On Recognizing the Humanity of the Enemy

A very interesting new display at the US Holocaust Museum's website features formerly unpublicized pictures of an unusual sort from Auschwitz. Among the images, taken from a scrapbook of one of the death camp's top functionaries, one can see SS officers, both men and women, and other camp "staff" laughing and having fun during their "down time."

In one image, they are hamming it up for the camera; in another they are sunning themselves in beach chairs; in a third they are enjoying blueberries as they listen to an accordionist.

SS officers having fun
US Holocaust Museum

SS at rest
US Holocaust Museum

As significant as these pictures are as documentary evidence to complete our picture of the horrific past, they only take on true import if we can learn something practical from them for the present.

I think the transcendent importance of these pictures to us, as Jewish Israelis, is in their potential to force us to understand something about the nature of our enemies. What I understand from these images is as follows:

Just because an experienced and veteran terrorist wears a suit, can be sophisticated at posh diplomatic meetings, or knows how to tell a good joke, or just because a resident of Gaza, Ramallah or Shechem seems to be a friendly guy and loves his children - all of that has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on his potential to be intent on murdering as many Jews as he can. In fact, under the right circumstances, he may be the one to literally tear apart a defenseless Jew unfortunate enough to fall into his hands (as happened in Ramallah, the Palestinian Authority's "Beverly Hills," in 2000).

Smiling PA Chief Mahmoud Abbas (Fatah)

That is what these pictures can teach us.

The Nazis were not aliens or monsters. They loved classical music, puppies, art, their children - and many were vegetarians, environmentalists; and some leading ones were "gay". So what?

That's what I have to say to those Israeli leftists who arrogantly claim that those of us on the Right can't see the humanity of the Arab enemy. They have it exactly backwards - it is they who can't see the humanity of the enemy. It is exactly the humanity of our enemies that makes them multifaceted, complicated beings - of whom one aspect is murderous, bloodthirsty, maniacal Jew-hatred.

PA police (Fatah), saluting

'They Want That There Will Be No More Jews Here'

A Saturday night entry by my fellow Arutz Sheva blogger Tzvi Fishman reminded me of the wisdom of children who receive an authentic Jewish education - and the idiocy of the adults who have taken leave of their own education and common sense.

In his latest blog entry, Fishman describes a meeting he had with the late Torah giant Rabbi Avraham Elkana Kahane Shapira. He asked Rabbi Shapira if it was permissible to relinquish parts of the Land of Israel to non-Jewish sovereignty. Fishman reports that the rabbi answered him by saying, "Why do you ask me such a question? Ask any six-year old in heder. He'll tell you the answer. You don't have to ask me."

Well, I happen to have a six-year-old child. She is not in heder, exactly, but she just started first grade in a religious public school. I didn't ask her to render a decision on the legality of concessions over the Land of Israel, but I did have an experience that led me to wonder if the country would not be better off run by Jewish six-year-olds.

Back before Rosh Hashanah, on September 11 actually, the President of the State of Israel, former Prime Minister, veteran of many Israeli governments, and a member of the nation's founding generation, Shimon Peres, made the following statement during a toast with foreign ambassadors to Israel. Referring to recent Palestinian Authority rocket attacks on Israeli towns in the Negev, Peres said:

"It makes no sense why they would continue to shoot at us despite the fact that we disengaged from the Gaza Strip."

Peres - internationally recognized statesman, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Israeli icon - just can't figure out why the Arabs in the PA continue to attack us after we concede to them land they claim they want from us for an Arab state. (This drove at least one frequent Arutz Sheva contributing columnist, Isaac Kohn, into a rage. You might want to read his take on our esteemed president after finishing up here.)

Well, it so happens that I was privileged to consult an authentic expert on Israel-Arab relations - my daughter. Did I mention that she is six years old?

She knew about the expulsion from Gush Katif and northern Samaria from previous conversations we had after she'd seen some pictures of Israeli soldiers throwing other Israelis out of their homes. Those were some tough questions for someone raised to love and honor "our boys in uniform." I told her as diplomatically as possible that some people believe that taking Jews out of parts of the Land of Israel and handing it to the Arabs will make the Arabs stop trying to harm us and would hopefully bring peace.

However, living in Israel, it is almost impossible for her not to know that rockets continue to fall on our brethren in the south.

So, when I asked her why she thought the Arabs were still firing rockets on Jewish towns even after we "disengaged" from Gaza and northern Samaria, my daughter had an answer. It was as follows (paying attention, Mr. Peres?):

"Maybe they don't really want the Land of Israel, but they want that there will be no more Jews here."

Double bull's-eye, honey.

Rabbi Shapira, if there is an Internet connection (wireless, I bet) in your new celestial yeshiva and you happen to glance at Arutz Sheva, then I hope you see this post and smile.

Chomsky and the Jewish er I mean Gilmore Girl Problem

Noam Chomsky, the discredited linguistics professor at MIT, is one of the worst anti-Semites on earth.  Son of a Jewish Hebrew teacher, Chomsky is a dogmatic Stalinist who hates Jews, Israel and the United States.  He considers the United States a worse regime than Nazi Germany.  He is closely associated with Holocaust Deniers and wrote the  sycophantic introduction to a book promoting Holocaust Denial by Robert Faurrison, a French Holocaust Denier.   He endorses terror attacks against Jews.  He leads the campaign of support for Neo-Nazi Norman Finkelstein. He was the main apologist within the United States for the Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot while it was committing genocide against its own citizens.  So naturally he was given a royal reception when cordially hosted a few years back by Ben Gurion University.

The world's greatest collection of anti-Chomsky material on the web can now be found here .   In particular, take a look at this and at this.

By the way, this is hardly the world's most pressing matter, but I really resented the fact that the Jewish girl in the Gilmore Girls TV series has a poster of Noam Chomsky on the wall of her dorm room.  No - it is not a show I ordinarily watch, but when I am on a treadmill in the gym I look for TV shows to watch that do not require deep thought because my brain is not getting much oxygen.  (Of course many professors in Israel have brains that NEVER get any oxygen!)

And in one of the episodes of Gilmore Girls assaulting me upon the treadmill, Paris (played by a Jewish actress), the neurotic Jewish girlfriend of the younger Gilmette, has a huge poster of the Chomsky on the wall of her dorm room. A neurotic Jewish coed having a pretentious name who likes arch-Stalinist anti-Semite Noam Chomsky?  Talk about offensive ethnic stereotyping! 

For more on this atrocity, see this.

Here is the dialogue from one episode of Gilmore Girls:

Gilmettes

PARIS: I'm not alone.
JANET: Oh, really? Who do you have besides your poster of Noam Chomsky?
PARIS: Who do I have?
JANET: Yeah. [Paris begins to speak but falls silent.] That's what I thought.  Very sad.
[Janet exits to her bedroom. Paris stomps off to her own bedroom, followed by Rory.]
PARIS: I'm gonna grab Barbie's neck and squeeze until her expandable hair falls out and she's dead, dead, dead!
(kind of like Noam Chomsky's Khmer Rouge friends affectionately squeezing the life out of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians?)

Photo of Cambodians who no longer object to Chomsky's "theories" about politics and linguistics.