Republican Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee is getting a lot of pushback for his incendiary comment that President Obama’s Iran deal will “take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven.”
Huckabee’s phrasing was surely over the top, but he was only echoing what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been saying, for years. What’s the difference between what Huckabee said and Netanyahu saying, “It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany”? Not that much. Maybe the outraged politicians and press should be pointing a finger at the Israeli Prime Minister.
Here are four of Netanyahu’s Iran=Nazis statements in recent years.
Drawing a direct analogy between Iran and Nazi Germany, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu asserted Monday that the Iranian nuclear program posed a threat not only to Israel, but to the entire western world. There was “still time,” however, to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons, he said.
“It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs,” Netanyahu told delegates to the annual United Jewish Communities General Assembly, repeating the line several times, like a chorus, during his address. “Believe him and stop him,” the opposition leader said of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “This is what we must do. Everything else pales before this.”
While the Iranian president “denies the Holocaust,” Netanyahu said, “he is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state.”
In 2012, Netanyahu said that the west’s failure to attack Iran was comparable to the U.S. government’s refusal to bomb the railways leading to Auschwitz in 1944:
“I will never allow my people to live in the shadow of annihilation”
In March 2015, Netanyahu spoke to Congress and compared Iran to the Nazis plotting the Holocaust:
My friend, standing up to Iran is not easy. Standing up to dark and murderous regimes never is. With us today is Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel.
Elie, your life and work inspires to give meaning to the words, “never again.”
And I wish I could promise you, Elie, that the lessons of history have been learned. I can only urge the leaders of the world not to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Not to sacrifice the future for the present; not to ignore aggression in the hopes of gaining an illusory peace.
But I can guarantee you this, the days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over.
In April, Netanyahu repeated the analogy on Holocaust memorial day in Israel:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu compared Iran to the Nazis on Wednesday and warned the Islamic Republic must be prevented from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Netanyahu linked the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews in World War II to Iran’s contested nuclear program and some of the Islamic Republic leaders’ repeated references to the destruction of Israel.
“As the Nazis strived to trample civilization and replace it with a ‘master race’ while destroying the Jewish people, so is Iran striving to take over the region and expand further with a declared goal of destroying the Jewish state,” Netanyahu said.
Is it really any wonder that Huckabee is saying what he’s saying? This is how propaganda works. Others are susceptible to the same rhetoric. Steve Emerson said the other day that Iran was “assuredly” planning a Holocaust in Israel and the United States, so we needed to “take out” the country. Sarah Palin said the same thing five years ago: “Iran’s leaders have repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel and with nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, the mullahs would be in a position to launch a Second Holocaust.” And South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said that the Iran deal is a possible “death sentence” for Israel.
Keep talking, Bibi! The more you screech your incomprehensible rants like the smelly drunk at the back of the bus, the more you make it certain that the Iran deal is going through.
That’s all, Bibi!
http://41.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mb22m3YOSZ1r4fn52o1_500.jpg
Project much? It is indeed possible to think it is now 1938. It’s just that it’s not Iran that is playing the role of Germany.
Huckabee’s rhetoric has been discussed all day on US cable TV shows, from the lefty MSNBC to the right’s Fox news; yet nobody mentioned that Huckabee was just mirroring Netanyahu–discussion is solely about Huckabee’s rhetoric being “over the top” or not. They chat about which GOP POTUS contenders say it’s ok, which say not.
Really depressing.
Talk about your symbol-minded.
And where’s the ADL on this misappropriation of Holocaust imagery? Oh, yeah, here: http://www.adl.org/press-center/press-releases/holocaust-nazis/adl-sharply-criticizes-huckabee-comment-7-26-15.html#.VbfUfLe3wcM, and meet Abe Foxman’s replacement, Jonathan Greenblatt.
“Huckabee’s phrasing was surely over the top, but he was only echoing what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been saying, for years. What’s the difference between what Huckabee said and Netanyahu saying, “It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany”? Not that much. Maybe the outraged politicians and press should be pointing a finger at the Israeli Prime Minister.”
My thoughts exactly!
By the way, the Maccabi Games just started in Berlin.