not born out of the Holocaust, but out of a national longing for the land that was 2000 years old. But the Holocaust helped define the need for that land, even to those who could not feel that longing. It provided a practical answer to the practical problem of Jewish survival, and that was something the humanists could never forgive it for.

The conflict between the humanist and the practical solution to the Holocaust underlies much of the distaste and even outright hatred of the left for Israel. Because the creation of the State of Israel in the aftermath of the Holocaust has always seemed to the Humanists like a deliberate rejection of their philosophy, a retreat into nationalism, which to them was the very cause of the Holocaust. While it was the USSR that innovated the meme that the Jews were the new Nazis, their lefty fellow travelers quickly picked up the idea because it was a logical outgrowth of their philosophy that you were either part of the collective solidarity of mankind or one of the killers. Part of the solution or part of the problem. In their minds the creation of Israel was millions of Jews opting out of being the solution and becoming the problem instead.

And now for the left, Israel is the great problem of the world. Because it demonstrated a lack of confidence in the humanist solution of teaching universal tolerance and fostering a great moral awakening in mankind. As Einstein breezily told the commission, Israel was unnecessary because something like the Holocaust could never happen again. And that particular brand of humanist arrogance can only deal with the rising hatred toward Jews by insisting that their multicultural project is working perfectly... but it is the Jews themselves who are at fault.

Yet today critics point out that Jews are endangered in Israel, which they argue proves that the practical solution is no solution as well. And that's true. But it ignores the actual practical solution, which is not to merely build a country, but to build an independent country. And while Israel was relatively independent for the first few decades, it has become steadily more dependent; politically, economically, psychologically and culturally dependent. And that dependence is what is now crushing the life out of the nation.

The Jews of Europe in the 1930's depended on the authorities to protect them. That made them dependent. Being dependent only made them more vulnerable. This fed the same vicious cycle that had destroyed Jewish community after community in Europe. Because the Jews could only be safe by depending on written or oral promises from the ruler that their rights would be respected if they settled in City X or Town Y. And then where there was a budget squeeze, taxes and fines would be targeted at them, and eventually riots and property seizures. The survivors would try to hang on or flee, and either way the cycle would begin again. The Jewish communities were dependent on the rulers, and that in turn made them targets, which only made them more dependent on the goodwill of the rulers.

The extent to which you depend on the protection of the authorities limits your ability to dictate the terms of that protection. In the contemporary American example, you can have smaller government and armed town watches... or a ban on guns and a cop on every block with the right to enter your home if he pleases. The more you depend on the authorities for protection, the less say you have in how you get protected, and the more those who protect you, rule over you.

Israel started out controlling its own security, but through its growing alliance with the United States, has increasingly lost control of its own security. In 1981 Saddam Hussein began developing nuclear technology, Israel did not ask the United States for permission before launching a covert mission to bomb his Osirak reactor. In 1992, Israel was not even allowed to bomb the Scud missile sites pounding its cities. Instead the country was forced to rely on imported US troops with Patriot missiles to provide its security for it. Today less than 30 years later it is assumed that Israel needs American permission before launching an attack on Iran's reactors.

In the 1950's, Israel responded to terrorist attacks from Gaza by covertly sending troops across the border into Egypt and wiping out the villages that were the source of the attacks. Today when Israel shoots a single terrorist, US and European governments immediately summon the Israeli ambassador to demand an explanation and issue official statements condemning the killing. In 1967, facing an Egyptian invasion-- Israel took the element of surprise and struck first. In six days, the forces of Egypt and Jordan were routed, Jerusalem, Gaza, Judea, Sinai and the Shomron were liberated. In 1973, facing another invasion, the Israeli government bowed to pressure from Kissinger and waited for the attack to come. The resulting war nearly destroyed Israel.

Israel has become dependent. The alliance with the US, one that was logical and mutually useful, when the US needed to move into the Middle East to counterbalance Soviet influence, has turned dysfunctional as its leaders have begun to act like proconsuls, demanding an endless feast of concessions from Israel to appease Islamic terrorists. Meanwhile Israeli governments have come to accept an inferior role, while taking at face value the promises that the US will guarantee its security.

In the 1930's, the Czechs believed that the Western powers would guarantee their security. So did the Poles. Both nations spent over 50 years as conquered nations and protectorates of other powers. The Jews of Europe expected that the authorities would protect their rights, even in the event of an invasion. What followed was the Holocaust.

The only meaningful lesson of the Holocaust is that if you expect others to protect your life or your rights, you are giving them the power to take away your rights or your life, when and as they please. Israel has foolishly put itself into the familiar position of the Jews of Europe, looking to the authorities for protection and trying to win their favor, complaining about the abuse, but only sliding further into dependency. If Israel does not break that cycle, it will be destroyed. The only way it can survive, if it realizes that its people and its soldiers are the only human beings who can protect, and that only those who dictate the terms of their own protection are truly free

article by: SULTAN KNISH

From NY to Jerusalem, Daniel Greenfield Covers the Stories Behind the News

Named one of the Jewish Press' Most Worthwhile Blogs, 2006, 2007 , 2008 and 2009

Cited at Front Page Magazine , Melanie Philips and One Jerusalem, Outpost and Little Green Footballs and American Thinker and Hot Air and the New Media Journal
Quoted by Daniel Pipes , Andrew Bostom, Atlas Shrugs, Debbie Schlussel and Tim Blair, Judith Klinghoffer and Michelle Malkin
Radio mentions by Michael Savage , Quinn and Rose, "America's Morning Show" ,AM 770 CHQR - The World Tonight with Rob Breakenridge , 680 WCBM Sean and Frank and Jim Ball


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Arabs and the Mufti were Hitler’s partner in the Holocaust

Atlas Shrugs is to be commended for the work it has done to develop this post

The Smoking Gun: The Auschwitz Blueprints and The Mufti

The Muslim Mufti’s Role in Extermination of the Jews

There is another site that is worth of attention.

Exposing Islamo-Fascism

So why anyone says that the Arabs had nothing to do with the Holocaust don’t you believe them.

When Obama and others say that Israel was created as a result of European guilt over the Holocaust, the Arabs have a share in that guilt.

The Crime of Remembering the Holocaust

There has for a while now been building a steady chorus of protest over commemorating the Holocaust. The voices are both Jewish and Non-Jewish. Some of them come from the left which indicts the Holocaust for being too limited to Jews to be worth remembering and as a pretext for oppressing the poor paleo-terrorist people. Some come from the right which claims the whole thing is anti-Christian and just prevents reconciliation between the Jews and everyone else.

Too much, the voices cry. Too much remembrance. Too much dedicated to remembering it. Who needs it anyway.

David Klinghoffer sums up this view quite nicely when he writes, "Our preoccupation with the ultimate symbol of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, has become notorious. There is no end in sight to the Holocaust history books, Holocaust novels, Holocaust television shows, Holocaust magazine and newspaper articles, chairs in Holocaust studies at universities, Holocaust museums, Holocaust poems, Holocaust paintings, Holocaust sculptures..."

Remembering the Holocaust is then a preoccupation. Some annoying obsession we can't seem to let go of. These same voices do not seem to think that the Civil War is a notorious preoccupation though it happened nearly a century and a half ago, though there are Civil War memorials, Civil War television shows, Civil War movies, Civil War books, Civil War newspaper articles, Civil War paintings, Civil War studies, Civil War poems.

Folks like Klinghoffer do not pen articles asking Americans to give up their preoccupation with the Civil War, to cry a halt, enough is enough. They feel no irritation at it in the least. For that matter Klinghoffer is not bothered by WW2 memorials, television shows, movies, books, magazine articles, studies and poems. It's perfectly okay to be 'preoccupied' with WW2, just not with the Jewish end of it. The moment studying WW2 slips into studying what happened to the Jews in WW2, it instantly becomes to him an example of neurotic behavior. An obsession with anti-Semitism. An unhealthy fixation on the murder of six million Jews.

When the Jews of Europe first went out of the world, the Holocaust was not a safe subject for discussion, nor was had happened to them. The allies who issued statements condemning German atrocities in leaflets dropped over Germany, did not mention the Jews. Neither did Roosevelt in his radio addresses. Neither did the Pope. The Jews who were liberated from the concentration camps (now the subject of many glowing documentaries) were not set free, for the most part they were considered DP's, Displaced Persons, and were put right back into camps with barbed wire, guarded by armed German guards. There was little if any recognition that anything particular had happened to them.

The Jews were considered citizens of their countries of origin meant to be returned there, never mind the fact that the citizens of most of those countries had willingly played a part in butchering them and that many of those countries were now under Stalinist rule. Truman fumed over a handful of Jewish refugees admitted to the United States. Eisenhower fumed over the Jews in the DP camps who refused to do what they were told. The State Department in partnership with the British fumed that despite their best hopes, some Jews had survived the Holocaust after all and were headed on illegal boats to British ruled Israel.

After the Holocaust there was no flood of memoirs. There was little in the way of a uniquely Jewish historical understanding of what had gone on. The academic, political and press consensus was that the Nazis had been mean people who had killed a lot of people, for no particular reason, except that they were against democracy. An echo of that kind of silly stupid rhetoric can still be heard in Bush's speeches when he presumes that Democracy equates with morality and a lack of it with amorality. That is belied by the fact that in WW2 fascist regimes and Fascist nations like Mussolini, Tojo and Franco did more to save Jews than democratic Switzerland or democratic France did, when they handed over Jews to the Nazis to be shot.

Most of the Nazis who had been convicted of war crimes were prematurely released under pressure frin the German government. Former Nazis had no trouble finding plenty of countries to take them in from Argentina to Ireland to America, which brought in many of them to 'fight Communism.' Post-WW2 discussions of atrocities were far more likely to focus on Hiroshima and Dresden than on Auschwitz and Dachau.

In the Senate, Senator Joseph McCarthy, who before hijacking and wrecking a legitimate investigation into Communist infiltration of America, had stood on the Senate floor thundering demands that the SS perpetrators of the Malmedy Massacre of 84 US troops be freed because their confessions had been obtained under duress (shades of Gitmo). The SS men who had murdered American soldiers were eventually all released in a matter of years. As were most of those who had been responsible for the Holocaust. On the Holocaust itself there was a shameful silence.

The USSR denied any Holocaust of Jews had taken place. Even decades later when it granted that it had, it limited the number to 3 million, those Jews who had been living in Soviet territories. The rest didn't matter. Many of those refugees had made it out of German territory into the USSR had been shot as German spies. Behind the scenes Stalin was hatching a plan for a Soviet Holocaust of the Jews. One that would permit the USSR to carry off a Holocaust while still keep Communists and socialist around the world loyal to the Soviet Union, using plausible deniability. Up until this point Communism had managed to murder hundreds of thousands of Jews, imprison many more and suppress Jewish culture and religion, while still being claimed by liberal Jews and non-Jews around the world, from Time Magazine to H.G. Wells to the Archbishop of Canterbury. There was no reason, Stalin thought, he couldn't wipe out all the Jews and still remain the world's beloved, Uncle Joe.

The Allies were meanwhile too busy embracing our newfound German allies against Communism to want to hear anything about their crimes. The newly hatched Israeli government was all too willing to sweep the whole thing under the rug in order to build ties with Germany. When future Prime Minister Begin led a march of Holocaust survivors in protest to the Knesset against the German policies of the Labor Socialist government, they were tear gassed by the police. I could tell far worse stories but I will not. No one wanted to hear from those had survived the Holocaust.

Today they are dying and we are hearing from them. We are remembering and listening, for what little good it does and still there are still many voices raised in protest that would prefer we didn't. Voices from the right and the left, voices of conservative and liberal Jews. Rabbi Daniel Lapin is outraged that the Holocaust Museum linked Christian anti-Semitism to the Holocaust, as if Germany and Eastern Europe in the first half of the 20th century had been populated entirely by Hindus. David Klinghoffer of course finds all the Holocaust talk to be a bit too much.

But we remember. Many thousands of years later we pray at the gravesite of Rachel our mother. Thousands of years later we weep at the remnant wall of the temple. We stand at Masada and each ten day interval between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur we recite piyutim remembering those murdered in the Crusades. We have not forgotten and we will not forget. To the 'Jewish' Klinghoffers of the right and the left, sneering at us, we can only reply to them as we do at the Seder, that is it a matter of Lachem Ve'Lo Lo. It is to us that this matter not to you. It is to us who are a part of it, who feel it in our hearts and our souls. You have no part of it or a part in us. As Naomi said to Orpah, go home. Our home is with the Jewish people, the living and the dead. Yours is elsewhere. Go and find it wherever it may be.

From NY to Jerusalem, Daniel Greenfield Covers the Stories Behind the News

Named one of the Jewish Press' Most Worthwhile Blogs, 2006, 2007 , 2008 and 2009

Cited at Front Page Magazine , Melanie Philips and One Jerusalem, Outpost and Little Green Footballs and American Thinker and Hot Air
Quoted by Daniel Pipes , Andrew Bostom, Atlas Shrugs, Debbie Schlussel and Tim Blair, Judith Klinghoffer and Michelle Malkin
Radio mentions by Michael Savage , Quinn and Rose, "America's Morning Show" ,AM 770 CHQR - The World Tonight with Rob Breakenridge , 680 WCBM Sean and Frank and Jim Ball

Israel asks Vatican to open Holocaust-era archives

Published: 12.20.09, 15:09 / Israel News

Israel asked the Vatican to open the Church archives from World War II following Pope Benedict's decision to renew the beatification of Pope Pius XII, who is accused of not taking action to save Jews during the Holocaust.


Foreign Ministry Spokesman Yigal Palmor said to AFP that Pope Pius' candidacy for sainthood does not affect Israel, but the Catholic Church. However, he said that historians must be allowed to evaluate the pope's actions during the war by opening the archives. (AFP)

Hunt for Auschwitz Arbeit Macht Frei sign thieves

Page last updated at 01:40 GMT, Saturday, 19 December 2009

Hundreds of thousands of people passed under the sign to their deaths

Polish police are using a sniffer dog in their search for thieves who took the infamous Arbeit Macht Frei sign over the entrance to Auschwitz.

Detectives and other police officers were sent to the site of the former Nazi camp where more than one million people, mostly Jewish, were murdered.

A replica of the sign, which translates as "Work Sets You Free", has been put up temporarily.

The theft on Friday has caused outrage in Israel, Poland and elsewhere.

"The theft of such a symbolic object is an attack on the memory of the Holocaust, and an escalation from those elements that would like to return us to darker days," said Avner Shalev from the Yad Vashem memorial centre in Jerusalem.

"I call on all enlightened forces in the world who fight against anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia and the hatred of the other to join together to combat these trends."

In Brussels, European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek, a former Polish prime minister, appealed to the thieves to return the sign.

"Give it back out of respect for the suffering of over a million victims, murdered in this Nazi camp, the biggest cemetery of humankind," he said.

Metal bars cut

The wrought-iron sign was half-unscrewed, half-torn off from above the death camp's gate between 0330 and 0500 on Friday, said a police spokeswoman.

HISTORY OF AUSCHWITZ SIGN Made by Polish political prisoners in 1940 Letter 'B' thought to have been reversed as act of defiance - making it appear upside-down Locals say Red Army soldiers were bribed to leave it in Poland after camp was liberated Occasionally replaced by replica while conservation work is done Audio-slideshow: Auschwitz decay

Investigators say at least two people would have been needed to steal the 5-m (16-ft), 40-kg (90-lb) sign.

Police said they were reviewing footage from a surveillance camera that overlooks the entrance gate and the road beyond but declined to say whether the crime was recorded, The Associated Press news agency reports.

Auschwitz museum spokesman Jaroslaw Mensfelt said it might have been too dark for the camera to have captured images.

He said the thieves apparently carried the sign 300m (yards) to an opening in a concrete wall. The opening was left intentionally to preserve a poplar tree dating back to the time of World War II.

Four metal bars that had blocked the opening had been cut and footprints in the snow led from the wall opening to the nearby road, where police presume the sign was loaded on to a vehicle.

Another police official said earlier that while all leads were being considered, police were focusing on a theft ordered by a private collector or a group of individuals.

It is the first time the sign, made by Polish prisoners, has been stolen since it was erected in 1940.

A 5,000-zloty ($1,700; £1,050) reward has been offered for information leading to the capture of the thieves.

Auschwitz, which receives more than a million visitors a year, has been run as a state museum since 1947.

Germany recently pledged 60m euros ($86m) to an endowment fund to help preserve the camp.