Here is Mike Huckabee, writing in the Jerusalem Post all about the Holocaust. He says he has visited Israel from one end to the other and that when his daughter went to Yad Vashem and said, "How did people let this happen?" she had gotten the situation of the Jewish state.
Here is Barack Obama saying virtually the same thing in a podcast of his conference call with Jewish reporters last week. His prepared comments are drenched in Holocaust rhetoric. He speaks of the international commemoration of the Holocaust. He speaks of his visit to Yad Vashem and being "overwhelmed" by the names there. He says that the memory of the Holocaust has solidified "our deep moral commitment" to Israel. He says his policy as president would give "real meaning to the words, ‘Never again.’"
And in the 15 minutes of the call I was able to listen to, Obama repeatedly says the greatest challenge in the peace process is that Palestinians must guarantee Israel’s security. He makes no mention of the colonies–sorry, I mean settlements. He says that the status of Jerusalem and the borders of the Palestinian state are issues that "the parties themselves have to make a determination" of. I.e., the U.S. will not exercise a forceful role on dividing Jerusalem and giving Palestinians anything like the 22 percent of Palestine they had before ’67–which is the only way that a deal could be struck, with the U.S. forcing it.
In the latest New York Review of Books, Tony Judt writes of the misuse of the Holocaust in our political culture:
When people chide me and others for criticizing Israel too
forcefully, lest we rouse the ghosts of prejudice, I tell them that
they have the problem exactly the wrong way around. It is just such a
taboo that may itself stimulate anti-Semitism. For some years now I
have visited colleges and high schools in the US and elsewhere,
lecturing on postwar European history and the memory of the Shoah. I also teach these topics in my university. And I can report on my findings.Students today do not need to be reminded of the genocide of the
Jews, the historical consequences of anti-Semitism, or the problem of
evil. They know all about these—in ways their parents never did. And
that is as it should be. But I have been struck lately by the frequency
with which new questions are surfacing: "Why do we focus so on the
Holocaust?" "Why is it illegal [in certain countries] to deny the
Holocaust but not other genocides?" "Is the threat of anti-Semitism not
exaggerated?" And, increasingly, "Doesn’t Israel use the Holocaust as
an excuse?" I do not recall hearing those questions in the past.
Wow. And Judt is not even talking about our politicians, who are absolutely unable to criticize Israel and are blackmailed from doing so by the Holocaust talk. Who can claim that on the most serious issues facing us–sectarian conflict in the Middle East–our politics aren’t broken?
