“Second Holocaust?” Hardly
By Ned Resnikoff - Oct 3rd, 2008 at 2:20 pmWhen I first heard someone say that we needed to stop Iran from being responsible for a “second Holocaust,” I thought it was an error in judgment. But now that Palin repeated a similar line during last night’s vice presidential debate–not the first time she or John McCain has used the phrase–it’s starting to look more and more like this is an official right-wing talking point.
I can’t possibly emphasize enough how stupid and dangerous this kind of talk is. Not only is it needlessly provocative, but it doesn’t even make any sense.
Has Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be “wiped off the map?” Maybe, maybe not. But even generously accepting the claim that Ahmadinejad did intend to threaten the entire people of Israel, to compare the scant substance of inflammatory language and idle threats toward another country to what happened during the Holocaust is to diminish the horror of it–especially considering that Ahmadinejad made the remark at a Holocaust denial conference attended by radical, anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews.
His words were calibrated to cause a very specific reaction: American politicians freaking out and calling for a military incursion into Iran, which in turn makes Ahmadinejad’s anti-Western and anti-Semitic bloviating seem more credible among Iranian conservatives. We’re playing right into his hands, and it’s particularly ridiculous considering that the Iranian Constitution doesn’t grant the country’s president the power to deploy a single soldier to another country. Ahmadinejad couldn’t attack Israel even if it made any sense for him to.
The real danger of bloodshed doesn’t come from Ahmadinejad’s politically calculated rants, but from the chance that American or Israel politicians might mistake him for a serious threat. And parroting this nonsense about a “second Holocaust” leads us straight down that path.
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October 3rd, 2008 at 4:53 pm