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Also, not wishing to labour the point but I think it needs to be said. If I were an Israeli I would be concerned about plucking the mote (well large splinter at least) from Adolph Hitler's eye when the beam was so firmly lodged in my own government's.

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Tielhard, you didn't really think I was going to let a "flippant" (as you put it) remark like that sail by me, did you? Not after you made it clear that you were serious about the comment. So let us take a look at some (not all) of the actions taken by the Nazis against the Jews between 1933-1939, and compare them to Israel's treatment of the Israeli Arabs and the Palestinians:

1. February 1933- Notorious anti-Semitic newspaper "Der Sturmer", the motto of which is "The Jews are our Misfortune", becomes the official newspaper of the ruling party/ In Israel racist newspapers are against the law.

2. March 9, 1933- The S.A and the Stalhelm provoke mass rioting against the Jews/ Israel doesn't even have the equivalents of the S.A and the Stalhelm, and the government has never provoked any riots against anyone.

3. April 1, 1933- Official boycott of all Jewish shops and businesses, Jewish physicians, and Jewish lawyers/ Israel has never instigated a boycott of Arab shops, businesses, physicians, lawyers, or any other Arabs.

4. April 7, 1933- The law for "The Recreation of Civil Service Professionalism" is passed, most Jewish civil servants are dismissed/ Go look for a similar law in Israeli law books. The search should keep you occupied for a couple of years, but I assure you you'll find no such thing. Good luck!

5. April 11, 1933- "Non-Aryans" are defined as "anyone descended from non-Aryans… especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith"/ Israel has laws defining Jews, but these are religious rather than racial laws. Other religions in Israel are defined by the leaders of those religions, not by Jews.

6. April 21, 1933- Jewish "Ritual Slaughter", an imaginary Jewish religious rite involving the torture and murder of Christians which had been used by anti-Semites to bash the Jews for centuries, is banned/ Israel has never banned the religious practices of any religion, be they real or imaginary (unless you count polygamy and the right to murder women "in the name of family honour", both of which the Israeli legal system frowns upon).

7. May 10, 1933- The Nazis burn books written by Jews and opponents of the Nazis/ The Israeli Ministry of Education once had some copies of a book shredded, but that was because it had a lot of factual errors.

8. July 14, 1933- All Jewish citizens who were naturalized after WWI, mostly from former Eastern Germany, have their citizenship revoked/ I'm trying to think of occasions when Israeli Arabs have had their citizenship revoked, but I can't think of any. Even Israeli Arabs who are convicted of terrorism remain citizens (although they also remain incarcerated).

9. September 1933- Schools start teaching the "Race Theory"/ Israeli schools teach real science and biology, based in actual fact, and I'm pretty sure that when we learnt about genetics we weren't told we were better than anyone, nor that Arabs or any other race are the genetic equivalents of rats (or worse).

10. Sept 22, 1933- The "Reich's Culture Ministry Law" is passed. The law discriminates against Jewish writers and artists/ Israeli Arab artists are not discriminated against in any laws.

11. January 24, 1934- Jews are banned from German Labour Front/ Israeli Arabs are free to belong to any organization (including the Communist party).

12. May 17, 1934- Jews are no longer entitled to have health insurance/ Israeli Arabs have health insurance, work in health clinics, receive health benefits, et cetera.

13. May 21, 1934- Non-Aryans are banned from the military/ Israeli Muslims are free to volunteer for army service, although hardly any ever have. Bedouins are free to volunteer for military service and many do. Druze serve a mandatory three year period in the army (the same as Jews) and many stay on of their own free will and rise to high ranking positions.

14. September 15, 1934- The Nuremberg laws are passed/ Need I elaborate?

15. November 14, 1934- The Nuremberg laws are enforced: Jews are not allowed to vote or hold public office, the remainder of the Jews in the civil service are discharged, Jews are not allowed to marry non-Jews, Jews are excluded from most professions, Jewish children are forced to use separate playgrounds and locker-rooms to non-Jews/ Arabs in Israel vote and hold public office, even those who are under investigation for treason following a visit to Syria (an enemy state) and a speech they made there calling for Israel’s destruction, and those who are former advisors of Yasser Arafat (and for a long time split his time between sitting in the Israeli parliament and advising one of Israel’s greatest enemies). Arabs serve in the Israeli civil service. Members of different religions can’t legally marry each other without converting in Israel, but this is a religious issue rather than a racial one, and in any case the law is in the process of undergoing revisions in order to allow members of different faiths to marry freely. Arabs are free to practice any profession, with the possible exception of “Kashrut observer”. Arab children usually choose to attend Arab schools (which teach Arabic as a first language and have a heavy focus on Arab history and literature) but are free to attend Jewish schools if they wish to do so. Those who choose to attend Jewish schools use the same playgrounds and locker-rooms as Jewish children.

16. Autumn 1937- The Nazis begin to take over Jewish property/ Israeli law allows for the takeover of lands by the state, and land is often taken from both Jews and Arabs (for the purpose of building roads or other public facilities). The owners are given either replacement lands nearby or monetary compensation.

17. November 1937- The state-sponsored exhibition “The Wondering Jew” in Munich depicts Jews as financial exploiters/ Israel has never held any racist exhibitions of any kind.

18. March 28, 1938- “Law pertaining to the Legal Rights of Jewish Cultural (Ethnic) Organizations”: Jewish communities are no longer legal entities enjoying civil rights/ Israel has no equivalent law.

19. June 9, 1938- The Munich synagogue is destroyed/ Israel preserves all Muslim and Christian holy sites. Even when an explosives belt was found hidden in a mosque in the Arab Israeli town of Taibe a few months ago, Israeli bomb squads risked their lives to remove it from the mosque before blowing it up.

20. June 15, 1938- “Associal action”: all “previously convicted” Jews (including those charged with traffic violations) are rounded up and sent to concentration camps/ Israel doesn’t even have concentration camps.

21. June 21, 1938- Jews, and only Jews, are issued with identity cards/ All Israelis over the age of 16, Jews and non-Jews alike, carry identity cards.

22. July 28, 1938- All Jewish physicians have their certification cancelled/ Plenty of Arab doctors in Israel (including the aforementioned gynecologist Ahmed Tibi, Israeli MK and advisor to Arafat).

23. August 10, 1938- The Nuremberg synagogue is destroyed/ See 19.

24. August 17, 1938- All Jews are required to add “Israel” or “Sara” to their names/ Despite what I posted in the “U.S. Racism II” thread a couple of months ago, all Arabs are free to name themselves and their kids whatever they want, including “Saddam Hussein” (we have a number of those over here, including one born just the other day).

25. September 12, 1938- Jews are forbidden to attend public cultural events/ All Israelis are free to attend any cultural events they like.

26. September 27, 1938- All Jewish lawyers have their licenses revoked/ Arab Israeli lawyers still practicing.

27. October 5, 1938- Confiscation of Jewish passports. New passports are issued with the letter “J” stamped on them/ My Israeli passport does not divulge my religion, and nor does anyone else’s (identity cards do show religion, but that’s another matter entirely).

28. October 28, 1938- Over 15,000 Jews are expelled to the Polish border/ It is widely accepted that Jewish fringe groups did in fact expel Arabs from what would soon become Israel during the early stages of the war of Independence, but it was never an official policy, and no Israeli Arabs have been expelled since then. From time to time Palestinian terrorists have been expelled, but these are not Israeli citizens, and in any case it always causes a large public uproar and they are inevitably allowed to return.

29. November 9-10, 1938- Kristellnacht. Government sponsored rioting against the Jews, possibly the most notorious pogrom in history. 26,000 Jews are arrested by the Nazis, never to return home. 91 Jews are killed, 191 synagogues are destroyed, 7,500 Jewish shops are looted/ Israeli Jews aren’t really big on rioting, unless soccer is somehow involved. Arab Israelis hold riots from time to time, most notably every year on “land day” and during the infamous events of October 2000, but their riots are more about tire-burning and rock-throwing than they are about looting and killing.

30. November 12, 1938- “Atonement Payments”. Jews are ordered to pay for damages caused during Kristellnacht. Jews are banned from attending movies, concerts, et cetera/ see 25.

31. November 15, 1938- Jewish children expelled from schools/ Arab children provided with free mandatory education up until the 10th grade. Arab Israelis and Palestinians are the most educated groups of Arabs in the entire Middle East.

32. November 28, 1938- Restrictions imposed on freedom of travel for Jews/ Israeli Arabs had travel restrictions imposed on them during the time of martial law, but that ended in 1967. Palestinians have many travel restrictions imposed on them, but that’s only because so many of them are trying to blow us up.

33. December 3, 1938- Jewish drivers have their licenses confiscated. Jews are forbidden to own businesses/ Three of the worst drivers I’ve ever had the misfortune of driving with were Arabs, but all three still have their licenses (although one got fined a few hundred shekels last year for driving at about twice the speed limit). Arabs are free to own businesses.

34. January 17, 1939- Jewish dentists, veterinarians and pharmacists have their licenses revoked/ Arab dentists, veterinarians and pharmacists still practicing.

35. January 24, 1939- National Central Office for Jewish Emigration is formed, and ordered to help speed up the emigration of Jews from Germany/ Some right-wing extremists in Israel would probably love to do something similar, but the law, as well as the principles laid down in the declaration of independence, prevent them from following through.

36. January 30, 1939- During a speech in parliament Hitler predicts the “extermination of the Jewish race in Europe” in the event of war/ I imagine Meir Kahane may have said something similar at some point, but he was never the leader of Israel, and in any case his anti-Arab party was outlawed for being racist (no Arab parties have ever been outlawed for being racist, although many quite arguably are).

37. February 21, 1939- Jews are ordered to relinquish all gold and silver/ Arabs in Israel have never been ordered to relinquish gold, silver, or any other material.


I personally feel that I have made my point quite adequately, so I will stop now. Please let me know if you would like to hear "Chapter II- The Part Where Hitler and the Nazis Start WWII and Slaughter Six Million Jews".

I eagerly await your reply

snm, agreed! - and many thanks, too. In all, Nazi Germany issued about 430 (!) anti-Jewish decrees in just over ten years - and that's for the territory of Germany in its1937 frontiers (that is, before annexations). If one includes annexed and occupied territories, the total runs to several thousands.

Agreed, there is a highly irritating tendency to make ill informed and frivolous comparisons with the Nazi régime across a whole range of topics.

One of the problems of this kind of thing is that it tends to trivialize the sheer horror of Nazi rule. Moreover, some of these tendencies are now firmly embedded in English usage, such as the use of the expression 'petty Hitler' for any over zealous or officious person in authority. For example, I've heard traffic wardens referred to (more than once) as 'petty Hitlers'. Even 'petty Musso' would be excessive ...

During WWII there was some propaganda value in occasionally portraying Hitler as an utterly grotesque, 'funny little man', as in "The Great Dictator", and viewed from a great height, the Nazis were not only evil but grotesque, too. However, there seems to be a veritable zest for highly misleading, absurd and trivializing comparisons.

Snm, I may sound ridiculous but I wouldn’t be able to fathom the degree of the Nazi atrocities towards the Jews because I was never involved in it directly or indirectly. Which is when these atrocities become just numbers and figures. This is why most people make comparisons like these to illustrate their points.



They are times when these atrocities are overlooked due to “enemy of an enemy is a friend.”
Mahatma Gandhi is supposed to be a great man but this is the man who called Hitler “my beloved brother”. We were more bothered about the British (in our struggle for independence) than be concerned with Fascism.

Ace, you don't sound ridiculous at all. I recognise that unfortunately most people have scant knowledge and understanding of what happened to the Jews prior to and during the Holocaust, because it does not effect them personally. I am not perfect in this regard- I probably know far less than I should about the plight of the Armenians, the Romanies, and many other peoples from around the globe. But I don't go around making frivolous comparisons that trivialise their suffering, either.

The "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" argument is only applicable when applied to concurrent situations- it doesn't hold up when used to compare current events to historical events.

And your point is?

My point is that your remark in that other thread was frivolous, baseless, dangerous, unfounded, insensitive, and WRONG!

snm,

Thank you for your excellent post.

It was very informative and I think for our younger members here it provides an instructive 'potted history' of what happened prior to and during WW2.

Hopefully, they will take it upon themselves to find out more about this dark part of history.

snm,

Your post deserves a response and I shall provide it shortly. In the mean-time I shall limit myself to noting that your formidable selection and marshalling of facts neither refutes nor supports the point I was trying to make but seems to address instead your perception of what my point was. Accordingly, as I would not want us to continue talking at cross purposes I wonder if you could clarify the following important point before I reply? You once wrote that:

"… Hitler is generally considered to have been the worst dictator in history. The Nazi regime is generally considered to have been the worst regime in history."

I do not think I agree with either of these statements by the way but that is not important. What I would like to know is why do you think that these are the cases? Is it the numbers involved, the ideology expressed or some other factor?

A combination of both. Also, when I said "is generally considered" I meant just that, that there seems to be a general consensus on this point. The statement you quote is admittedly quite simplistic, and while I think it was perfectly appropriate under the circumstances in which I originally posted it, I'm not sure it's complex enough for the discussion that I imagine is going to ensue in this thread.

By the way, I can't wait to hear what on earth you're trying to get at here, but the following just occurred to me: assuming the Nazi regime was not the worst regime in history (I still maintain that it was, but I agree with the statement someone made in a different thread a while back about it not being a competition, and I imagine you would agree with that too) how does that make your original statement any less irresponsible?

Also, please note that as of yet I have not addressed the issue of alleged "formidable selection and marshalling of facts". I'm waiting to see what you're trying to say first.

(That said, if any part of your argument is going to be based on the presumption that "Hitler wasn't really as bad as people say he was" I am going to respectfully decline to take part in the discussion, and will meet up with you on some other thread, or perhaps at my imaginary dinner party).

T, it seemed to me that your original post posited an equivalency, moral and/or historical, between the Nazis and the Israelis. If I have misinterpreted that, please so advise. If not, I think what snm has posted is most germane. Whether Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot can be argued to have been worse than Hitler would appear to be collateral to the issue. Beatka went there already (or attempted to) in the EU thread, btw.

This topic is possibly best left buried, but the following article is just too good not to post. I think it's a must-read for any one of the many posters on this board who have compared Bush to Hitler. The article is long, so I've only copied parts of it, but the whole thing is worth reading. I've also highlighted a passage that relates to some things Bloomsby posted recently in the Book Corner.

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Nazis murdered millions of unarmed people. They put them in ovens. They made soap out of them. They carted off children in boxcars to die and used some of the kids for medical experiments, including injecting dyes into their eyes to see if they could improve their looks. Lower on the list of charges, the Nazis enslaved millions and launched wars for territorial and egotistical gain (and sent many of the conquered populations to death camps as well). Lower still, they banned books and burned them too. They expropriated homes and businesses, banned religions, etc.
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[...]

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I could, of course, get more graphic about what the Nazis did, but I don't much like writing about the Holocaust. It's not merely a depressing subject, its enormity is so depressing, so compacted down with evil and barbarity and cruelty that it folds in upon itself like a black hole. The gravitational pull of its tragedy has permanently bent the trajectory of mankind. Suffice it to say that the Nazis weren't simply generically bad, they were uniquely and monumentally evil, not just in their hearts but also in literally billions of intentional, well-planned, and bureaucratized decisions they made every day.

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And yet, in polite and supposedly sophisticated circles in America today it is acceptable to say George Bush is akin to a Nazi and that America is becoming Nazi-like. Indeed, in certain corners of the globe to disagree with this assertion is the more outlandish position than to agree with it.
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In the September 1, 2003, issue of National Review, Byron York chronicles [...] some of the Bushphobia. He writes,

"A staple of Bush-hating is the portrayal of the president as a Nazi. That has, of course, been a prominent part of other attacks against other presidents, but today it seems to be deployed with particular aggressiveness against Bush. There are thousands of references, across the vastness of the Internet, linking Bush to Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Do you want to buy a T-shirt with a swastika replacing the "s" in Bush? No problem. Do you want to collect images of Bush in a German army uniform, with a Hitler mustache Photoshopped onto his face? That's easy. Do you want to find pictures of Dick Cheney and Tom Ridge and Ari Fleischer dressed as Bush's Nazi henchmen? That's easy, too."

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As York observes, It's not just the intellectual poltroons of the Internet who feign bravery by loudly saying what is patently stupid so that people a fraction dumber than them might mistake it for boldness and conviction. It's not just the masses of undifferentiated cattle who sport their Hitlerfied George Bush T-shirts and who chant slogans with a verve more truly reminiscent of Nuremberg than anything ever uttered by George Bush.
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Indeed, "smart" people mouth this nonsense too. Scholars at Berkeley insist that George Bush shares a psychological profile with Hitler. An editorial writer for the Kansas City Star invokes Martin Niemoller's "First they came for the Jews…" mantra to decry the alleged excesses of the Patriot Act. Various Muslim activists are constantly suggesting that they are the Jews of the Nazified America. Almost everyday I get dozens of e-mails from seemingly intelligent liberals — and a few conservatives — who insist that I "can't deny it" anymore — it's 1933 Germany in America.
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[...]
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Show me the camps. Show me the millions of people being gassed. Show me the tattoos on people's arms. Show me elderly Muslim men being beaten in the streets, their stores smashed, and books burned. Show me huge piles of emaciated bodies stocked high like cords of wood.
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[...]

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So if you can't show me the death camps and the horror, find another example. Compare Bush to Bismarck or Franco or Mikey from the Life cereal commercials for all I care — because any of those would make more sense.
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By the way, I don't say this because I feel a passionate need to defend George Bush. I would make the exact same points if Al Gore were president. I would make the exact same points if anybody running for the Democratic nomination were president. This has nothing to do with partisanship. It has to do with the fact that such comparisons are slanderous to the United States and historical truth and amount to Holocaust denial. When you say that anything George Bush has done is akin to what Hitler did, you make the Holocaust into nothing more than an example of partisan excess.
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[...]

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"Darn those Republicans" does not equal "Darn those Nazis." The Patriot Act is not the final solution. The handful of men in Guantanamo may not all be guilty of terrorism, but it's more than reasonable to assume they are. And no matter how you try to contort it, Gitmo is not the same thing as Auschwitz or Dachau. [...] You don't get carted off to Cuba and gassed if you criticize the president or if you are one-quarter Muslim. And, inversely, there was no reasonable justification for throwing the Jews and the Gypsies and all the others into the death camps. The Jews weren't terrorists or members of a terrorist organization. To say that the men in Guantanamo — or any of the Muslims being politely interviewed by appointment — are akin to the Jews of Germany is to trivialize the experiences of the millions who were slaughtered. Even if you think Muslims are being unfairly inconvenienced, when you say they are the Jews of Nazified America you are in essence saying the worst crime of the Holocaust was to unfairly inconvenience the Jews.

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“Bush=Hitler” The politics of dangerous stupidity.

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I'm puzzled and disturbed by the happy-go-lucky zest for labelling conservative politicians as "Hitlers" and governments as "Nazi". It so happens that I'm not a fan of President Bush, but surely it's perfectly sufficient to describe him as "high-handed" and "arrogant". This also has the great advantage that it's much nearer the mark than those mind-boggling epithets invoking comparisons with the Nazis.

Again, I want to say that I deplore anything that detracts from the appalling uniqueness of the Nazi régime. Facile, unthinking and ill informed comparisions are also an insult to the victims of Nazism and their descendants - whether Jews or not. In almost every country the Nazis attacked and invaded, they governed with the utmost and frenzied brutality, so there are many, many victims - and descendants.

As I said much earlier in this thread, calling any old right-wing politician a "Hilter" or a "Nazi" trivializes and relativizes, as if we lived in a world where "Hitlers" are two a penny. Hence the insult to victims. It's also unhistorical ...

What I truly can't understand is what on Earth possesses people to make these comparisons.


Is it a complete lack of sensitivity for the feelings of the victims, the survivors, their families, and their descendants?

Is it the worst kind of moral relativism? An inability to discern that the actions of the Nazis were any worse than the actions of any other military force or regime in history?

Are people so blinded by their hatred of Bush/Sharon/etc. that they can't see straight?

Is it a herd mentality- one person makes the comparison and other people follow without really thinking through the meaning or the implications? (One person who compared Bush to Hitler actually defended it to me on the grounds that she had read articles that made the comparison, but was incapable of defending her position on her own terms).

Is it simple ignorance, a lack of knowledge or understanding of what the Nazis did? (Indeed one person who invoked the Nuremberg Laws as part of an argument turned out never to have read them, Neimoller's supposed "First they came for the Jews..." quote, which turns up so frequently in discussions regarding Muslims in the US, is in fact a misquote, and I have been criticized for suggesting that someone who compared Guantanamo to Auschwitz needed to brush up on her knowledge regarding the Death Camp).


Or is it a combination of these factors?

Apparently, not many people read books or even watch TV programs that demonstrate, with pictures, the extent and diabolical nature of Nazism. This is ancient history except to those of us who remember the actual events.
I was very young when the victims of Nazism were being counted, when the newsreels showed what Hitler's regime had been so diligent in covering up for years.
This isn't a controversial issue, it is a statement of fact that human vermin led a willing nation into the disaster that almost wiped out a race of people. They did it by spouting hate and fixing blame for problems of their own making on millions of innocent people.
If there is a Hell, the Nazi regime and all of it's supporters belong in it.

What makes the Nazi regime so aweful is not just the numbers but the fact thet the Nazis, before they became Nazis, were ordinary people. I mean, it can't be that Germany at that time just happened to have a huge concentration of "evil" people. - And this does raise the terrifying possibility that given similar circumstances, something as horrendous could happen again.

(I myself am no supporter of Bush and Sharon, but would not think of comparing them to Hitler)

I would, as an Indian like to add that When Mahatma Gandhi said "Hitler is my brother" he meant it in the sense of universal love and compassion, which is hard to understand (I don't) but which I admire. He lived his life by the principles of truth and non-violence, and while it is very easy to scoff at him it is very difficult to actually practise such virtues. He would never have allied himself with Hitler on the principle of "the enemy of my...", in fact when Subhash Chandra Bose, one of our more military freedom fighters tried to do just that, he expressed severe disaproval.

Just bringing this up again for the benefit of a certain individual who yesterday posted that (and I paraphrase here): "the only difference between Israelis and the Nazis is that the Nazis had better uniforms".