JK writes:
If Avigdor Lieberman and the purveyors of the mufti/Hitler-photo gambit in Israeli embassies want to be honest, they might add these photos of India’s Congress Party leader Subhas Chandra Bose visiting Germany. He was in Berlin at the same time as the mufti, and for the same reason: to rid his nation of British colonialism. Here are some nice shots.
Just for fun, they could throw in this photo of Bose–one of the heroes of the Congress Party, alongside Gandhi and Nehru–making a speech during WWII in Imperial Japan!
Bose
If Jeffrey Goldberg can understand the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" concept–it’s the basis of his logy analysis in the current "Ideas" issue of The Atlantic–why can’t Mr. Lieberman and Co. understand the historical context of British colonial subjects looking for help from Germany, however foolish and immoral it can appear to us at first blush?
A number of present-day political parties found inspiration of one sort or another in the Nazis, including India’s Hindu nationalist BJP party. The party that’s the present-day BJP sent missions to Germany thru the 1930s. Yet it’s the BJP that tightened relations with Israel in 2003, when Ariel Sharon visited Delhi.
Israeli embassies may also wish to slip in info about Pierre Gemayel, a personal guest of Hitler in 1936 who, inspired, then founded the Lebanese Phalange. But that might not be so good either…. Israel aligned itself with the Phalange during its invasion of Lebanon, and in 1982 inserted Pierre’s son, Bashir, as Israel’s hand-picked president!
I suppose the BJP and the Gemayels (not to mention Anwar Sadat who thought the Nazis were cool) are forgiven for their Nazi past because of alliances with Israel (and "anti-terror" rhetoric), while Palestinians as a population get demonized because they resist dispossession. So what’s Israel really concerned about–what happened in WWII, or maintaining domination over the land? We can see it’s the latter.
