At press time, Sen. Bennet, and Reps. DeGette, Polis, Tipton and Perlmutter, are undecided on the Iran deal. Here is why they should vote no.
I.
There is a perverse advantage to witnessing atrocities up front, in person. Even the best of the witnesses will say, “then my knees went weak and I went away.”
When he went away — pardon us if we do not name him just yet — his stomach that made his knees go weak may not have been safe. That was a small price. He was safe. Safe then. Safe for two decades thereafter. Perfectly safe. He was able to retreat behind his details, his schedules, his lists, his pre-computer-era lists that, truth to tell, no computer could match for their thoroughness and precision.
The war in which he was a leader was not fought between governments. It was fought between peoples. For an entire people had become corrupted. Not that it thereby lost any of its refinement. Corruption and refinement can go together, making a war fought between two peoples a perfectly clear contest.
We admit, we were astonished when we read of his refinement —his response from Minsk in 1941, recollected in 1961:
“There were the piles of dead people. They were shooting into the pit — it was rather a large one, so I was told, perhaps four to five times the size of this room, perhaps even six or seven times. I didn’t think much about it because I could hardly express any thoughts about it — I only saw it and that was quite enough — they were shooting into the pit and I saw a woman, her arms seemed to be at the back; and then my knees went weak and I went away.”
He went away to Lvov, where he also came up front, in person, and responded:
“I came to Lvov and saw for the first time a charming picture — the railway station which was built in honour of the sixtieth year of the reign of Franz Josef; and since I always find pleasure in that period, maybe because Iheard so many nice things about it in my parents’ home . . . This for the first time drove away these terrible thoughts which had never left me since Minsk, this was the first time I could forget.
“I came to the state police . . . and visited the commander, because I was passing that way, and said: ‘Yes, this is terrible, the things which are going on. We educate the young people to grow up as sadists.’”
Then he added:
“I told everyone who came my way — I said: ‘How can you shoot a woman and children, how is this possible? It cannot be done — these people can go mad or become sadists, and they are our own people.’’
He was speaking to a subordinate, a local commander, who said: “This is true, and this is how it is done here. The shootings are carried out here, too — do you wish to see for yourself?’ I said: ‘No, I do not want to see.’ And he said: ‘We shall see whether you wish to or not, because it is on our way.’ There was a trench, but the trench was already filled in; and there was a kind of spring of blood gushing from the earth — and this, too, I had never seen before. As far as I was concerned, I’d had enough . . . ”
II.
Who is the speaker? Who is this fastidious embodiment of refinement? It is no less, no other than Adolf Eichmann himself. He, whose knees went weak, who recoiled at “terrible things,” who worried about “our” people becoming sadists, who had enough when he saw the spring of blood gushing from the earth — he said all this in 1941 and recollected it at his trial in Jerusalem in 1961.
He! The very person who in 1941 and thereafter was the single person primarily responsible for organizing these mass killings. He! Adolf Eichmann himself, could do what he did not because he was a sadist, not because he did not have a rich civilization behind him, but because he believed in Jew-hatred, because his belief trumped all of his other values — and because he could safely retreat from the brutal reality of his ideology into the impersonal world of schedules and statistics, clauses and subclauses, principles and annexes, all typewritten on unthreatening, unemotional, blank paper, shuffled within and between antiseptic offices.
The Iran “deal” or “agreement” is similarly soothing — blank pieces of paper filled in with schedules and statistics, clauses and subclauses. These pieces of paper, on which so much careful, precise thought has gone into the data written thereon, hide a civilization as beautiful and irrelevant as German music, poetry and literature were to the execution of Nazism. There is a reality behind all the data in the “deal” or “agreement” with Iran. That reality is hatred. It is imprinted on unthreatening paper. It is different from, but as fanatic as, Nazism. Its implementation, even the implementers might recoil from.
Decency and sadism can coexist in one person, and in one people.
Not having the stomach for mass murder, and implementing mass murder, can go together.
Just as Eichmann had a heart, so too the ayatollahs in Iran have a heart; and just as in Eichmann’s case his humanity took second place to his ideology, so too in the case of the ayatollahs.
Just as a dead, murdered, innocent woman’s arms, distorted and out of place, could move an Eichmann — but not move him enough to adjust his ideology, his orders, and his dedication to his genocidal “ideals” — so too the imagination of an Israel destroyed, an “ideal” regularly articulated by Iran, will not be adjusted due to a country economically reinvigorated by the promise of sanctions relief under this deal.
To point to the decency of the Iranian people is to divert from the truth behind this deal.
That truth, that hatred, that “ideal” imprinted on unthreatening paper, is the hatred of Iran for Israel.
That truth, that hatred on the unthreatening paper, is the hatred of Iran for America.
The decency of the Iranian people does not make a shred of a difference. When one people is consumed with hatred for another country, the civilization of that people is not in play.
III.
Your historic vote coming up in Congress cannot responsibly be based on the internal cohesion of the principles and annexes on those unemotional pieces of paper. Internal cohesion on paper is not the issue. The issue is the reality of hatred behind the conditions and intricacies on the paper. These must determine your vote.
One makes peace with one’s enemies, not one’s friends, it is often said. True enough. But only if one’s enemies want peace. Not a single word from a single leader of Iran indicates that this is the case. These leaders, by their own proudly articulated statements, want an unfettered nuclear program, domination of at least the Middle East, sanctions relief and the freedom to spend those freed dollars the way they want — on terrorism in Lebanon, Yemen, Gaza, Iraq and elsewhere.
That, in reality, is what you will be voting on, not on whether clauses and conditions meet sufficient standards of coherence and assurance.
One votes on the deal one has, not on the deal one doesn’t have, it is often said. True enough — if there is no better deal to be had. The tongue-hanging-out thirst of Iran for sanctions relief could not be more clear. To vote this deal down is either to bring a duly humbled Iran back to the table to agree to an end to its pursuit of nuclear weapons, or to face the hard fact that Iranian hatred must be confronted with a combination of tightened, heightened sanctions and military strikes on selected targets.
When the Holocaust ran amok, many more millions of innocent people — non-Jews — were killed. Israel now, like the Jews then, is the canary in the mine that is our world. Keep that in mind, please, when you vote.
Keep in mind that while Congresspeople can walk away, Israel cannot. Unlike the Jews in the 1930s, Israel is armed. Vote responsibly by not forcing Israel to act defensively — if desperate enough, with its own nuclear weapons.
Copyright 2015 © Intermountain Jewish New
