Oh well I missed it.... for another year

[Griffin NoName]

Holocaust Remembrance Day, 19^th April

Israel's Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, gave a speech comparing Nazi Germany to today's Iran.

Hmmmm.

[Swatopluk]

Nazi comparisions have become so abused that they have essentially lost their power.
Remember: Obama is Hitler AND Stalin while Saddam Hussein was only Hitler (and he had to share the position with Milosevic).
Not to forget all those feminazis and islamofascists. And for fairness, some stupid people compared Dubya to Hitler, although he was clearly Wilhelm II without the brain and interest in science and culture.

[Griffin NoName]

.., some stupid people compared Dubya to Hitler, although he was clearly Wilhelm II without the brain and interest in science and culture.

Nazi comparisions have become so abused that they have essentially lost their power.

Depends on which sector of society you apply this to. Certainly hasn't lost its power amongst my father's generation (WWII veteran). Actually I would say nor my contemporaries. That it's lost power with younger generations would be also for other reasons............. after all  I am not much bothered by the Crimea war, or the Boer war, though my father probably is, but WWI (both grandfathers faught in - and was forced to watch endlessly on TV by one said grandfather as a child - me the child not him) and WWII and Suez (I'm a Brit who grew up in the '50s) have real meanings for me. Plus, I think most Jews still find it abhorrent. So can one say it has lost its power for more people than for whom it retains its power? Dunno.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

From an intellectual POV Hitler/Nazi regime may have lost their power (as Kana used to say, the first to bring them up first loses the debate), but among the general population they are clearly understood as the epitome of evil and that's how the terms (same with socialist, communist, fascist, etc) are generally used, that is, not understanding what they were about but as an emphatic way to say that something is truly evil.

We may understood and scorn the ignorant use but that doesn't stop it from happening.

[Roland Deschain]

An Israeli ambassador comparing Iran to Nazi Germany? "Pot, kettle, black" comes to mind when you consider what's been happening in Israel/Palestine since the end of WWII, although it would be remiss of me not to mention that there are many dissenters to violence, oppression, and theocratic rule in both Israel and Iran. While one can make comparisons between Iran and the Nazis, one can also make other comparisons between Israel and the Nazis, the US and the Nazis, or pretty much any country and the Nazis. I could even draw comparisons between the ancient Egyptian civilisation and any country in existence today. It really means nothing unless you compare the actions of a hated group to your own, and this is something that successive Israeli governments have never wanted to do, for they fear the results.

The ambassador is trying the usual "look at us, poor vilified country" manoeuvre, which really doesn't work when you look at the situation objectively. Iran had nothing to do with the Holocaust, and to bring it up at a ceremony made to honour the dead is to subvert the purpose of that ceremony. The Holocaust was about a group of people (amongst many other groups - gays, dissenters, political enemies, blacks, the mentally disabled, gypsies, etc) who were vilified and named as the reason for Germany's downfall (good film), and used as a means to an end. Whilst it is true that the Iranian government are also using the Jews as a means to an end, which is to focus hate upon them to move the peoples' eye away from their own government's iniquities, they're also doing this as a direct result of the Israeli government's actions over the past several decades.

The invocation to Godwin's Law certainly has removed power from the assertion, but this has the effect of making any valid corellation instantly null and void in the eyes of most people, especially the younger generations. Many people just do not know their history, and seem to completely misunderstand what actually happened and the reasons behind it. I'm not sure on its pre-internet origins, but I know it originally came from Usenet groups, and has diverged from there. I simply fail to understand how people can still think that by just comparing someone or some group to a morally detestable person can instantly make them "win" an argument.

What all of these people rely on is the ignorance of the public and the desperation of those in need, tools used for thousands of years. Will we ever evolve enough as a species to move past such petty things?

[Griffin NoName]

Ahmadinejad : 'Kill all Jews and annihilate Israel

I think that is what Hitler wanted to do (well not the annihilate Israel - difficult prior to 1948).

It is quite a specific statement.

I don't think Israel has plans to kill all Muslims?

[Roland Deschain]

Ahmadinejad : 'Kill all Jews and annihilate Israel

I think that is what Hitler wanted to do (well not the annihilate Israel - difficult prior to 1948).

It is quite a specific statement.

I don't think Israel has plans to kill all Muslims?

No, Israel don't have such a plan, but they've killed quite a few innocent people through their campaigns. My point was that Israel have a lot of faults of their own, one of the biggest being their attitude and actions towards the Palestinians.

Israel was formed on the back of terrorism, and due to the UK pulling out and leaving them all to it, we have the situation there today. No side in that conflict doesn't have blood on its hands, and while I cannot condone Ahmedinejad's reprehensible comment, the Israeli government are certainly not helping themselves out here. The one Israeli Prime Minister to make any serious progress towards a tenable peace in the past two decades was assassinated by a religious zealot, and since then yet more Palestinian homes have been bulldozed to make way for Israeli "settlements".

As I said, I do not condone murder on any scale, or the hate aimed towards any group of people, but there are powers within the Israeli government who do not deserve the power they wield, nor do they truly speak for their people.

[Swatopluk]

As far as I can see the canary in the coalmine is still alive and moderately happy. Iran has still the largest Jewish minority in the whole region and persecution was not ramped up (while other groups saw a significant increase in the same).
That leads me to the conclusion that it is bark and no bite. The proxy wars led against each other look to me more like the Cold War on a smaller scale and far lower than e.g. the conflict between India and Pakistan.
It becomes a real problem when third parties pour oil on the fire and fan it (Saudi Arabia and the US most prominently).
From the point of view of the donkey cavities running both Israel and Iran the art is too keep the tension as high as possible without driving the other side over the edge.

[Griffin NoName]

Ahmadinejad : 'Kill all Jews and annihilate Israel

I think that is what Hitler wanted to do (well not the annihilate Israel - difficult prior to 1948).

It is quite a specific statement.

I don't think Israel has plans to kill all Muslims?

No, Israel don't have such a plan, but they've killed quite a few innocent people through their campaigns. My point was that Israel have a lot of faults of their own, one of the biggest being their attitude and actions towards the Palestinians.

Israel was formed on the back of terrorism, and due to the UK pulling out and leaving them all to it, we have the situation there today. No side in that conflict doesn't have blood on its hands, and while I cannot condone Ahmedinejad's reprehensible comment, the Israeli government are certainly not helping themselves out here. The one Israeli Prime Minister to make any serious progress towards a tenable peace in the past two decades was assassinated by a religious zealot, and since then yet more Palestinian homes have been bulldozed to make way for Israeli "settlements".

As I said, I do not condone murder on any scale, or the hate aimed towards any group of people, but there are powers within the Israeli government who do not deserve the power they wield, nor do they truly speak for their people.

I wasn't condoning Israel. But there is a difference. Ahmadinejad directly threatens my life. I don't like it.