Recently a friend of mine forwarded to me a slide show comparing the slaughter of Jews during the Holocaust to the treatment of Gazans by Israel. Photos of SS troops were paired with photos of Israeli soldiers, concentration camp fences were paired with military checkpoints, and so on. It had gotten to my friend from a friend of hers in Spain, and that person had received it from someone else in Spain. The text claimed that grandchildren of Holocaust victims were treating Gazans exactly as the Nazis had treated Jews, and that Israelis are no better than Nazis.
My friend is a native of Germany, and has never shown any signs of being anti-semitic. Here is how I answered her:
Heidi, I’m sorry, but this is so slanted it could have been written by Josef Goebbels.
Israel has not rounded up Palestinians for extermination. Jews in Germany were not blowing up school buses full of German children, and there were no Jewish militants vowing to destroy Germany. There was no Jewish militia targeting German civilians with rockets and mortars, then hiding among Jewish citizens so that German authorities could not get them without endangering the lives of those innocent of any wrongdoing. The Nazis did not do everything in their power to avoid inflicting casualties on Jewish civilians.
In Germany, the Nazis chose the Jews as a scapegoat to blame for all of Germany’s problems – the 5% of Germany’s population who had contributed 40% of its artistic and scientific achievements were blamed for 100% of its trouble. In that way the situation is similar: Despotic Arab and Iranian leaders rail against Israel, which covers a tiny portion of the land in that area, smaller than Massachusetts, as though Israel is somehow responsible for the miserable living conditions in their own lands. That works well for them: Every young Arab and Iranian who dies trying to destroy Israel is a young Arab or Iranian who will not be storming the palace.
The Jew-hating militants could bring peace to the Middle East immediately, just by stopping their attacks on Israel. By comparison, the only way Israel could bring peace would be by ceasing to exist.
Modern Germany is a model of a well-working democracy, in my opinion, although I certainly don’t know it as well as you. German people are intelligent and well educated, and the voting German public as a whole sympathizes with the Israeli cause. That’s why Germany grants immediate citizenship and full social benefits to any Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union, and why Germany is the world’s second largest provider of armaments and financial aid to Israel.
I don’t like to see innocent people suffer, not Germans, not Israelis, not Palestinians. I’d really like to see it end in my lifetime.
No offense. I just can’t agree with this.