Goldberg on Israel

In today's Los Angeles Times, Jonah Goldberg looks at the gulf between the protesters of Israel and reality.

 

Across the Islamic world, and in too many points West, it is still considered a penetrating and poignant insight to call Zionists the "new Nazis." For instance, in Sunday's Gulf News, Mohammad Abdullah al Mutawa, a sociology professor at United Arab Emirates University, penned an essay titled "Zionists are the new Nazis." He began: "Today, the whole world stands as a witness to the fact that the Nazi Holocaust was a mere lie, which was devised by the Zionists to blackmail humanity."

 

At a Saturday New York protest against Israel's military assault on Gaza, some carried signs that read: "Israel: The Fourth Reich"; "Holocaust by Holocaust Survivors"; "Stop Israel's Holocaust"; "Holocaust in Gaza"; and "Stop the Zionist Genocide in Gaza."

 

Type "Israel" and "Nazi" into any news search engine and you'll be rewarded, or punished, with a bounty of such statements just over the last week or so.

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First, let us note that if supposedly all-powerful Israel is dedicated to exterminating the Palestinian people, it is doing a very bad job. The Palestinian population has only grown since 1948. There are more Arab citizens living in Israel proper today than there were in all of Palestine the year Israel was founded.

 

Perhaps one reason Israel fails at genocide is that it isn't interested in genocide? That would explain why Israel warned thousands of Gazans by cellphone to leave homes near Hamas rocket stockpiles. It would clarify why, even amid all-out war, it offers aid to enemy civilians. It would even illuminate the otherwise mysterious clamor from Israelis for a viable "peace partner."

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I think, deep down, the desire to cast the Israelis as Nazis is fueled by the haters' need to see their own hatreds and ambitions mirrored in their enemy's actions. Hamas has an avowedly Hitlerite agenda. The only way to make such an agenda defensible is to convince yourself and others that the Israelis deserve it. Hence, Hamas and its allies insist that when they aim rockets at grade schools and playgrounds, they are resisting the "new Nazis." It brings to mind Huey Long's reported prophecy that if fascism ever came to America, it would be called anti-fascism. Well, with Hamas, Hitlerism comes to the Middle East wearing the mask of anti-Hitlerism.