Today, January 27th is Holocaust Memorial Day, when people throughout the world commemorate the six million Jews who died at the hands of Hitler and his many willing assistants in all nations.
The Times cartoon above, showing a gargoyle like, hook nosed Benyamin Netanyahu 'cementing in a wall to peace' with the blood of those Arabs who identify as Palestinians is pretty much standard fare nowadays in the kind of country the UK has become. Or more accurately, as Caroline Glick recently pointed out, the kind of country Britain has been for some time but now feels increasingly comfortable with revealing openly.
While there are undoubtedly a number of sporadic commerativeceremonies in Britain today, the overwhelming thrust of the country's leadership and its policies are conveyed far more accurately by the cartoon above. And whether they want to admit it or not, that cartoon, and the fact that it was allowed to run today is not only overt anti-semitism, but craven cowardice. Can you imagine the Times ever running the Mohammed cartoons?
Just a day ago, Liberal MP David Ward compared Israel's policies with those of the Nazis at Auschwitz:
"Having visited Auschwitz twice - once with my family and once with local schools - I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza."
While he was eventually forced to make a pro forma apology by party leaders, subsequent remarks by Ward signal that he hasn't changed his views one iota.
The sophistry that people like David Ward and many other Britons indulge in is pretty wide spread these days...that there's a difference between 'Jews' - especially Left wing Jews willing to play along with the anti-Zionist narrative - and 'Israel'.
As the above cartoon reveals, what they really object to is Jews having the nerve to actually have the right of self-determination and to insist on defending themselves, something they wouldn't dare criticize for any other group.
What they're ultimately comfortable with, whether they admit it or not, is the idea of Jews as victims,perpetually dependent on their tolerance and goodwill. The cartoon underlines that hideous comfort in Jews as victims by using the motif of a wall to slam Israel's security barrier, which has saved countless Israeli lives from Islamist terrorism. Holocaust Remembrance Day, if nothing else, should be a reminder of how quickly the winds can change when it comes to the Jews, and it is a strong and powerful Israel that makes sure that passively going along with those odious breezes is not an option anymore.
The 'anti-Zionist' is almost inevitably an anti-semite, and usually you don't have to dig too deeply at all.
Since this cartoon appeared in Britain's largest newspaper,and judging by the comments a lot of people found it appropriate, it's worth taking a moment to review a little history. Because Britain's own record on the Holocaust is frequently glossed over.
The UK was directly complicit in the death toll of the Holocaust by defying international law and closing off Jewish immigration to Palestine on the eve of the Holocaust with the issuance of the White Paper in 1938, trapping millions of Jews in Europe without a place to flee to.Needless to say, few of them were welcome in Britain.
Britain even refused to negotiate with the Nazis to save one million Jews during the last part of WWII. In 1944, Himmler attempted to make a deal with the Allies to exchange one million Jews, including the still intact Jewish population of Hungary, about 500,000 people, for a few trucks, some soap and some coffee. The official name of the Nazi proposal was Blut fur wahren - literally, blood for goods. The Americans signaled that they might be willing to sign on to the deal but the British vetoed it, explicitly because they were more interested in placating the Arab interests in the Middle East and did not want these Jews in Palestine.They even went to the extent of imprisoning Joel Brand, the Hungarian Jew and member of the Hungarian Aid and Rescue Committee who was Himmler's envoy to the allies for months in Cairo, in order to effectively stonewall the proposed deal.
Brand later testified under oath in the Eichmann trial that he heard Lord Moyne, the British Minister Resident in the Middle East who was present when he was interrogated by British Intelligence say, "What can I do with these million Jews? Wherever would we put them?"
Hungary's Jews ended up in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen instead of Israel,where most of them were murdered.And while Britain was doing its best to prevent Jews from coming in to Palestine, at the same time they were allowing unlimited Arab in-migration there.Anyone interested in the full sordid story should read Lucy Dawidowicz's ` The War Against the Jews : 1933-1945: and Joan Peter's prize winning From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine.
Even after the war, the British did their very best to strangle the nascent Israel at birth. The British not only made a point of turning over as many strategic locations and arms caches within Palestine to the Arabs as they could manage, but were happy to arm and train the Arab armies that launched a jihad to massacre the Jews of Israel in 1948, a mere three years after Auschwitz was liberated. The most effective Arab fighting force in that war and the one that carried out the ethnic cleansing of the Old City of Jerusalem and the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria was the Jordanian Arab legion, led by British officers under the notorious anti-semite Colonel John Glubb, AKA 'Glubb Pasha'.
This is the country whose elites presume to sit in judgement over Israel's 'crimes'.
I'd say it was shameful, but how does one even convey the concept of shame to those whom have ceased to even understand what that word means? To those incapable of feeling it?
UPDATE: The Times,of course has defended this cartoon. “This is a typically robust cartoon by Gerald Scarfe,” said a spokesperson for The Sunday Times, adding, “The Sunday Times firmly believes that it is not anti-Semitic. It is aimed squarely at Mr Netanyahu and his policies, not at Israel, let alone at Jewish people.”
They also claim that the cartoon's appearance on Holocaust Memorial Day was 'just a coincidence' because of the recent Israeli elections. As if they have no control over what appears in their sordid rag whatsoever.
QED on what I wrote above, exactly. 'It's not all Jews we hate..just the uppity ones with the nerve to stand up for themselves. You see that, don't you?"
One can almost hear their German counterparts of seventy years ago telling their Jewish compatriots that even they had to admit, Hitler made a lot of good points and besides, he wasn't really after them....just the Jews in the East, the communists and the international bankers.Not the 'good Jews.'
Drool, Britannia. When people who purport to be decent embrace indecency wholeheartedly, they deserve what happens to them.
This is why I boycott British products and TV programs and academics.
ReplyDeleteI don't think this is the kind of country Britain has become. This is the country they have been for hundreds of years. They portrayed the Irish in the same way back in the 1700 and 1800's - interestingly, with big fat noses.
ReplyDeleteAsk Indians how they were treated or Algerians and so on.
I don't want to imply all Brits are like this but they have a tendency to elect the type of people who say and do things like this.