Holocaust politics has come into major play in recent months and in some of the most bizarre ways. First there was Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s breaking out literal blueprints for Auschwitz when he spoke at the U.N. Did Bibi believe that those nations seated were not familiar with the European events of WWII? Possibly he felt they hadn’t seen Defiance or Inglourious Basterds, or one of the many other revisionist films dealing with this topic to come out of Hollywood in recent years, and needed to brush up on the subject. Whatever the case may be, Netanyahu never once addressed the fact that Israel has had nukes for decades and has steadfastly refused to join the IAEA, sign a nuclear non-proliferation treaty or allow inspections of their nuclear facilities. Iran has complied on all of these accounts. Yet the Israeli Prime Minister could only chastise the countries that had the courtesy to remain seated and listen to what the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had to say. Netanyahu’s behavior only bears out the need to initiate a scholarly study of this WWII event, just as President Ahmadinejad has suggested. To blindly accept information from those who pontificate on its occurrence is a religion, not a dispassionate examination of historical fact.
While the European events of WWII may play a big role with a Jewish population they are not as significant to many others, especially most Muslims. Why should they be? These events only affected some Muslims with the creation of Israel. America backed U.N. Resolution 181 primarily because of the events in Europe during the war. If the U.S. had really believed in democracy they would have supported Palestine being returned to the Arabs at the end of the British Mandate. After all Britain had previously supported Arab independence with the McMahon-Hussein correspondence of 1915, two years before the Balfour Declaration was issued. England and France eventually said, “No” to both the Arabs and Jews with the Sykes-Picot Treaty and divvied up the spoils of the former Ottoman Empire between themselves.
Shortly after the Balfour Declaration President Wilson rightly observed on July 4, 1918,
The settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or political relationship, rests upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned, and not upon the basis of the material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement for the sake of its own exterior influence or mastery. If that principle is to rule, and so the wishes of Palestine’s population are to be decisive as to what is to be done with Palestine, then it is to be remembered that the non-Jewish population of Palestine – nearly nine-tenths of the whole – are emphatically against the entire Zionist program. The tables show that there was no one thing upon which the population of Palestine was more agreed upon than this. To subject a people so minded to unlimited Jewish immigration, and to steady financial and social pressure to surrender the land, would be a gross violation of the principle just quoted, and of the People’s rights, though it is kept within the forms of law. ((President Woodrow Wilson speech on Independence Day July 4, 1918, text in Tannous, Izzat. 1988. The Palestinians: Eyewitness History of Palestine Under British Mandate. I.G.T. Company, New York, p. 72.))
Twenty-nine years later and another world war under our belt, the U.S. sang another tune. Truman pragmatically observed when questioned regarding his overruling a report by the State Department advocating against the creation of Israel, “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.” ((“Harry Truman,” Wikipedia; also quoted in “Anti-Zionism,” ed. by Teikener, Abed Rabbo & Mezvinsky; also in Cape Cod Times “The Sorrow of Truman,” Sean Gonsalves, Nov. 28, 2000.)) This support from the Truman Administration was borne out of guilt and political expedience. It is notable that Truman refrained from championing having all those displaced Jews sent to New York instead of Palestine.
Sixty-two years after the creation of Israel the west is still consistently battered with images of WWII by Israelis and Jews as some type of bastardized excuse for nearly any type of crime or aberrant behavior they might be guilty of. In July 2009 New Jersey resident Ben-Ami Kaddish pled guilty to spying for Israel. The top secret documents he sent were far more extensive and damaging than those Jonathan Pollard, another Jewish spy handed over to Israel. For sixty seconds the media had a field day playing the holocaust card and whining that M.R. Kaddish was too old to stand trial and that the events occurred years ago. Kaddish was eventually convicted of a single offense and sentenced to pay a $50,000 dollar fine. Kaddish’s reply when Judge Pauley passed sentence, “No problem.” ((New York Times, “Man 85 Avoids Jail Time for Giving Military Secrets,” Benjamin Weiser, May 29, 2009.)) Obviously spying for Israel pays well.
The media along with Representative Jane Harman and the usual suspects, AIPAC and ADL were also very instrumental in getting the trials of AIPAC spies, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman derailed. Oddly enough the federal official who was not Jewish and involved in passing information to Rosen and Weissman is presently doing hard time for his part of the crime.
In September, Toronto journalist and author, Naomi Klein and a group of artists signed a letter calling the Toronto Film Festival on the carpet for celebrating Israeli filmmakers. Klein likened the recognition as the same as celebrating California wine during the 1960’s grape boycott or South Africa during its apartheid history. She and the other signers were instantly labeled anti-Semites and self-hating Jews. Some went as far as offering absurd rationalizations how Klein could be Jewish and an anti-Semite too. This was no doubt why activist Jane Fonda backed down faster than a turkey tossed from a 747 when confronted by this monolithic lobby.
Most recently holocaust politics has played a big role in the Roman Polanski case. Polanski, who was convicted of drugging and having unlawful sex with a minor, has been a fugitive from American justice for 31 years. The Los Angeles Times ran two articles and an editorial on Polanski in their October 1, 2009 edition. When was the last time a movie director warranted three pieces in a single issue, none dealing with his latest hit film? All three articles invoked the holocaust as some excuse for not sentencing Polanski. One piece even went as far as to mention the fact that the director was arrested on Rosh Hashanah. As if the Swiss police were lying in wait for Polanski like nefarious Nazis to capture him on a Jewish holiday. According to this line of thinking then any Catholic pedophile should be given a pass on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
Regarding Polanski’s arrest, Peg Yorkin was quoted, “My personal thoughts are let the guy go. It’s bad a person was raped. But that was so many years ago. The guy has been through so much in his life. It’s crazy to arrest him now. Let it go. The government could spend its money on other things.” It is highly doubtful Ms. Yorkin would be expounding such ideas if it was her 13 year old daughter who was drugged and sodomized. The fact that a woman would defend Polanski only serves to demonstrate how warped the thinking is of those practitioners of holocaust politics. Bringing the events of WWII in as some jaundiced defense for Polanski also smacks of gross elitism. The thinking is that what happened to Polanski’s mother being sent off to a camp is so traumatic it would be cruel and unusual punishment to send him to prison. Guess what, prison is supposed to be punishment for committing a crime, especially one as socially unacceptable as pedophilia. The logical end to this type of thinking would be to give all Chinese-American rapists a pass since over 6 million Chinese civilians were slaughtered by the Japanese during WWII. ((The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust, Iris Chang,)) The most time Polanski can ever do is 16 months. That is less than two years for brutally stealing a young girl’s childhood.
This use of holocaust politics allowing Israel to summarily dismiss the Goldstone Report and rationalize that Ben-Ami Kaddish is too old to prosecute only makes the argument that Jews considered themselves above the law, specifically because of events which occurred 70 years ago in Europe. Of course there are those exceptions, Bernie Madoff who stole primarily from Jews, and certainly wasn’t a beneficiary of holocaust politics is now doing time. It does beg the question that if Polanski’s case is so ancient that the Los Angeles D.A. shouldn’t bother with it, then an explanation is certainly due as to why so much of the government’s time and money was spent seeing that alleged Nazi guard, John Demjanjuk was deported for a crime that he already served time for and was found not guilty of by an Israeli court.
Debra Winger is on record saying, “The whole art world suffers from such arrests [Polanski’s].” ((“Euro outrage over Polanski arrest,” Variety.)) Hollywood and the media continue to bellyache about Mel Gibson’s 2006 DUI arrest and he didn’t touch a person, let alone a young girl. Where is Winger’s support for an artist like Mr. Gibson? When the cast of Seinfeld recently reunited the media was conspicuously silent about Michael Richards’ racial invective against African-Americans at a comedy club in 2006. ((It is a public record that Michael Richards committed the act mentioned in the article. YouTube videos of the occurrence were the first to break it. It was also covered on Huffington Post at the time.)) Obviously Mr. Richards’ crime was old news and wasn’t worth bringing up.
Accountability is something all countries and persons should face for their actions. No one should be above their country’s laws. No country should be above international law. Considering Israel’s recent war crimes and the fact they are chomping at the bit to bomb Iran, the dropped cases against AIPAC spies and the excusing of a convicted pedophile it should give one pause to wonder if the consistent use of holocaust politics has created a chosen group that is above criminal prosecution and accountability for their crimes.