In today's world, it is chic to use the Holocaust in order to promote your own agenda. And that has worked nicely for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Saddam Hussein, the Voting Rights Act detractors, Sandy Hook anti gun activists, the environmentalists, PETA, and now for activists against Israel. Look at the signs at any pro Palestinian demonstration and you will see the most vile accusations against Jews and Israeli leadership.
As the Gaza War drew to what it is hoped will be a protracted ceasefire, 327 Jewish Holocaust survivors and their extended families, placed a despicable ad, which The New York Times accepted.
Studying that ad carefully tells a rather different story. First of all, very few of those 327 individuals actually experienced Nazi atrocities personally. My count was about 14 people. Another 26 survivors were either very young or babies, which is not cited here to minimize an involvement of some kind. The 287 other so-called survivors, like me, have only had a secondary experience with the Holocaust through parents, grandparents or other relatives, yet these self proclaimed morality experts jumped on the anti-Semitic bandwagon with the people who have been terrorizing Jews and Israel since 1948.
Since the Holocaust represents the greatest absolute evil in human history, the use of Nazi analogies, graphics, photos and comparisons will bring many people to your side of an issue. This is especially important to understand since the other side--Zionists and Israel--do not use Nazi ideology to describe their enemies--even though Israel's enemies today may be even worse than Nazis.
Hamas leaders are actually worse ideologically than Adolf Hitler--the only difference is that Jews today have the power and skills to defend themselves. And here lies the problem that the world's Left has with Israel. The Left does not divide humanity into Good and Evil. They divide the world into Weak and Strong; they have compassion for the weak and disdain for the strong--which is why they hate America and Israel.
The Jewish Left is even worse and most of those 327 so called "Jewish" individuals, many of whom do not even practice Judaism, are hard Left. True Leftism/Liberalism seems to be a form of the Stockholm Syndrome in which kidnapped victims begin to identify and support their kidnapper's political views.
We are witness to the "Israel-Palestinian Syndrome," where some Jews, such as those in J Street, begin to identify with their enemies' goals, even though they include the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews worldwide.
Still, 327 Jews out of 14 million worldwide is an extremely small percentage. One can probably get the same percentage of Americans to agree that the US never went to the moon, or that the earth is flat, or that they saw Elvis yesterday. But even though that ad represents an insignificant number of people, it is currently being used by anti-Semites and radical Islamists to promote the idea that Israel is truly committing genocide. If one cannot tell the difference between the evil of Hamas and the goodness/decency of Israel, then one's moral compass is truly broken.
The International Jewish anti-Zionist Network's charges of a "massacre in Gaza" is an obscenity. Comparisons to the Holocaust trivialize the Holocaust. Even numerically, the audacity to compare a war which Hamas began and in which it suffered about 2000 casualties, to burning, gassing and torturing 6 million non-violent and innocent Jews is mind-boggling.
The real problem is that these Leftist Jews are mostly pacifists who hate all war, because part of the reality of war is that civilians will also get killed--not just the military. Someone should tell each one of these 327 immoral Jews that if not for war and a lot of German babies dying in Dresden and Berlin, they would all not be here today. Unfortunately, the fact that war is sometimes the only answer is an important lesson of the Holocaust.
It was Hermann Goering who said, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." This was a Nazi ideal and the Israel haters, both Muslims and Leftist Jews, have picked up on it.
The "survivor" ad talked about the massive lie of "extreme racist dehumanization of the Palestinians in Israeli society." What these ignorant Jews do not realize is that one fifth of Israel's society is made up of Palestinian Arabs who are equal Israeli citizens. They vote, they have businesses, they work in Israel and they have Arab representation in the Israeli Knesset. There is an Arab justice on the Israeli Supreme Court.
I just returned from Israel where I saw how happy the Israeli Arabs are today--they are the freest Arabs in the entire Middle East. If they were not happy, they could easily sell their houses, take their money and belongings and move not too far away to a culture and religion that is exactly like theirs--any Arab country in the Middle East. Yet they stay in Israel because they like it there.
As far as calling Israel an Apartheid state, never has a bigger lie been told. In fact, Jews are often subject to discrimination in Israel, because since, according to Jewish law, Jews cannot work on the Sabbath, Arab citizens get all the service jobs. Jews are not permitted to work on the Sabbath, even if they are not religious--because other Jews may not be served by them on that day and hotels do not obtain Kosher certificates if they allow Jews to break Jewish law. I stayed at The King David Hotel and the overwhelming majority of employees were Arabs who are permitted to work on the Jewish Sabbath, so that is who The King David hires for the rest of the week. Working in one of the many great hotels in Israel is one of the best jobs around--and Israeli Arabs appreciate it..
Another lesson of the Holocaust besides the big lie is victimhood. The Nazis blamed the Jews for the ills in their society, just as the Palestinians and those 327 Jews blame Israel for the ills in Palestinian society. Victimhood is a terrific and convenient political tool which motivates people whose leadership has abused them, to feel disadvantaged and marginalized. It is all because of The Zionists aka The Israelis aka The Jews--who are the culprits of all their problems. Where have I heard that before?
Finally, this group of 327 calls for the economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel--a page taken right out of the Nazi playbook where the Germans boycotted Jewish businesses, fired all Jews who worked for them and then--on Kristallnacht--burned all the Jewish books and synagogues--a true academic boycott. Shame on every one of those 327 Jews who, without Israel today, would be experiencing the same death threats and abuse that we see in France.
Today, our enemies know we have massive power because of Israel--and we will never walk into gas chambers again--nor will those 327 Jewish traitors.
Irwin N. Graulich is a motivational speaker and author on ethics, morality, Judaism, religion and politics, and president of Bloch Graulich Whelan Inc., a leading marketing, communications and branding company in New York City. He is a child of two Holocaust survivors.
