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Aluf Benn editorial: Booby trap between Natanz and Auschwitz

Haaretz’s editor-in-chief says Netanyahu publicly booby-trapped himself to war with Iran by comparing the need to strike its nuclear program with the Jewish request to bomb Auschwitz. In his speech to the AIPAC conference Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moved closer than ever to the point of no return en route to war with Iran.

Netanyahu compared Iran to Nazi Germany, its nuclear facilities to death camps, and his current trip to the White House to a desperate plea to former U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt by the Jewish-American community to bomb Auschwitz.  The Wyman Institute – The Roosevelt Administration, David Ben-Gurion, and the Failure to Bomb Auschwitz: A Mystery Solved.

“Israel has patiently waited for the international community to resolve this issue. We’ve waited for diplomacy to work, we’ve waited for sanctions to work. None of us can afford to wait much longer,” Netanyahu warned, adding that, as Israeli premier, he would “never let Israel live under the shadow of annihilation.”

Netanyahu says, You also refused to bomb Auschwitz

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Netanyahu holding letters between the World Jewish Congress and the US War Department in 1944 (Photo: Cliff Owen/AP)

The Holocaust talk has but one meaning – forcing Israel to go to war and strike the Iranians. Arguments against an attack, weighty as they may be, turn to smoke when put up against the Warsaw Ghetto, Auschwitz and Treblinka. No amount of missiles falling on Tel Aviv, rising oil prices and economic crises matter when compared to genocide. If that’s the situation, the option of sitting quietly, expecting the “world” to neutralize Iran, or waiting for the creation of a stable balance of terror, becomes nonexistent.

If Netanyahu doesn’t act and Iran achieves nuclear weapons capabilities, he’ll go down in history as a pathetic loudmouth. As a poor man’s Churchill.

But Netanyahu booby-trapped himself back while he was still making his way to Washington, when he presented Iran with a public demand: Dismantle the underground enrichment facility near Qom, cease all enrichment activity, and remove the medium-grade uranium from Iranian territory.

Livni decries PM’s Holocaust imagery on Iran

(JPost) – Opposition leader Tzipi Livni decried Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s use of “hysterical” Holocaust imagery in discussing Iran, saying it scared Israel’s citizens and cast the Jewish state as weak.

“We are not in the ghetto and there is no place for Holocaust comparisons,” Livni said. “The nation of Israel is strong. The Jewish Nation today has the brains and the ability to stop our enemies. We don’t need to create an atmosphere of Holocaust threats and annihilation to scare the citizens.”

Netanyahu’s UN speech: Cheapening the Holocaust, comparing Hamas to the Nazis

The war rhetoric of Israel’s leadership since the year 2000 is part of propaganda and the need to dehumanize the Palestinian and Iranian people. War is insane and the intelligence and military leadership has made this clear not to preempt an attack on a sovereign Iran.

More below the fold …

Dehumanization and the Psychology of killing

The act of dehumanization is defined by Miriam Webster as “to deprive of human qualities, personality, or spirit”. More fluidly in its applied state, dehumanization is the act of a country reducing their enemy to a status of less than human both in the eyes of their soldiers and their citizenry. (1) It has been a facet of warfare since we first evolved social groups. (2)”They are foul pagans!” “Look at the tone of their skin!” “They do X, Y and Z like filthy barbarians!” Those three sentences in one form or another have been at the heart of dehumanization from the very start finding the little lines that separate, making the foe seem brutal and alien, classifying them as “the other”.

The Second World War is filled with powerful examples of dehumanization on all sides of the conflicts with the Soviet propaganda machine depicting Germans as “ravening beasts”. Other examples hit far closer to home with US propaganda depicting the famously buck tooth and near sighted “japs”. Even before the war a lot of attention was given to the Japanese treatment of the Chinese with actions that were declared to be beyond the pale of civilized warfare.

That is the start of dehumanization, of making an enemy something “else”. They are cast as purely evil, lower in the eyes of your civilization and in the harshest light possible. The psychology behind it all is that it will allow soldiers to kill easier, and it will lend more support from the civilian population.

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The dehumanization has instead gone underground to the smoke pits and after hours chats in the barracks, especially amongst the enlisted troops. Slang terms such as “hadji” and “raghead” are in common use for troops of all races and racial slurs and jokes against the enemy are extremely common. Mixed with stories of combat and the enemy’s behavior during it, and reports of the latest murder of civilians by suicide bombing, or the torture and beheading of a fellow serviceman is more then enough to keep the process of dehumanization alive and well, if underground.

What would Muhammad drive?

PM: Israel has acted against US advice before

WASHINGTON (JPost) – Citing historical precedents in which the US and Israel did not see eye-to-eye and Israel acted according to its own perception of its interests, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told congressional leaders that Israel viewed things differently than the US did at times, because it was not a global power and was more vulnerable.

Israeli sources said Netanyahu, meeting congressional leaders before flying back to Israel Tuesday evening, noted that David Ben-Gurion declared independence against the advice of the US; Levi Eshkol launched a preemptive attack in 1967, against Washington’s counsel; and Menachem Begin decided to bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 despite US opposition.

[Will Bibi Netanyahu launch a preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2012 to embarrass President Obama in an election year? – Oui]

The Book of Esther

The story of Purim is told in the Biblical book of Esther. The heroes of the story are Esther, a beautiful young Jewish woman living in Persia, and her cousin Mordecai, who raised her as if she were his daughter. Esther was taken to the house of Ahasuerus, King of Persia, to become part of his harem. King Ahasuerus loved Esther more than his other women and made Esther queen, but the king did not know that Esther was a Jew, because Mordecai told her not to reveal her identity.

The villain of the story is Haman, an arrogant, egotistical advisor to the king. Haman hated Mordecai because Mordecai refused to bow down to Haman, so Haman plotted to destroy the Jewish people. In a speech that is all too familiar to Jews, Haman told the king,

    ” There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your realm. Their laws are different from those of every other people’s, and they do not observe the king’s laws; therefore it is not befitting the king to tolerate them.” Esther 3:8.

The king gave the fate of the Jewish people to Haman, to do as he pleased to them. Haman planned to exterminate all of the Jews.

Mordecai persuaded Esther to speak to the king on behalf of the Jewish people. This was a dangerous thing for Esther to do, because anyone who came into the king’s presence without being summoned could be put to death, and she had not been summoned. Esther fasted for three days to prepare herself, then went into the king. He welcomed her. Later, she told him of Haman’s plot against her people. The Jewish people were saved, and Haman and his ten sons were hanged on the gallows that had been prepared for Mordecai.

The book of Esther is unusual in that it is the only book of the Bible that does not contain the name of G-d. In fact, it includes virtually no reference to G-d. Mordecai makes a vague reference to the fact that the Jews will be saved by someone else, if not by Esther, but that is the closest the book comes to mentioning G-d. Thus, one important message that can be gained from the story is that G-d often works in ways that are not apparent, in ways that appear to be chance, coincidence or ordinary good luck.

Would Israel’s Courts Hang Haman?

Rabbi Lior compares Obama to villain Haman

(JPost) – Meretz MK calls for investigation against rabbi who called US president a “Kushi”; Lior brands Europeans as “Nazi collaborators.”

Kiryat Arba’s Chief Rabbi Dov Lior compared US President Barak Obama to Haman – an enemy of the Jews in the Book of Esther- during a conference in the West Bank this week, Army Radio reported. He also labeled the Obama a “kushi ” of the West, a derogatory term used to describe people of African descent.

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Netanyahu and Obama butting heads (Reuters)

In the same speech, the rabbi branded the Europeans as “Nazi collaborators,” and called for increased settlement activity in the West Bank “to eradicate the jungle.”

In reaction to his comments, MK Zahava Gal-On (Meretz) called on Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein to launch an investigation against the rabbi for incitement to racism.  

Harry S. Truman as a Modern Cyrus

This article tells the background of Truman’s decision, from his lifelong love for the Bible to the pressures he faced from opponents and his own advisors, who warned that political realities, especially postwar Europe’s need for Middle Eastern oil, outweighed the needs of the Jewish people for a homeland. But Truman was resolute in defending the establishment of Israel on religious and humanitarian grounds.

To illustrate the deterioration of good-will towards Israel since the Oslo Accords in 1992

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 29 — The government today made public three letters sent by former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad to prime ministers of Israel. The Star’s online portal said the documents clearly reflect Malaysia’s firm stand against Israel’s campaign against the Palestinians.

Datuk Seri Anifah Aman was quoted as saying the decision to release the letters was made to dispel recent allegations that the government has not been consistent in its stance in relation to Palestine and its people.

The foreign minister in a statement today said the three letters are:
 a) A letter from Dr Mahathir Mohamad to Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli Prime Minister, dated December 21, 1993.
 b) A letter from Dr Mahathir Mohamad to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister, dated March 14, 1997.
 c) A letter from Dr Mahathir Mohamad to Ehud Barak, Israeli Prime Minister, dated June 8, 1999.

Malaysia’s alleged ties with Israel were again dragged into the spotlight when the Wall Street Journal quoted Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim as saying in an interview that he supported “all efforts to protect the security of the state of Israel.” He later clarified to say his backing was conditional.

This led to Umno rivals and Dr Mahathir attacking the opposition leader as a Jewish sympathiser. PKR pressure group Jingga 13 retaliated by highlighting the presence of Israeli vessels in local ports, claiming this affirmed claims that Malaysia had clandestine ties with Israel.

Malaysia is a staunch supporter of Palestine and has no diplomatic relationship with Israel. Muslim politicians have long vied for support from Malays by denouncing what they say are inhumane acts of aggression by Israel towards its neighbour.

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

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