Hamas is Nazi Germany and Israel is valiant and desperate England — explains Canadian Jewish leader

ISGAP is the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy. Its chief concern appears to be fighting the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement that targets Israel. Right after the Gaza onslaught of this summer, in which 2100 Palestinians were killed, including 500 children, and about 70 Israelis, most of them soldiers, the organization provided the following as its “quote of the week,” from Frederick Krantz, of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, which equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. The quote:

On August 20, 1940 Winston Churchill, Great Britain’s new Prime Minister, addressing Parliament as the desperate Battle of Britain continued, with the final victory of the RAF over the Luftwaffe’s assault against England still in the balance, said of Fighter Command, “Never on the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few”. This speech, which rallied the British nation facing a Nazi cross-channel invasion should the Battle have been lost, is directly applicable today to the valiant soldiers and pilots of the Israel Defense Forces. With an attention to minimizing civilian casualties, even at the risks of their own increased losses, unknown in the annals of Western warfare, the IDF is defending Israel from the Hamas terrorists’ sustained rocket and tunnel assault on the civilian population. Let us salute our brave Israeli infantry, tankers, fighter-pilots, sailors, and Iron Dome personnel who, subject to an unbelievable wave of viciously unbalanced media and “international community” blindness and hypocrisy, are bravely and indefatigably defending Israel and the Jewish people. Once again, never have so many owed so much to so few; and once again, in the face of Hamas’ genocidal antisemitic campaign, we Jews repeat, “Never again!” — CIJR Director Prof. Frederick Krantz, from an Address to the Jewish People, Montreal, August 20, 2014

Do I need to explain why the analogy is unhinged/crazed? Gaza has militias that fire rockets; Israel has one of the largest armies in the world. I am reading the late Tony Judt’s book-length conversation with Timothy Snyder, in which he anchors his advocacy for one democratic state in Israel and Palestine in his opposition to the manipulation of the Jewish experience in Europe.

I am a Jew who is not at all reluctant to discuss the troubling consequences of our contemporary obsession with Holocaust commemoration…  [Israel] stands out for its slightly paranoid national political culture and has become unhealthily dependent upon the Holocaust–its moral crutch and weapon of choice with which to fend off all criticism…. In the years to come, Israel is going to devalue, undermine and ultimately destroy the meaning and serviceability of the Holocaust, reducing it to what many people already say it is: Israel’s excuse for bad behavior.

(Thanks to Scott McConnell.)

Speaking of anti-Semitism initiatives, there is another panel on anti-Semitism in Europe at the Wilson Center on October 22. I wonder how much the panel will conflate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

The Rise of Global Anti-Semitism

Seventy years after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism is once again being expressed publicly and violently. Classic anti-Semitic tropes are freely expressed; signs reading “Jews to the gas” and “Hitler should have finished the job,” are common; and Jews have been attacked and murdered. Two panelists will discuss this phenomenon, which is especially prevalent in Europe and the Middle East.

Speakers:
Walter Reich
Senior Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Center; Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Professor of International Affairs, Ethics and Human Behavior, The George Washington University; and Former Director, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Roya Hakakian
Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Center, and author of Assassins of the Turquoise Palace Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran