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Obama’s comparison of the Holocaust to Palestinian suffering

A Nazi soldier was carrying lollipops in his pocket. He asked Jewish children whether they wanted a lollipop. When they said yes and opened their mouths, the Nazi shot them in the mouth, dead.

In his speech to the Arab world in Cairo, June 4, President Obama compared the Nazi Holocaust to the treatment of the Palestinians. Obama referred to both Israelis and Palestinians as “two peoples with  . . . a painful history.” Obama put Jewish history and Palestinian history on the same plane. He said:

“Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. . . . Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed — more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today.

“ . . .Threatening Israel with destruction — or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews — is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.

“On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people — Muslims and Christians — have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than 60 years they’ve endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations — large and small — that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. And America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity and a state of their own. (Applause.)

“For decades then, there has been a stalemate: two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive.”

Right. Exactly right. Compromise will be elusive, in fact impossible, so long as an historical, factual, moral, rhetorical and presidential equivalence is placed on Jewish and Palestinian history — an equivalence between humiliations large and small and the icily callous murder of children as the Devil himself could not conceive: via lollipops.

Geza, from the small Hungarian town of Adevande, was taken into a Hungarian labor battalion. An officer tortured the laborers. One day, the battalion decided to give him a present — a watch — to slow or stop his cruelty. It worked, at first. Then he said: “So, you steal watches? You are thieves! You must all hand in your watches. Those who refuse will be placed on the tracks when the evening train passes here.” Six people refused. That evening they buried six mutilated bodies near Kharkov.

Indeed yes. Compromise will be impossible so long as equivalence is placed on “the pain of dislocation” and bodies on the tracks in the evening.

“ . . . anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust . . . On the other hand it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people — Muslims and Christians — have suffered in pursuit of a homeland.” On the one hand, on the other hand —

On Rosh Hashanah, 1941, the Jews of Eisysky and nearby towns were taken to the old Jewish cemetery in front of open ditches, ordered to undress and then were shot in the back of the head by Lithuanian guards with the encouragement and help of the local people. Zvi Michalowsky, 16, counting the bullets and the intervals between one volley of fire and the next, fell into the grave a split second before the volley of fire hit him. He felt the bodies piling up on top of him and covering him. He felt the streams of blood around him and the trembling pile of dying bodies moving beneath him. In the cold, dead night, he could hear the murderers singing and drinking and celebrating. After 800 years, on Sept. 26, 1941, Eisysky was Judenfrei. Naked, covered with blood, he crawled out of the pit, went to a Christian home and knocked on the door. “Please let me in,” he pleaded. Naked, covered with blood, age 16, he was told: ‘Jew, go back to the grave where you belong!’”*

True enough. There will be no compromise between Israel and the Palestinians so long as the chief advocate and power behind the proposed compromise is an American president who believes that life in the refugee camp is, “on the other hand,” the equivalent of the lethal hatred faced by Holocaust survivors such as Zvi Michalowsky, 16, in 1941.

One need not minimize the suffering of the Palestinians to acknowledge the unique enormity of the Holocaust. One need not equate the Holocaust and, “on the other hand,” the suffering of the Palestinians to achieve peace. Just the opposite, in fact. Peace will be built when the Jewish history is no longer distorted, reduced, compared, equated, transmogrified, “on-the-one-handed on-the-other-handed.” The claim that the Jews have no history in Palestine is but the predecessor lie to the claim that because both Israel’s and the Palestinians’ aspiration are “legitimate,” they are equivalent. They are not. The Palestinian people never had to transcend soldiers who lured their children to death with lollipops, placed them on the tracks in the evening or told them to go back to the grave, let alone shot them dead there. Mr. Obama, a bit more accuracy, and sensitivity, please!

*The three incidents are from from Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust, by Yaffa Eliach.




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