Netanyahu and the Holocaust

Many op-eds are praising Netanyahu's "calling out" the United Nations and holding up pictures of Auschwitz to prove the Holocaust occurred, and it was, surely, a dramatic moment and a confrontational one, but Gideon Levy at Ha'aretz is suggesting that this isn't the right approach at all:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cheapened the memory of the Holocaust in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday. He did so twice. Once, when he brandished proof of the very existence of the Holocaust, as if it needed any, and again when he compared Hamas to the Nazis.

If Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust, Netanyahu cheapens it. Is there a need of proof, 60 years later? Or, the world might think, is the denier right?nd it is doubtful that any historian of stature would buy the comparison the prime minister made between Hamas and the Nazis, or between the London Blitz and the Qassam rockets on Sderot. In the Blitz, 400 German bombers and 600 fighter planes killed 43,000 people and destroyed more than one million homes. Hamas' Qassams, perhaps the most primitive weapon in the world, have killed 18 people in eight years. Yes, they sowed great terror - but a Blitz?

And if we can compare a poorly equipped terrorist organization to the horrific Nazi killing machine, why should others not compare the Nazis' behavior to that of Israel Defense Forces soldiers? In both cases, the comparison is baseless and infuriating.

On Internet news groups, there's the famous rule called Godwin's Law: the first person in a discussion thread to compare someone they disagree with to the Nazis, loses. Far too many Arabs and Iranian polemicists have compared Israel to the Nazis, and Israel is often quick to do the same with its opponents. As Levy notes, though, it really cheapens the Holocaust. And why respond to Holocaust deniers with photos of Auschwitz? This suggests there's actually a real historical debate. There isn't. It happened. It's playing Ahmadinejad's own game. And I wouldn't want ot live under Hamas rule, by any means, and I don't know what they might be capable of if they had the power Germany had under the Third Reich, but as they exist today, walled up in Gaza, they are not comparable to the Nazis as overlords of Europe. I think Levy has a point: Netanyahu descended to the rhetorical level of Israel's enemies and dignified the crazier Holocaust denials with a response, and cheapened the real horror of the Shoah in so doing.