Israel’s bigwigs attacked at dawn on a wide front. The president in Germany, the prime minister with a giant entourage in Poland, the foreign minister in Hungary, his deputy in Slovakia, the culture minister in France, the information minister at the United Nations, and even the Likud party’s Druze Knesset member, Ayoob Kara, in Italy. They were all out there to make florid speeches about the Holocaust.
Wednesday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and an Israeli public relations drive like this hasn’t been seen for ages. The timing of the unusual effort – never have so many ministers deployed across the globe – is not coincidental: When the world is talking Goldstone, we talk Holocaust, as if out to blur the impression. When the world talks occupation, we’ll talk Iran as if we wanted them to forget.
Last Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared, in front of the Auschwitz extermination camp ,that the world must learn from the Holocaust to unite against new threats. His reference to “impending danger” and an “existential threat”, as well as “murderous evil [which] must be stopped as soon as possible, before it can realize its schemes”, was of course aimed at the “nuclear threat” of Iran.
To prevent this “evil”, Netanyahu emphasized the need of a strong state and a powerful army and added:
We must warn of the impending danger to the rest of the world and at the same time to be ready to defend ourselves.
We the Jewish people learned the lesson [of the Holocaust] well after we lost one-third of our people.
I pledge as prime minister that we will never let the hand of evil harm our people and our state, never again.
All enlightened nations must absorb this lesson.
At the end of his speech, Netanyahu set out the “holy” defense line and said that he would not to allow a “new Amalek”, a reference to a Biblical king who waged war against the Jews, to threaten again to destroy the Jewish nation.
During a visit to Berlin, Israeli President Shimon Peres stated Tuesday that Iran is the world’s “center of terror” which seeks to impose its will on the Middle East. He said:
Ahmadinejad’s regime is openly calling for Israel’s destruction, denying the Holocaust, and preventing peace with the Palestinians. It is destabilizing Lebanon and Yemen and trying to take over Iraq.
Today’s center of terror is in Iran. Terror is the military wing of Iran’s political ambitions. The Iranians aspire to take control of the Middle East, and to destabilize existing regimes.
On the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, during a ceremony at Yad Vashem on Monday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called on the international community to fight against the increasing “evil” of anti-Semitism which is seeking the destruction not only of Israel but also the rest of the world. Netanyahu continued:
There is an evil that can spread and threaten the security of Jews. We know that this just begins with Jews, and then continues on to the rest of the world. There are today new people who hate Jews, with new reasons for [wanting] the destruction of the Jewish state. This is our concern.
Without explicitly signifying Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, Netanyahu declared, “This is a test for humanity and we will see in the coming weeks how the international community stops this evil before it spreads.”
We have a snap analysis of the interview in Today’s LiveBlog. The interview of the Basiji member to which interviewer Jon Snow refers is also on Enduring America:
Jon Snow: “Mr President do you accept that this country is at a cross roads? We are one week away from the end of the year and that the deadline when you have to give a response to the nuclear offer made by the P5+1.
“The P5 group that meets with Germany from the security council of the United Nations – apparently representing the security council that has made this proposal about enrichment taking the material outside the country, bringing it back. And they say by the end of this year that is the deadline for a response.”
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: “I think part of this question must be corrected. Actually we have given the proposal for the exchange of the fuel and according to the regulations they have to provide the fuel without any conditions. Read the rest of this entry »
Britain has been caught up this week in a debate over whether the leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin, should appear on the BBC’s headline political discussion programme, Question Time. The BNP, which has its roots in the 1980s National Front, is primarily defined by its views on race and immigration, which many see as a “whites-only” or “whites-first” policy, both for the BNP’s membership and for its vision of England/Britain.
Griffin was joined by British Minister of Justice Jack Straw (Labour Party), Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion Sayeeda Warsi (Conservative), member of Parliament Chris Huhne (Liberal Democrat), and playwright and deputy chair of the British Museum, Bonnie Greer.
Videos of protests outside the BBC and a six-minute extract of the discussion are followed by the full programme in six parts:
Before the programme, crowds gathered outside the BBC to protest Griffin’s appearance.
From the start of the discussion, the focus was on the BNP and race, wrapped up in notions of “British” or “English” identity, personified initially by Winston Churchill and then by the multi-cultural Britain that has developed since World War II. Notice also the exchange over the Holocaust, which is likely to dominate British news coverage today:
The programme moved on to other topics, including an interesting exchange over British and Islam in Part 3 and over the merits of “indigenous” residents of Britain in Parts 5-6. Question Time in full (6 parts):
Mr Smith gives a snap analysis of the President’s language and strategy:
There was no mention whatsoever of internal Iranian politics or struggles, apart from the notion that the Iranian people is wholeheartedly behind the Supreme Leader [and, presumably, the Government]. Ahmadinejad’s rehashed Holocaust revisionism for quite some time. I guess this was because for months he was silent on the theme.
There were more attacks on European nations, accusing them at times of complicity with the Zionists. It is interesting that, while Ahmadinejad has written off next week’s demonstrations in New York when he appears at the United Nations, he is aware of them.
Last weekend, we wrote about an article in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet by Donald Bostrom, calling for an investigation into numerous claims in the 1990s that Israeli soldiers stole the organs of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and the furious response from Israeli diplomatic circles. Although the Swedish Embassy in Israel distanced itself from the report, the Swedish government. Stockholm refused to condemn the article, saying briefly that Sweden has a “free press”.
This is an anti-Semitic blood libel against the Jewish people and the Jewish state. The Swedish government cannot remain apathetic… We know the origins of these claims. In medieval times, there were claims that the Jews use the blood of Christians to bake their Matzas for Passover. The modern version now is that the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) soldiers use organs of Palestinian to take money.
Then, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman compared today’s Sweden with the country of the 1940s, telling Sweden’s ambassador on Thursday evening:
It’s a shame that the Swedish Foreign Ministry fails to intervene in a case of blood libels against Jews… This is reminiscent of Sweden’s stand during World War II, when [it] had failed to intervene as well.
What should not be forgotten, as we noted in the earlier article, is that this dispute overlays diplomatic frictions over Israel’s policy toward Palestine and possible political advantage in displacing that issue. So expect the rhetorical battle between neo-Holocaust scenarios, in which the Israeli military is victimised, and the claims of freedom of the press to continue for some time.
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at Auschwitz (see separate entry) Haaretz’s Gideon Levy responded sharply, declaring, “Holocaust remembrance is a boon for Israeli propaganda“.
Mr Smith gives a snap analysis of the President’s language and strategy:
Last weekend, 
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