Germans should stop feeling Holocaust guilt: Ahmadinejad

[ECH1969]

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Germans they should no longer allow themselves to be held prisoner by a sense of guilt over the Holocaust and reiterated doubts that the Holocaust happened.

In an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, Ahmadinejad said he doubted Germans were allowed to write "the truth" about the Holocaust and said he was still considering traveling to Germany for the World Cup soccer tournament.

"I believe the German people are prisoners of the Holocaust. More than 60 million were killed in World War Two ... The question is: Why is it that only Jews are at the center of attention?," he said in the interview published on Sunday.

"How long is this going to go on?" he added. "How long will the German people be held hostage to the Zionists?... Why should you feel obligated to the Zionists?

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyid=2006-05-28T152033Z_01_L28632352_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAN-AHMADINEJAD-HOLOCAUST.xml&src=rss&rpc=22

[Orrin_73]

1. He desperately wants to go to germany during

the world cup. But the question is whether the germans will let him in. On a side not, I read somehwere that the neo nazis in germany will be cheering for iran.

[WhiteTara]

2. I don't doubt the Holocaust, but good question

why are the Jewish people the only ones at the center. The Roma, the gays, communists and anyone else they didn't like were killed also.

This is such a hard issue. Six million people of one race being murdered is terrible. I wonder how many native Americans were slaughtered when they were invaded by the Europeans, but no one gave them a country made up of someone elses. As a matter of fact, we reduced them to the smallest and "worst" part of their lands and have been stealing them back ever since. I have always believed the Palestians have been wronged from the get go at the creation of Israel. They were murdered and forced off their lands, literally out of their homes, the 1967 War stole more of their land and homes. And this is in their recent memories. And still they are being systematically killed every day.

I have no answers. Ahmadinejad says the Jews should be given land in their homeland of Europe. Novel idea. What say you Europe, take back your refugees?

[JVS]

3. I believe that the British offered to create a Jewish state in Uganda.....

but the offer was rejected.

[still_one]

5. good question my ass

it neglects the fact that the final solution was to kill every Jew in the world. It neglects the fact that the iranian president is a virulent anti-Jewish bigot who is an embarassment to Iranians everywhere

[William769]

7. Wasn't he the recently who said death to Isreal?

[OKNancy]

9. I'd like to see as much vitriol thrown to this idiot as

to the Pope in the other thread.
( I'm not a Catholic or religious fwiw )

[Gman]

37. Ha! That'll be the day at DU

like I said there, it's no different here than at FR when it comes to Catholic bashing.

[JohnKleeb]

41. It would be, wouldn't it?

This thread has nearly 4X less responses than the ones about what Benedict said and most of hte responses to what Benedict said were negative and ugly. I acknowledge that the Catholic Church has its flaws. I don't get the way most reacted. The pope was asking a rhetorical question I believe when he asked where was god, I don't know why pepole got so mad for a guy trying to heal old wounds and remember the most tragic event of the past century. Yes, the Catholic Church didn't fight the Nazis in the Holocaust but are they exclusively to blame, no not at all. I agree with you and Nancy though that this not what hte Pope said should be getting most people's virathol and anger because hell the pope was remembering the Holocaust and its victims while Ahmadijad mocked the victims as he's been doing.

[Marie26]

64. He is mocking

I'll probably get flamed for this, but I think it comes down to some feeling that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." The Iranian Pres. is an enemy of Bush, & so I think people are inclined to give him a pass. Or to believe that everything that he says is being somehow twisted or filtered by the Bush Admin. But that seems sort of simplistic to me - can't they both be bad? Can't they both be dangerous? I've been paying attention to Ahmadinejad for awhile & he truly makes some sort of hateful remark about Jews every month or so. It's like he can't help himself. He's very anti-Semitic, has a big mouth, & seems to enjoy taunting people. Now, this doesn't mean we should invade Iran, but it does mean he's a jerk & a bigot, at the very least. Plus, if he is this nutty, it makes war w/Iran an even worse idea. There's still many years before Iran comes close to having nuclear power - he'll lose power soon & hopefully someone more reasonable will take control (in both Iran & the US).

[JohnKleeb]

79. You're not gonna get any flames from me

I think you're right and it's sad because the world is more complex. I like everyone here doesn't think highly of Bush and I think like you it's possible for us to despise Bush and those who hate him. I hate Bin Laden and Al Queda for preaching hate to Westerners, Secularists, and Jews. The world isn't a black and white place but rather a shades of gray one.

[bdamomma]

122. but bush does not see gray

that is how wacked out he is.

[Name removed]

100. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Marie26]

102. Oh, Please

That is a "worst of DU" post for sure. Ahmadinejad is not "asking questions." He's got all the answers. He thinks the "Zionists" are using the false myth of the Holocaust to support Israel. Please don't act like he's saying this because he cares so much about the plight of blacks, or gays (who can be executed in Iran), or gypsies (who are not very welcome in Iran). He's saying this cause he hates Isreal and Jews, & is always looking for a chance, any chance, to bash the "Zionists." Was he "asking questions" when he sponsored a cartoon contest for the most anti-Holocaust cartoon? How about when he held a conference of Holocaust deniers? How about when he called for Israel to be wiped off the map? Not many questions about Israeli policy there, just a lot of hateful ranting. It IS possible to criticize Israel's actions w/o needing to launch into rants or deny the Holocaust occured. There's a big difference between honest discussion & bigoted rants. And it is possible to ask questions about Israel/Palestine relations w/o being labeled an anti-Semite. It happens here all the time. In fact, it's common in most liberal media outlets. There's no "end of discussion" because of the Holocaust - the discussion is always ongoing. I'm not in favor of a lot of Israel's policies, but that doesn't mean I have to be hateful about it. Ahmadinejad is an obvious bigot & an anti-Semite. Why would anyone feel compelled to defend someone like that? The scariest thing to me is that many here seem to not only defend Ahmadinejad, but actually agree with him.

And hey, here's some links:

"Society of Gypsies in Israel" - http://www.geocities.com/domarisociety/english1.html
"History of Gay Israel" - Israel is among the leaders in equality for sexual minorities http://www.thegully.com/essays/gaymundo/020220_gay_israel_history.html
"The Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews" - http://www.iaej.co.il/

[geek tragedy]

104. I believe that poster thinks like Ahmadinejad.

Hence his/her "ze Joos haff marketed zerr victimhood" remark.

[Marie26]

106. I think so too. nt

[wordpix2]

125. so right, at least some at DU know what's going on

[Name removed]

138. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ScreamingWhisper]

133. Hear! Hear! Excellent! n/t

[geek tragedy]

103. "[T]he Jews marketed their victimhood."

Gee, I wonder why people accuse certain 'anti-Zionists' of being anti-semitic. Truly a mystery.

[wordpix2]

124. what a disgusting piece of anti-Jewish propaganda that statement is

:puke:

[Emendator]

171. Good point

"Yes, the Catholic Church didn't fight the Nazis in the Holocaust but are they exclusively to blame, no not at all."

The Church did what it could. Whenever people complain about what Pius XII and the Church did to save the Jews, one should answer: more than anyone else at the time. FDR refused US entry to a boat of refugees. The US did not enter World War II to save the Jews.

[PsychoDad]

23. the final solution...

The final solution was to kill every undesirable human, every subhuman, to eradicate them from the gene pool. Hitler and the Nazis started not with the jews, but with the handicapped and mentally ill.

But the catholic church, among others, protested and the Nazi's changed their focus.

Everyone the Nazi's felt were undesirable.. Gays, Slavs, Roma, Jehovah's witnesses, liberals, etc, were slated for extermination.

Not just the Jews.

For some reason the Church, among others, remained silent about these groups.

Peace.

[still_one]

49. The Church remained silent about the Jews during the war also

Pope Pius did very little protesting. History has already written that chapter, along with the Spanish inquisition, and other injustices

Read Mien Kompt if you want to know where it started.

[eagler]

152. Israel is a sovereign nation now ,period ,and to say that they

or any nation should be wiped out is too naziesque and evil. The present day area that is today's Israel was formed out of the old Ottoman empire which sided and lost WW1 with Germany along with Iraq Iran Syria and Lebanon.

[William769]

6. Maybe because it was over 6 million.

:eyes:

On Edit: I am Native American. Should I also ask them to take back all the refuges in America?

[MrPrax]

13. Hey you got it half right...

If the game is 'Who did the Nazis kill the most'--the gold goes to the Russians and the others...the Nazis killed upwards of 25-30 million of them, but because of the cold war, we have been taught to ignore that part.

The Nazis ideology of 'superiority of race' was definitely as much a motiviation there as it was in the killing camps with Jewish people...fair's fair.

But let's agree that there might be a kernel of truthiness in Ahmadinejad; he is somewhat inelegant, to say the least, in making his somewhat 'racist' comments and he is really not the one to open the discussion on the subject.

[wordpix]

25. Ahmadinejad's "somewhat racist comments?" The guy is totally a racist & a

wacko, too. A lot of Iranians would like to see him gone as well as Israelis.

[Igel]

29. I'm not sure you're clear on truthiness.

It's not a good thing.

[Name removed]

32. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Igel]

43. Ah, we've checked out the depths of truthiness.

I must say, anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist are two adjectives that I've never had applied to me before.

In any event, the thing about truthiness is that the conclusion of the reasoning is fervently desired to be true, and felt deeply to be true, but is ... alas ... almost certainly false, or sufficiently untrue to not merit the use of the word 'true'.

I was quibbling with your use of the word. Nothing more. It's a professional hobby.

[bemildred]

48. LOL.

You stand exposed at last ....
:rofl::rofl:

[wordpix2]

74. I guess you don't read, then

[NuttyFluffers]

116. that's odd. same person, two accounts? huh. wonder why.

either that or you got a neighbor who's channeling you. how curious.

[wordpix2]

123. Same person with 2 computers in two different parts of the world, is that

a problem for you?

[NuttyFluffers]

145. a curious behavior...

esp since 2 pcs in 2 parts of the world shouldn't make much of a difference; one could still use the same account. a strange phenomenon usually occurs when i've seen such multiple accounts on other message boards. oh well, i'm sure it's all very innocent this time.
:hi:

[wordpix2]

159. yes it's innocent. Have you seen the passcode DU gives out? No way I

could remember it between my two computers so I just signed on with a similar name at work. Guess what? That computer will be gone soon so you won't have to worry.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

167. you know that you can change the password.

just trying to help.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

166. lol

2 computers!

2 accounts!

One supersonic spacecraft to shuttle the elite DU'er to and fro! No, wait, a unicorn! Hell yeah!

[ScreamingWhisper]

134. "....kernel of truthiness in Ahmadinejad"...You are Joking? Right?

"...Russians and the others...the Nazis killed upwards of 25-30 million of them."
Where do you get that figure? can You state your source?
Total Soviet losses Military and Civilian was just over 21 mil (God that is staggering...)
I would think the largest difference is that the Jews were rounded up and defensless during the
course of their own extermination. They didn't go out in a blaze of melodramatic war bravery, but in silenced despair.

http://ww2bodycount.netfirms.com/

[BayCityProgressive]

14. you have got to be kidding

right? That post was so misinformed and ridiculous. How about all of us European Americans get forced back to Europe too while we are at it! :eyes:

[wordpix]

26. unfortunately I do not think BareNaked was kidding

[WhiteTara]

86. I have a feeling that Native Americans

would love to force us back to Europe...somehow I doubt we would be well received as most of us were "huddled refuse from their teaming shores" and it was good riddance to us.

What I said was that when Israel was created, the people now living in Palestian terrority drive by their old homes and see Israelis living in them. Somehow I think that must be very hard, and then, for them to be treated so terribly, kept in ghettos forced to got throgh checkpoints for everything and to be denied for any whim? this does not make me respect or admire the Israelis. Nor does it make me feel sympathy for them. I remember Sabra and Chatila. I was just beginning to work in the news room, and there at 2 in the afternoon one fine fall day, there on the satelite feed were piles of dead Palestians. There was a high fence and people had been forced to the fence and then shot. It was one of the most devastating things I had ever seen.

When I was small, my father was in the occupation army and we were stationed in Austria. My mother took us to Buchenwald. I have read the Eli Weisel's book. I have read the Diary of Anne Frank. What happened was horrific, but what the Israelis have done is horrific too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacres

The Sabra and Shatila massacre (or Sabra and Chatila massacre) was carried out in September 1982 by Lebanese Maronite Christian militias in the Sabra and Shatila (صبرا وشاتيلا) refugee camps. The Maronite forces stood under the direct command of Elie Hobeika, who would later become a longtime Lebanese parliament member and in the 1990s also a cabinet minister. The number of victims of the massacre is estimated at 700-3500 (see below).

The camps were externally surrounded by Israeli soldiers throughout the incident, and the militias had been sent in by Israel to find Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) members. The Kahan Commission, an inquiry into the massacre established by the Israeli government, found that while the Phalangists alone, and no Israelis, were directly responsible, it also "asserted that Israel had indirect responsibility for the massacre", and named then Israeli Defence Minister (and future Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon, among several prominent Israelis, as bearing "personal responsibility" for the events.
snip
The massacre provoked outrage around the world. On December 16, 1982 the United Nations General Assembly condemned the massacre and declared it to be an act of genocide.<12>
snip

On September 28, the Israeli Government resolved to establish a Commission of Inquiry, which was led by former Supreme Court Justice Kahan. The report included evidence from Israeli army personnel, as well as political figures and Phalangist officers. In the report, published in the spring of 1983, the Kahan Commission stated that there was no evidence that Israeli units took direct part in the massacre and that it was the "direct responsibility of Phalangists". However, the Commission recorded that Israeli military personnel were aware that a massacre was in progress without taking serious steps to stop it, and that reports of a massacre in progress were made to senior Israeli officers and even to an Israeli cabinet minister; it therefore regarded Israel as bearing part of the "indirect responsibility". Among those it considered to bear a part of this indirect responsibility, the commission found that Ariel Sharon bore "personal responsibility" and recommended his dismissal from the post of Defense Minister; it also recommended the dismissal of Director of Military Intelligence Yehoshua Saguy, and the effective demotion of Division Commander Amos Yaron for at least three years. These recommendations were carried out. Even though the Kahan Commission concluded that Sharon should not hold public office again, he would later become Prime Minister of Israel.<15>

[megatherium]

19. Anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism. nt

[PsychoDad]

35. Isn't that argument similar to saying....

That if you don't agree with the Nation of Islam that you are by extension Anti-African American?
or...
If you don't agree with Christian Dominionism you are anti-Christian?

Does Zionist = All Jews? Or is Zionism simply a political position and Judaism a Race and a Religion?

I guess my question is, Do all Jews consider themselves Zionists? Are all Jews by default Zionists?

If not then Anti-Zionist = Anti-Jewish is patently and evidently false. Isn't it?

I know that there are quite a few non-Jewish zionists in the Christian Dominionist/Fundimentalist camp. So It's seemingly not exclusive to Jews.

Peace.

[megatherium]

39. Your points are all fine and good, but I still believe that

it is wrong to suggest that of all identifiable national/ethnic/religious peoples, the Jews do not deserve or need a homeland of their own. Now I won't defend all the crap the Israelis have done (by now even most Israelis understand that their occupation of the West Bank is not tenable). But in the wake of the horrors of WWII, and given the persistence of anti-Semitism around the world (in the US and Europe, as well as Muslim states and elsewhere), I think the goal of Zionism is a reasonable goal. Jews do need and deserve a homeland they can defend, Jews do deserve to not have to ask host populations or governments for acceptance (something most ethnic or national groups take for granted).

There are a lot of folks in the progressive movement who seem to single the Israelis out for particular criticism, but who do not seem to give as much attention to much worse abusers of human rights. For example, British scholars have tried to ostracize or boycott Jewish scholars. But this does not seem to have been done for e.g. Saudi scholars, nor Chinese -- but both these countries have egregious violations of human rights. So there's a bit of hypocrisy here, which suggests anti-Semitism. (However, I reckon the guilty parties do not think of themselves as anti-Semitic -- in fact I think the Israelis are being punished because being of European extraction, they're being held to a higher standard. A subtle form of prejudice, perhaps, if well-intentioned.)

[BayCityProgressive]

40. Zionism

is definately a worthy goal. Even communist Russia created a Zionist state and some American Jews moved to it. Unfortunately, just like everything STalin did...it was a mess.

[nodehopper]

95. huh?

what is this about Stalin's/Soviet zionist state? I grew up in the USSR and I have no idea what you are talking about.

[PsychoDad]

98. Birobidzhan

The Soviet creation of a Jewish Autonomous Region

Jewish Autonomous Region or Birobidzhan (bērōbējän') , autonomous region (1995 pop. 211,900), c.13,800 sq mi (35,700 sq km), Khabarovsk Territory, Russian Far East, in the basins of the Biro and Bidzhan rivers, tributaries of the Amur. The capital is Birobidzhan. The region is bounded on the south by China (Heilongjinag prov.) and on the north by the Bureya and Hinggan (Khingan) mts., which yield gold, tin, iron ore, and graphite. Mining, agriculture (chiefly on the Amur plain), lumbering, and light manufacturing are the major economic activities.

Formed in 1928 to give Soviet Jews a home territory and to increase settlement along the vulnerable borders of the Soviet Far East, the area was raised to the status of an autonomous region in 1934. The Jewish population peaked in 1948 at about 30,000 (one fourth of the total population). Despite some remaining Yiddish influences—including a Yiddish newspaper—Jewish cultural activity in the region has declined enormously since Stalin's anticosmopolitanism campaigns and since the liberalization of Jewish emigration in the 1970s. Jews now make up less than 2% of the region's population.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.answers.com/topic/jewish-autonomous-oblast

[PsychoDad]

113. Interesting to note...

Birobidzhan is larger than the state of Israel.

Birobidzhan is 35,700 sq km and Israel is currently 20,770 SQ KM

[Spider Jerusalem]

118. One would think that the Second World War...

would have thoroughly discredited the idea of ethnic nationalism (which says, in essence, 'if you aren't a European Jew/white Christian/Shi'ite/'Aryan' then you can't be a real Israeli/American/Iranian/German, et cetera). As a blueprint for nation-building, it leaves a bit to be desired; the experiences of the modern world have shown that a socially and politically integrated multi-ethnic society is a more desirable goal than one which by its nature and intent creates a subset of people within its borders who are, ipso facto, second-class citizens at best.

[Marie26]

42. Not really

The Iranian president says "Zionism" because he does not recognize the state of Israel. Since Israel does not exist, all Israelis are actually "Zionists" in the land of Palestine. "Zionism" is not a particular party or platform. Instead, it's a historical reference to the early Jewish migration to Palestine in the 1800's. He just uses the word now cause he can't bring himself to actually say "Israel." When he says he's anti-Zionism, that means that he favors ending the state of Israel (a sentiment he's also expressed.) Whatever the semantics on this particular word, he's clearly an anti-Semite & uses every chance he can find to bash Judaism in general. He's asked to wipe Israel off the map, said that he doesn't believe the Holocaust occurred, and personally launched an "anti-Holocaust" cartoon contest in retaliation for the Muhammad cartoons. Why he chose to offend Jews because of an offensive Danish cartoon is a bit murky, but it's typical of the logic of a true bigot, who will always try to blame his favorite scapegoat.

[treestar]

132. There are Jewish anti-Zionists

Some of them being the Jewish people who were living in Palestine before the creation of Israel, before Zionism.

[JCMach1]

58. I disagree... Zionism as practiced by the state of Israel

has caused horrific death and destruction in the world. Violence and disregard breed violence.

I just came back from the Bekaaa valley in Lebanon where Palestinians are still living in canvas UN tents from the 1970's and 1980's and using an open river for their water supply. Unwanted by Lebanon, and with few, or menial jobs and little hope, can you tell me where terrorism comes from?

But relgion, nationality, and ethnicity are just pawns in this little passion play. The real story is wealth, power, and control...

[manic expression]

81. Yeah, and anti-Bush is a form of anti-Americanism

And anti-fascism is a form of anti-Italianism.

:eyes: :sarcasm: :eyes:

Are you serious? Anti-Zionism means opposing the theft of land and the oppression of a people. It has nothing to do with Judaism, and you are certifiably insane if you are delusional enough to believe that it does. Please, start looking at reality.

[megatherium]

97. The fact that you would construe Jewish nationalism

as having "nothing to do with Judaism" is itself anti-Semitic.

[NJmaverick]

120. That's right don't debate Zoinism on it's own merits

It's better to hide behind lies about antisemitism. I understand the reason for this intellectual dishonesty. It's that Zoinism is a morally bankrupt concept that can only be supported through tricks like screaming "YOU HATE JEWS!".

[megatherium]

135. Calling Jewish nationalism "morally bankrupt" _is_

antisemitism. The legal right of Israel to exist has long been recognized by the international community (including Europe, the US, Egypt, Jordan and most other countries). Opposing a two-state solution (supporting the dismantling of Israel as a Jewish state) is depriving the Jews, alone of all peoples, the right to national self-identity and determinism. I think that is antisemitism and it is not intellectually dishonest to say so.

[NJmaverick]

136. No it's WRONG to keep screaming antisemitism!

I am sick and tired of this healthy debate being stifled by dishonest people that scream racism, when ever the topic is brought up!

[megatherium]

142. OK, OK, I'll stop saying "antisemitism" if you stop

saying "dishonest".

But you should understand how threatening I and many other people find assertions that Zionism (Jewish nationalism) is "murder and theft," or "morally bankrupt," and so forth. Jews have rarely enjoyed prolonged safety, or a lack of prejudice and discrimination, in the many lands their Diaspora have taken them. Even in the USA Jews have experienced significant discrimination (this has only diminished since the 1950s). Before WWII, Germany was relatively open to Jews in the professions but of course, this abruptly changed in the 1930s. There were anti-Jewish progroms in Central Europe even after the end of WWII. All Jews know how rapidly things can change, when they live as minorities in other countries. This is a large part of the argument as to why a Jewish homeland, which is always available as a refuge, which Jews can defend without relying on anyone else, is morally good.

As far as who owned the land before the formation of the modern state of Israel, you should be aware that there has always been a significant Jewish presence in Palestine. Also, there was no Palestinian state before Israel was created. The land was administered by the British between the two world wars (the British Mandate, given by the League of Nations); before then, for centuries it had been controlled by the Ottoman Turks. Before during and after WWII, Jews sought refuge in Palestine. But the British barred Jews from entering Palestine, even after the Holocaust and the end of the war. (For example, they barred the "Exodus 1947", a ship bearing 4,500 Holocaust survivors from coming to Palestine; they sent them back to displaced persons camps in Germany.) The British brought the matter before the United Nations, which decided to partition the land into a Palestinian state and a Jewish state. The Arabs rejected this arrangement; when the British withdrew, the Jews declared independence and were immediately attacked by the neighboring Arab states. The Jews were not expected to win their war for independence, but they did. Many Palestinian Arabs were displaced in the war. This is of course a serious unresolved problem, but I cannot see a moral, legal solution to the problem that does not involve two states (with Israel within its pre-1967 borders).

[manic expression]

149. Look,

"Jews have rarely enjoyed prolonged safety, or a lack of prejudice and discrimination, in the many lands their Diaspora have taken them."

Neither have Gypsies. Neither have Zoroastrians. Neither have homosexuals. Neither have atheists. Neither have Buddhists. Neither have Native Americans. Neither have Mormons. Neither have the aborigines of Australia. Neither have neopagans. The list goes on. The point is that this is not anything close to a justification for one's own state on the land of others. If you start using past oppression as a rationale for present oppression, that is insane.

"This is a large part of the argument as to why a Jewish homeland, which is always available as a refuge, which Jews can defend without relying on anyone else, is morally good."

And of course you wouldn't mind if the Tutsis decided your land was suitable for their own homeland, leaving you impoverished, homeless or worse? Right, I didn't think so. Using a phantom threat to justify stealing land from an entire people and routinely murdering them for decades is also insane. Israel is not going to stop a genocide from happening anywhere, but it does enable ethnic cleansing of its own. Another thing you conveniently ignore is that Israel depends on the US for much of its support in many areas. Without US backing, Israel would never exist (and the world would be a better place). By the way, Jews were living in the region peacefully before the Zionists started showing up and throwing people out of their homes and eventually ripping the land from an entire population, which is ethnic cleansing by definition. Quite the "refuge".

There has been a significant Jewish presence in Palestine, and that was in harmony with the other groups until the Zionists just had to have their way. There may not have been a Palestinian state, but there WERE Palestinians, and if you think it is was OK to forcibly throw them out, you are wrong. That is like saying that because there was no Native American state, Jackson was right when he forced the Cherokee into Oklahoma. The British supported the Zionist settlers for the most part, just look at the Balfour Declaration. This policy resulted in demonstrations by the Palestinians both peaceful and riotous.

"The Arabs rejected this arrangement; when the British withdrew, the Jews declared independence and were immediately attacked by the neighboring Arab states."

Nice try. First, the partition was patently ridiculous as the Zionists received most of the land while being smaller in number. Secondly, the plan wasn't fully implemented (check the link below). However, regardless of who rejected what, the Zionists immediately moved to take more of what they desired: other people's land.

"Both Arab and Jewish sides prepared for the coming confrontation by mobilising forces. The first 'clearing' operations were conducted against Palestinian villages by Jewish forces in December."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/03/v3_ip_timeline/html/1947.stm

The conflict that ensued was simply a matter of which force would gain the upper hand. The Zionists did, and atrocities soon followed. In response to this, many fled their native lands into the surrounding regions (known as "al-Nakba", or "the catastrophe"). In further response, the Arab nations tried to intervene but could not make any progress. The end result was Israel gaining (stealing) most of the original British mandate.

[megatherium]

150. The British Mandate encompassed a territory that included

modern Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and Jordan. The Israelis did not gain or steal "most of the land" or "most of the original British mandate"; they only had and have 10% to 20%. Most of the Mandate was actually taken by Arab states, e.g., the Hashemites took what became modern Jordan. (I believe the Hashemites are from Arabia.) That is, Jordan is majority Palestinian in population and culture but ruled by outsiders. In fact, Palestinian militants attempted to overthrow the Hashemites in the terrible "Black September" events of 1970, but they failed.

I believe that your statement that the Israelis managed to grab "most" of the Mandate is based on the erroneous impression that the Mandate was only the territory including modern Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. But again, the territory was much larger than that.

[manic expression]

151. The British Mandate of Palestine

what was supposed to be divided.

The Zionists received over 50% of the land of Palestine in the original plan. After their independence, they grabbed almost all of it. It's pretty well illustrated in the BBC article.

"The partition plan gave 56.47% of Palestine to the Jewish state and 43.53% to the Arab state, with an international enclave around Jerusalem."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/03/v3_ip_timeline/html/1947.stm

"Armistices established Israel's borders on the frontier of most of the earlier British Mandate Palestine.

Egypt kept the Gaza Strip while Jordan annexed the area around East Jerusalem and the land now known as the West Bank. These territories made up about 25% of the total area of British Mandate Palestine."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/03/v3_ip_timeline/html/1948.stm

As it says, the Arab states took what was left (25%). Of course the situation with the refugees has been difficult (all such situations are), but IMO, that alone is an indicator of the catastrophic problems Israel has caused the region.

The "Mandate" that is being referred to is the Mandate of Palestine. That is what I was talking about and it was not unclear.

[megatherium]

153. The BBC map refers to the Mandate of Palestine as:

"Palestine - comprising what are now Israel, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jordan"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/03/v3_israel_palestinians/maps/html/british_control.stm
This is what I was referring to.

At this point, I should drop out of this discussion thread. I lack the detailed historical knowledge to argue this further.

[manic expression]

154. Right...

It's fine if you don't want to continue.

[manic expression]

140. No it is not

because EVERY form of nationalism which seeks to evict and steal its way to its goals is morally bankrupt. Regardless of what has been recognized, Israel is the product of theft and murder, and it has continued with these despicable practices up to today.

"Opposing a two-state solution (supporting the dismantling of Israel as a Jewish state) is depriving the Jews, alone of all peoples, the right to national self-identity and determinism."

That is ridiculous. Dismantling Israel would deprive the region of an oppressive and unjustified power. It would deprive Zionists the vehicle to steal and kill at their whim. No one has a built-in right to a "national self-identity", for would you appreciate it if Mormons just told every non-Mormon to get the hell out of Utah simply for their "national self-identity"? Probably not. Why? Because it is patently unjustified to wantonly and selfishly claim an indulgent and unnecessary "national identity" through the deprivation and subjugation of entire peoples. Actually, it is very nearly the definition of deprivation to do so.

Opposing such wrongs could not be further from anti-semitism. That would be like saying someone is anti-English for merely disagreeing with the treatment of native peoples throughout the world (ie Nigeria, India, etc...).

[geek tragedy]

144. Most Israelis were born in Israel.

Similarly, the great majority of Palestinians were born outside of Israel.

Every state is founded on the theft of land by one group from another.

I suppose you favor dismantling Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and every other Arab state as well, since you're all hot and bothered about unjust governments and what not.

[Marie26]

147. Or the US, for that matter. nt

[manic expression]

148. Today

However, the forced eviction of 750,000 people may have had *something* to do with that.

Palestinians are born outside of Israel because Israel took the land Palestinians were on, therefore it is hard to be born on land your parents no longer own. Furthermore, the theft that is taking place is through the setting up of settlements, and that is without formal borders.

Most states are founded on the migration and shifting of populations. Outright theft, however, is not so common. This is seen mostly in countries like the US, Latin America, Australia and some others. That is completely different from what mostly happens.

An unjust government in general issues is different from a state which was recently founded upon mass robbery. An unjust government in the domestic regard is different from a state which regularly commits murderous atrocities. You're comparing apples and caesar salads.

[geek tragedy]

156. So, the people living in Israel have no right to self-determination?

I just want to understand this--there has never been a state of Palestine, but there is a state of Israel. However, we need to destroy Israel so that there can be a Palestine.

Should we expel all of the white people from the US and Canada as well?

[manic expression]

157. As I've said

First, there was supposed to be a Palestinian state, but Israel destroyed that before it could be formed, taking a lot of the land and throwing the Palestinians out in the process. Secondly, there has never been a "state of the Native Americans", so does that make it OK to force them all into reservations and massacre them? Please.

If "self-determination" means theft and murder, then no, you don't have "self-determination". If you actually use the term correctly, meaning Israel can exist, then yes. However, Palestinians MUST have the right to return to their rightful lands. Israel has NO RIGHT to keep stealing land and evicting and murdering innocents. Palestinians have a right to a decent and dignified life, and Israel is standing in the way of that.

No, we shouldn't expel all the white people. Should the white people have murdered and oppressed the Native Americans like Israel is doing to the Palestinians? No. The solution for both situations is to create some justice for the group that has been deprived and victimized. Give Palestinians the right of return and other basic rights, give Native American communities full support and more and maybe we'll get somewhere.

[geek tragedy]

158. Do you favor a one-state or two-state solution?

If by right of return one means that Israel acknowledges the historical injustice faced by the Palestinians and provides compensation, I don't think reasonable people can really disagree that it's appropriate.

However, if by the right of return one means the destruction of Israel . . .

[manic expression]

160. A practical solution

would never involve the "destruction of Israel" (even though few care about the routine destruction of Palestinian homes and lives).

Israel must acknowledge its past and sustained wrongdoing and allow those who have been wronged to reclaim their rightful land. Dismantling Israel is unnecessary (not to mention unhelpful, counterproductive, impractical, you get my point).

If this was actually done, Arabs would be a very significant part of the population, so the Zionist dream would be over if that happened.

To be honest (aka cynical), there is no way Israel would ever agree to such a solution. They won't even hand over the West Bank and they accorded themselves the right to do whatever they want to the Gaza Strip. I mean, that huge wall might be an indication of Israel's openness to a reasonable solution.

edited in parentheses

[geek tragedy]

162. How would 'allowing those who have been wronged

to reclaim their land' NOT be the same as dismantling Israel?

There's a word for what Israel would become--Palestine.

Asking a bit much to ask Jews to be ruled by the people who just elected Hamas.

[manic expression]

163. Why?

Because it would still be Israel. The only difference is that the people who got their land STOLEN from Israel would get it rightfully back.

You have a problem with giving back something that was blatantly stolen? Or do you simply not care about "those people"?

Israel would be Israel, just with more Palestinians. Are Israelis really so hateful of Palestinians that they cannot share the same country with them? Is Israel so "pure" that it cannot be "corrupted" by those savage A-Rabs? Seriously though, what's your problem with justice?

Maybe if Israel didn't steal as much land as it could get its fingers on, it wouldn't be facing this little situation. Palestinians elected Hamas because they're tired of being treated like dirt. Israel keeps killing innocent Palestinians and destroying Palestinian homes like its a sport...what do you expect?

[geek tragedy]

164. It wouldn't be Israel--it would be Palestine.

It would be Jews being ruled by Palestinians.

The Palestinians should have their own state, but not by destroying the state of Israel.

Yes, there was theft and injustice involved in the founding of Israel.

That was sixty years ago. Israel's creation is not something that can be undone because the Palestinians have joined a long, long, long list of people who got screwed.

[AngryAmish]

155. Or Turkey

[manic expression]

139. It is most certainly NOT

The fascists of Spain were "Spanish nationalists", but how does that REALLY involve Spain? It is simply a mindset which wants to set up a certain thing that relates to the Castillan identity. That is all.

Similarly, Zionism is a political philsophy which seeks to take land from others to set up a Jewish state. The ONLY thing that has to do with Judaism is the identity of Judaism and the identity alone. Not one other facet of Zionism has anything truly to do with Judaism, lest you claim all Jews are Zionists.

[megatherium]

146. Please see my post #142

for an explanation as to why I believe Zionism is moral, and why I find the equation of Zionism with racism, murder, theft, etc to be repugnant.

[wordpix]

24. maybe if you read stories from the survivors of concentration camps, you

would know what the final solution was all about and how horrific it was. That's not to say what was done to native Americans in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Rwanda in the '90's or Darfur today is not horrific, too. But the scale of 6 million murdered, the long trips on rails with no food, water, blankets, the poison gas "showers," the camp guards working people to death, separating children from their parents and often killing them in front of their parents and the crematoria---it was and is still shocking.

FYI, where Israel is now WAS their homeland historically so it does not "belong" to the Palestinians or any other Arab group. The Hebrew tribes shared that land for thousands of years with other tribes but the tribes of Israel left and were scattered during the diaspora because they were being murdered there, too.

It's always nice to have a scapegoat to blame your miseries on, right? And a scapegoat really helps to promote world peace. :( :sarcasm:

You should get your history straight before you go off making false accusations.

[dionysus]

44. it doesn't fucking mean they can boot the palestinians off

of that land cause it was their turf 2000 years ago, shit

[davidinalameda]

114. there is no such thing as a Palestinian

weren't the Arabs Jordanian to begin with?

[wordpix2]

129. background about Palestinians from UN site

http://www.un.org/depts/dpa/ngo/history.html

The Palestine problem became an international issue towards the end of the First World War with the disintegration of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Palestine was among the several former Ottoman Arab territories which were placed under the administration of Great Britain under the Mandates System adopted by the League of Nations pursuant to the League's Covenant (Article 22) .

All but one of these Mandated Territories became fully independent States, as anticipated. The exception was Palestine where, instead of being limited to "the rendering of administrative assistance and advice" the Mandate had as a primary objective the implementation of the "Balfour Declaration" issued by the British Government in 1917, expressing support for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people".

During the years of the Palestine Mandate, from 1922 to 1947, large-scale Jewish immigration from abroad, mainly from Eastern Europe took place, the numbers swelling in the 1930s with the notorious Nazi persecution of Jewish populations. Palestinian demands for independence and resistance to Jewish immigration led to a rebellion in 1937, followed by continuing terrorism and violence from both sides during and immediately after World War II. Great Britain tried to implement various formulas to bring independence to a land ravaged by violence. In 1947, Great Britain in frustration turned the problem over to the United Nations.

After looking at various alternatives, the UN proposed the partitioning of Palestine into two independent States, one Palestinian Arab and the other Jewish, with Jerusalem internationalized (Resolution 181 (II) of 1947). One of the two States envisaged in the partition plan proclaimed its independence as Israel and in the 1948 war expanded to occupy 77 per cent of the territory of Palestine. Israel also occupied the larger part of Jerusalem. Over half the indigenous Palestinian population fled or were expelled. Jordan and Egypt occupied the other parts of the territory assigned by the partition resolution to the Palestinian Arab State which did not come into being.

more...
It appears from the historical facts that there are many to blame for the present lack of a Palestinian state going back to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. In Eastern Europe, Jews were persecuted and murdered just for being Jews so many wanted to return to their historical homeland in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration by the (imperialist) British government helped make this happen. With Hitler, mass Jewish immigration to Palestine occurred, causing the need for expansion of Jewish territory. And then, Jordan and Egypt took over territory assigned by the UN to a Palestinian Arab State.

Unfortunately, it's very common that some here at DU blame Israel and Jews for the Palestinians being "thrown off" their land. That is scapegoating, no doubt about it. When you look at the history, you can see that a LOT of factors were in play including Jewish annihilation and persecution in Eastern Europe and Germany from early 1900's on.

[WhiteTara]

143. and the six day war was just their way

of saying, "sorry for your loss"?

[wordpix2]

161. and the little piece of land called Israel was the world's way of saying,

"Sorry for your loss." Six million Jews, that is.

[manic expression]

78. And?

No one is saying the Holocaust was a picnic! However, the Holocaust has little to do with Israel. The Zionist state was being formed before the turn of the century, as in the 1800's.

"But the scale of 6 million murdered..."

What are you saying? NO ONE HERE IS SAYING THE HOLOCAUST WASN'T TERRIBLE!

FYI, where Israel is now belongs to the Palestinians. Period. Israel stole it from them, and 750,000 people were thrown off their land. Using your logic, Irish and Welsh people could claim everything from France to northern Italy because those were historically Celtic homelands (:eyes:). Jews were living peacefully in the area before the Zionists showed up and started throwing the people they didn't like off their land and/or killing them (what does that remind you of?).

Face it: Israel is the PRODUCT of theft and murder. The land doesn't belong to them.

And no, it doesn't have anything to do with the Holocaust.

[bunyip]

85. Well said

The main obstacles to understanding the Palestine conflict are the manipulative frames used by the pro-colonization lobbyists.

I liked this part:

Using your logic, Irish and Welsh people could claim everything from France to northern Italy because those were historically Celtic homelands

Hmmm, I'm of Irish and Scottish descent. D'ya think the US would give us Celts $3 billion a year to ethnically cleanse our 'homeland'?
:sarcasm:



Anyone want to start a shrill and self-serving lobby group?

[wordpix2]

126. "However, the Holocaust has little to do with Israel." Boy, are you wrong

Check your historical facts.

[manic expression]

141. Care to provide some?

I didn't think so.

Zionists were trying to form Israel in the 1800's. Check THOSE facts.

How about these facts?:

"The Zionist project of the 1920s and 1930s saw hundreds of thousands of Jews emigrating to British Mandate Palestine, provoking unrest in the Arab community.

In 1922, a British census showed the Jewish population had risen to about 11% of Palestine's 750,000 inhabitants. More than 300,000 immigrants arrived in the next 15 years."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/03/v3_ip_timeline/html/1929_36.stm

[NJmaverick]

121. So why make the Palastinians pay for the suffering???

I do not accept the historical arguement. You go back far enough and Italy can claim the land as it was once part of the Roman empire. Do you have a good and honest arguement?

[Emillereid]

54. Remember the communists were the Nazi's first target -- they used the

fear of communists like Bush uses fear of terrorists. They also slaughtered the mentally retarded and mentally ill -- as well as the Gypsies. Something on the order of 20 million Russians died. I do think the zionists exploit the holocaust, but I have no doubt that it happened. I too think it was wrong to solve a European problem on the backs of the Palestinians -- but what is done is done. I would actually like to see one state formed that both the Israelis and the Palestinians could live. I think the idea of a 'Jewish' state is wrong -- the idea that any Jew anywhere in the world can automatically be an Israeli, yet the people from whom the land was stolen, can't, is completely insane. If any land was to be given for a Jewish state, it probably should have been carved out of Germany. I don't think that people have ancient right to land -- and if any group has that right, it would be native Americans.

A professor from Sweden claimed at an international forum held in Turkey last year that Americans have been responsible for the death of between 12 - 15 million and that that puts them in the same league as the Nazis and Stalin.

[Phx_Dem]

67. Judaism is a religion not a race nt

[WinkyDink]

72. Maybe because the NAZIS wrote of being "JUDENFREI", not

"Romanyfrei", or "Fillintheblankfrei"??

Maybe because Ukrainians, Latvians, Poles, etc. rounded up their JEWISH neighbors and helped murder them, back when guns and ditches were used?

A big et cetera is to be understood.

[manic expression]

82. What?

They killed other groups just the same. Are you saying that some deaths are worth more than others? What are you really trying to say?

[manic expression]

76. I agree

First, a Zionist state was getting started long before the Holocaust, long before WWI (yes, the first one). Don't even get me started on the disgusting ethnic cleansing and murder on Israel's hands.

It's simply wrong and foolish to oppress a group because of an unrelated persecution. There are far better solutions than putting group A on group B's land (and killing quite a few "B's" in the process).

What say we have a Roma state in Pakistan since they supposedly originated from northern India? What about a Tutsi state in Tanzania? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

[treestar]

130. IA, it happened, but modern day Germans are just going to get

resentful thinking they are on the hook for it. Though initially one could support the idea of the Jewish people getting a slice of Germany. But getting a piece of Palestine has just led to problems. Being American and used to the concept of migration, I guess I just don't sympathize with all the history-of-the-land stuff. Find a place to live, who cares where your ancestors were 2000 years ago? And that can't be known for sure for anyone.

[michael_1166]

4. My passport says I'm German

but I do not believe in the concept of countries. I am me, not a "German". Being German (or being American) is an artificial, human-made concept not worth anything for people not believing in these kind of concepts. Just like patriotism is all in the "patriots" head, it's not real. Even if you print a million flags, it's just a state of mind (a bad one if you ask me).

I never felt any guilt for the Holocaust. I did not participate in it, I wasn't even born then. But I don't need madman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad telling me I shouldn't feel any guilt.

[still_one]

10. and the u.s. should also feel guilty

for attacking a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, and forgetting the lessons of viet nam, and that is the whole point

[BayCityProgressive]

15. that doesn't

even have anything to do with this story! If this were a story about the US or the Pope everyone would be bashing away...but since it is against Jews and Israel let's cut the Islamic Hitler as much slack as possible...how sickenign this place is sometimes..:argh:

[still_one]

16. no argument from me

but I won't play that game or give any credibility to the anti-Jewish president of iran

[wordpix]

27. thank you, BC Progressive

[Hoping4Change]

8. I have to agree that many others were victimized. Consider the

plight of Ukrainians (a group that rarely mentioned as being victimized by Hitler).



"During World War II, Ukraine and Ukrainians were savaged by the Germans. Approximately 6 million Ukrainians were killed. Of this 6 million, 3 million were non-Jewish Ukrainian civilians and 900,000 were Ukrainian Jews.

Another 2.4 million Ukrainian men and women were pirated away by the Germans for slave labor in Germany. More than 2 million Ukrainians died in combat against the Germans or died in German captivity as Soviet prisoners of war.

According to Nazi German racist ideology, Jews, Gypsies and Slavs were "untermenschen," or subhumans. Ukraine was to be resettled by Germans as part of the "lebensraum" (living space) campaign: one segment of the Ukrainian population was to be killed, a second deported to Asia and a third subjugated as slaves.

Nazi officials referred to Ukrainians as helots and half-monkeys. The Nazi commissioner of occupied Ukraine, Erich Koch, referred to Ukrainians as Negroes, and the marquee at the Kyiv Ballet Theater had a sign that read "No Ukrainians or Dogs Admitted." "


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Bohdan Vitvitsky, an attorney, has written and lectured on the plight of the Slavs during the Nazi Holocaust

[still_one]

17. read the final solution and maybe you'll understand

theJews were signaled out for extermination , and that any credibility shoud be given to these statements of the Iranian president is disgusting

[NorthernSpy]

60. read up on what the Belgians did in the Congo, and maybe YOU'll understand

... why some of us take exception to holocaust exceptionialism. There are atrocities that DO compare to the nazi holocaust, both in scope and in sheer evil.

When Namibia was the German colony of Southwest Africa, the Germans exterminated (as in, hunted them down like deer) 80% of the Herero people. The few left alive were driven into the Kalahari. Apparently, it was assumed that they'd just shrivel up and die there.

Von Trotha's order to exterminate the Herero was given and carried out 40 years before the holocaust, but not many people draw the obvious parallels. Holocaust exceptionalism urges us to remember the attempted genocide of the Herero as just one of those other, lesser horrors done to lesser people. And that infuriates me.

theJews were signaled out for extermination

The Roma were every bit as singled out for extermination on racial grounds. Why do so many people gloss over that?

[Laughing Mirror]

65. Why do so many people gloss over that?

Because Congolese and Namibians and Romas were not considered completely human by their white European predators, so millions upon millions of them could be done away with without anybody giving them a second thought.

[bunyip]

73. Congolese and Namibians and Romas

are still not considered completely human. Their historical suffering is never mentioned.

The West is still heaving with hysteria 60 years after liberating Auchwitz, but accepts other genocides without a backward glance.

Racism, pure and simple. :grr:

[Chovexani]

109. The Porrajmos never ended

It just left the camps and kept going. Some of the anti-Roma rhetoric still being spouted today, in 2006 (particularly in Eastern Europe) sounds as bad as any of the virulent anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust. Roma are still persecuted by all kinds of horrible laws, receive subpar social services and are scapegoated for damn near everything bad that happens in the gadje communities in which they live.

When will people realize that acknowledging the horrors and persecution of other ethnic groups does not minimize what happened to the Jews?

(Full disclosure: I have Romani blood, it is a bit of a touchy issue for me.)

[Dorian Gray]

93. That's true...

the Roma were singled out. And that's despicable. Ahmadinejad is trying to justify his hatred of the Jewish. (The Roma don't factor into the equation in his mind.) He doesn't discuss Roma-ism or the Gypsification of the MIddle East. He does talk about the Zionification of Palestine, though. And that's why there is a problem.

Do you deny that the Holocaust happened, and every life destroyed is a travesty and a tragedy? Well, Ahmadinejad does, and that's why he's a maniacal loon who doesn't deserve respect from Der Spiegel or consideration from us.

[Dorian Gray]

92. Yes....

Truly disgusting.

[treestar]

131. So were the Slavs, the Nazis just never got to them on the scale

they would have planned. Thank God. But that doesn't mean the Nazis didn't despise other races. They despised anyone who wasn't Aryan and intended to commit genocide on all the non-Aryans eventually.

[PsychoDad]

165. Russians are Slavs.

Upwards of 20 million russian civilians lost their lives in wwii.

20 Million.

That's not counting Red Army losses.

[The Magistrate]

168. That Figure, Sir, Does Include Red Army Losses

As well as deaths at the hand of the Soviet government itself, which were considerable.

[PsychoDad]

169. You Sir are correct.

I double checked my sources and you are right.

...Nation.........Pop 1939...Military Deaths..Civilian Deaths..Holocaust deaths...total
Soviet Union<48> 168,500,000 10,700,000 11,500,000 1,000,000 23,200,000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

I quoted the information from memory, which seems to serve me less and less well as the years pass. :)

Peace.

[The Magistrate]

170. A Problem I Am Familiar With, My Friend, As Well

Always a pleasure to come upon you in the forum, Sir!

Peace be upon you.

[struggle4progress]

11. Ahmadinejad really is a disgusting piece of shit.

[Miss Chybil]

47. I agree. nt

[no_hypocrisy]

12. Someone should ask Ahmadinejad how you can feel guilty for something

that never happened . . . . that is, according to his addled logic.

[JohnKleeb]

18. I feel guilt about the holocaust and I was born well after it happened

Ahmadijad is a sick bastard. Germans certainly should feel the most guilt about the Holocaust but so should we as Americans and the British too among others. We could have let them in as refugees but many weren't allowed in. The Dutch let many Jews in the most famous being Anne Frank and her family unfortunely the Neterlands was invaded in 1940. We can't forget the Holocaust and I think denying the Holocaust like Ahmadijad has been doing is disgusting.

[michael_1166]

21. Why?

Why should modern-day people born in Germany feel any guilt about the Holocaust? Why should a human being feel any guilt about what happened in the past of the place he or she was born in? You cannot choose the place you are born in. I resist having to inherit someone else's guilt just because my life here on earth started in a specific geographic location and not somewhere else. There is no logic in that, it simply makes no sense.

Assuming you're living in the U.S, are you still busy feeling guilty because your country dropped atomic bombs onto Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945? Probably not.

[JohnKleeb]

22. Yeah I feel guilt about the A Bombs

Why do I feel guilt because of something i wasn't alive during, well it's a hard answer but it goes back to the possiblity that i had relatives that did nothing while Hitler rose to power. Perhaps it is a little extreme but I feel guilt that we did nothing in Rwanda and currently are doing nothing in Sudan. Why? because we had and have the capability to help those people but we're too concerned with the more mudane things in life.

[michael_1166]

28. I see, and thank you for your answer

But you can't change the past, just the present and the future.

I think it doesn't help attributing evil-doings to specific countries during certain timeframes, like "The Germans started WWII in 1939, the U.S. dropped A-Bombs in 1945" etc. It's always human beings doing these kind of things. It's the same kind of darkness within us humans that caused Nazis killing Jews or U.S. marines killing 24 innocent Iraqis in Haditha. If we want a better world, we don't reach it by fighting and blaming countries, we have to start with ourselves and the potential evil in all of us, independent from the countries we're living in.

[JohnKleeb]

30. OF course specific nations shouldn't be blamed

Yep, the only thing that can be changed is the future and the present and we have to learn from history to do better and not make the mistakes others made. I don't blame Germany individually for the Holocaust of course because in every country that was invaded there were people who betrayed their own people and of course in some countries there were people who did their best to save people. Those are the real heroes in tragedies such as the Holocaust, Rwanda, etc.

[Igel]

34. That would be shame, not guilt.

If it's guilt, you're saying you're somehow responsible for what was done. Guilt in the absence of responsibility is an impossibility.

Shame--a nearly forgotten idea--can be for what others in our clan have done, to the extent that we expect better of them and accept responsibility for their behavior. I can be ashamed for what my brother did, to the extent that we have a family name, and I exert some influence over him. But unless I assisted him in some way, I can never share guilt with him.

I am ashamed for what Christians did in the Crusades. I'm also ashamed that scholars haven't presented the flip side. But since I'm responsible for neither group, that's about the extent of it. And even the shame is attenuated.

In this matter--and possibly only in this--I agree with the Aryan fascist. Kids may be ashamed of what their parents did, but they can never be guilty of what they did. The Holocaust, even including all the Slavs, Roma, and other 'deviants' killed, is not an ethnic thing: Germans are not forever to be Jew-killers, any more than Greeks are to be forever philosophers, Roma to be fortune-tellers, or Arabs to be slavers.

I also don't feel guilt over not intervening in Rwanda (I was an adult at the time, and let's ignore my ignorance of what was going on). Guilt is for a transgression; I'm not sure we had any more obligation to intervene than anybody else ... say, the countries with historical ties to Rwanda, and troops in-country? Shame is the appropriate word for not stopping others from committing transgressions in this case, even if it's unlikely mobilization could have occurred in time. Same for Bosnia, where we *did* know what was happening, and did nothing. But guilt isn't the appropriate word.

[JohnKleeb]

36. Ok shame it is

but my point is as an American I do feel shame that my country could have done something in Rwanda and did nothing. We're the most powerful and influential country in the world whether we like it or not so standing by in a Genocide is inexcusable to me. I feel and some may disagree that we have an obligation to do what we can. Perhaps that's a litlte idealistic but if the US wants to be regarded as the most influential country in the world than it should help pepole in need or at the very least encourage neighboring nations to do something. You're right though guilt isn't the right word and you're absolutely right that Germans won't always be Jew killers but the stain of what happened will be there long after the last survivor of the holocaust dies.

[wordpix]

31. add to that, the * family should feel guilt, too, as * grandaddy Prescott

Bush was supplying Hitler with what he needed. See post #1 here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1237317#1238512

Guardian
George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
…
The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.
…
One of the first jobs Walker gave Bush was to manage UBC. Bush was a founding member of the bank and the incorporation documents…
The bank was set up by Harriman and Bush's father-in-law to provide a US bank for the Thyssens, Germany's most powerful industrial family.
…By the time Fritz Thyssen inherited the business empire in 1926, Germany's economic recovery was faltering. After hearing Adolf Hitler speak, Thyssen became mesmerised by the young firebrand. He joined the Nazi party in December 1931 and admits backing Hitler in his autobiography, I Paid Hitler, when the National Socialists were still a radical fringe party. He stepped in several times to bail out the struggling party: in 1928 Thyssen had bought the Barlow Palace on Briennerstrasse, in Munich, which Hitler converted into the Brown House, the headquarters of the Nazi party. The money came from another Thyssen overseas institution, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvarrt in Rotterdam.
…
A report issued by the Office of Alien Property Custodian in 1942 stated of the companies that "since 1939, these (steel and mining) properties have been in possession of and have been operated by the German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country's war effort".
…
Thyssen's partner in United Steel Works, which had coal mines and steel plants across the region, was Friedrich Flick,…Flick's plants in Poland
made heavy use of slave labour from the concentration camps in Poland. According to a New York Times article published in March 18 1934 Flick owned two-thirds of CSSC while "American interests" held the rest.…

Jan Lissmann, one of the lawyers for the survivors, said: "President Bush withdrew President Bill Clinton's signature from the treaty not only to protect Americans, but also to protect himself and his family."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00....

[JohnKleeb]

33. Sure

That goes for all those who helped fund the Third Reich. Henry Ford and Charles Lindburgh are long gone but what they did was bad too.

[Marie26]

20. He just never shuts up, does he? nt

[fedsron2us]

38. I see Ahmadinejad still has not got his World Cup tickets.

[President Kerry]

107. i heard his visa application is going kinda slow. wink wink

[noel adamson]

45. Americans should share that guilt.in a very big way and it's time

we acknowledged this. Famous Americans such as Henry Ford and Prescott Bush had more to do with the Holocaust than Hitler. Ford, who placed an anti semitic pamphlet he authored himself, in every new Ford titled "The International Jew — The World’s Foremost Problem", ( http://www.jrbooksonline.com/Intl_Jew_full_version/ijtoc_.htm )Sought Hitler out in the very early 1920s, financed him, gave him new automobiles and armed him and his band of fringe kooks who the vast majority of Germans did not take seriously. Here are newspaper articles of the day and some other documentation such as his FBI file; http://www.stockmaven.com/HistoricalMediaReports.htm

Hitler, who kept a photo of Ford on his desk, awarded him one of Germany's highest medals in 1938 for his development of modern mass production methods which were used to give the death camps their reputation for their "efficiency" in administering the "final solution" to "the Jewish problem", homelessness, people on welfare, gypsies (the Roma people), homosexuals, "habitual criminals and a long list of other people on their hit list.


Prescott Bush was at the forefront of the "Eugenics" movement that was responsible for the forced sterilization of many people in the USA before WW2 and up through the 1970s in the interest of "purifying the race". He managed a company that financed Hitler, laundered money from American and German backers and supplied Hitler with almost half of the raw materials and munitions with which he built his war machine. Here is a copy of Vesting Order 248 which ordered the confiscation of that business for trading with the enemy almost an entire year after Pearl Harbor and long after Hitler's true nature and intentions were understood.
http://www.treasoninc.com/VestingOrder248.html
The annotations in color are mine and note that his partners include Nazi party members both of the American Nazi party and the German Nazi party.

While Germany certainly had it's share of ethnocentric bigots and racists it was, in large part, the ancestors of our current regime, both hereditary and ideological, who manipulated them to produce the monster that Hitler personified. And now they have finally succeeded in entrenching themselves at the top of the big prize, the U.S.A.

[Marie26]

46. As well as Joseph Kennedy, Lindbergh, etc.

It's sort of scary how many leading Americans were quiet supporters of the Nazis.

[still_one]

50. The BIG difference is, IT WAS NOT AMERICAN POLICY

During Hitler's reign, it WAS GERMAN POLICY

[noel adamson]

52. Yes. We had Roosevelt in office and the Republicans, taken over by

fascists after Teddy Roosevelt, the last Republican who conserved anything, were fighting him at home and through such entities as Hitler from abroad. These were the same Wall street manipulators who had orchestrated the plunder and crash of the stock market in '29. They attempted a coup with the now well known plot to try and get Major General Smedley Butler to lead a half million disgruntled veterans into Washington, D.C. to overthrow FDR. Their successors still are at war with Roosevelt, still have all of the ethnocentric kooks following them. They want to do things as petty as put Reagan's head on the dime in FDR's stead, get rid of Social Security, the minimum wage and, for all practical purposes, democracy itself. ("The U.S. is a republic not a democracy")

During Hitler's reign it was policy because the darkest element of Wall street and German industrialists dictated that it be so.

[still_one]

55. I am NOT saying there was NOT anti-Jewish setiment

in the government, it just was NOT official policy, while it was with the nazis

As far as you assertion that wall street manipulators orchestrated the crash in '29, I beg to disagree. There were many reasons, not the least was tremendous margin debt, no government regulation of the banks, which allowed for risky practices, and greed

[noel adamson]

56. I'll concede that. The phrase "Wall street manipulators" was overly

broad and excludes adjacent economic institutions but the lack of regulation is a common Republican thread and every time the Republicans gain enough power they allow a lawless ("de-regulated") situation to flourish and the results are such events as the crash of 1929, the savings and loan black hole for money and gigantic national debt of the Reagan/Bush I era and ultra gigantic national debt, discredit of the dollar and likely greater horrors to come as a result of the Gee Dub regime.

[still_one]

57. you are absolutely right

not only about 1929, and the S&L crisis, but also the huge merger of giant oil companies, and deregulation of the energy market which gave us the California energy crisis, and Enron

Unfortunately, I think there will be a lot of pain because of this administrations policies, and I only hope people remember who got us into this situation

[enigma000]

62. Prescott Bush had more to do with the Holocaust than Hitler?

Heck, let's just go ALL the way then. How about the US invaded Poland in 1939. And the US bombed the Japanese naval base at Pearl Harbour. And Germany won the war, 'cause they were the good guys and........

[noel adamson]

63. Hitler would have remained a fringe kook in Bavaria if not for the massive

backing of Henry Ford, Prescott Bush and their cohorts who were bent on corporate domination and "purifying" the human race. Did you take a look at the links in my previous post to Ford's anti-semitic pamphlet titled "the international Jew; The World's Foremost Problem" ? Or the newspaper articles from the early 1920s that described Ford's backing of a little known band of zealots in Bavaria? As for Poland, they were the source of much, if not most, of the steel and steel products Hitler used in his war machine. I would guess that the Nazis debt to them was canceled after the invasion of 1939. Did you take a look at Vesting Order 248?

Germany did not win the war but Nazi influence in the U.S. government has been very powerful. Much of the German SS was brought to the U.S. under Allen Dulles' supervision and incorporated into the CIA. Both Allen and John Dulles were previously high level Nazi employees.

You imply that I am making all of this up without refuting any of the evidence I have offered and further imply that, somehow or another, I am saying that the Nazis were the "good guys". I think you did not read what I wrote. While it is common to call people who one thinks have taken a harsh stance "Nazis" I am offering well documented historical evidence for the involvement of specific Americans in both the rise of fascism in Germany in the 1920s and 30s and in America to this day and I am further saying that the Bush Crime Family is one of those specific groups.

[Marie26]

66. Does that apply

to the Kennedy Crime Family as well? I know Prescott Bush had some involvement, but I wonder if it was that rare orexceptional for the upper-class elite families to be involved in this stuff during the 1920's-30's. Bush Sr. seems to have profited from cashing out his share in a German-owned bank, but the rest seems like rumors at this point. Eugenics was a pretty big fad during that time, but there's no evidence that Bush Sr. was involved in that movement (I looked).

[noel adamson]

84. Prescott Bush was not just casually involved in financing Hitler;

He was the managing partner in Union Banking Corporation, set up by German industrialist Fritz Thyssen in 1924, with both German and American Nazi party members and they were specifically financing the purchase of munitions and raw materials to build the war machine*, not butter and eggs and they did not cash out; it was confiscated under the Trading With the Enemy Act**. They were doing it under the Harriman name. The Harriman's had been responsible for installing brutal puppet governments in other people's countries for the purpose of exploitation of resources and Germany was little different. This also often involved sending our troops into many, many countries on different pretenses such as that we were "liberating" them or that they had done something to us or were going to do something to us. Smedley Butler's name has become much more widely known since Gee Dub's ascension to the White House and his "War Is A Racket" is a short and worthwhile read on that subject. He was a Marine Corps General, 2 time Medal of Honor winner and expressed his feelings, after his service, that it had all been at the behest of the Wall street house of Brown Brothers Harriman and not the American people at large, the electorate.

As for the eugenics part, that was indeed a general fad during the '20s and '30s as was the rise of racism to possibly it's highest level in American history. Again Henry Ford's financial support for Hitler clearly included a core bond of vicious anti-semitism and a perverted form of Darwin's theories especially popular among the ruthless industrialists of the day who justified their own ruthlessness thusly.

George Bush Sr. Has made references to over breeding by third world populations and American people of color as well as being chief instigator of forced sterilization of non whites in other countries and here at home up through the 1970s through the "Association for Voluntary Surgical Contraception" a renamed fascist organization who's original name was the "Sterilization League". I cannot lay hands on the information on Prescott's eugenics involvement at the moment but Averill Harriman's involvement was great and his business associates generally held similar views. I remember reading of Prescott's lecturing in Germany on the subject in the 1930s but cannot document this. Many Corporations from IBM to Bayer were involved in the death camps where Bayer, for one, experimented on inmates and "euthanized" them when the experiments were finished. One thing is for certain; no one in the Bush family gives a damn about the common person.


*
50.8% of Nazi Germany's pig iron

41.4% of Nazi Germany's universal plate

36.0% of Nazi Germany's heavy plate

38.5% of Nazi Germany's galvanized sheet

45.5% of Nazi Germany's pipes and tubes

22.1% of Nazi Germany's wire

35.0% of Nazi Germany's explosives.




** Vesting order 248 is the actual document that authorized seizing Prescott Bush's business for trading with Hitler. http://www.treasoninc.com/VestingOrder248.html

*** "War Is A Racket" by Major General Smedley Butler http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

[Marie26]

110. Some facts & rumors

Yeah, I understand that Prescott Bush made money from his involvement w/a bank that traded w/Germany during WWII. He's got some complicity, as does every financier who helped fund the German war machine. But, I'm not sure Prescott Bush was more involved than many other Wall Street bankers; and to say that Prescott Bush had more to do with the Holocaust than Hitler is, um, ludicrous. "I cannot lay hands on the information on Prescott's eugenics involvement at the moment... I remember reading of Prescott's lecturing in Germany on the subject in the 1930s but cannot document this." OK then. But if he was really "at the forefront of the Eugenics movement", wouldn't there be a bit more reliable information about it? The Internet is a good source of info, but it's also a good source of speculative rumors, and I think the "Prescott Bush was a Nazi" story is probably one of them.

ETA: Here's a good link from the Anti-Defamation League. "Prescott Bush's Alleged Nazi "Ties" - Rumors about the alleged Nazi "ties" of the late Prescott Bush, the grandfather of President George W. Bush, have circulated widely through the Internet in recent years. These charges are untenable and politically motivated. Despite some early financial dealings between Prescott Bush and a Nazi industrialist named Fritz Thyssen (who was arrested by the Nazi regime in 1938 and imprisoned during the war), Prescott Bush was neither a Nazi nor a Nazi sympathizer.

http://www.adl.org/Internet_Rumors/prescott.htm

[noel adamson]

112. Prescott Bush was not (just) an "early supporter" of Hitler

He had his business taken away long after WW2 had started, after the extermination of "undesirables" started in Germany and German occupied Europe and almost a year after Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese drawing the U.S. into the war. Again, the document confiscating that business, Union Banking Corporation.

I would say that being the financial manager for financing Hitler makes one a Nazi sympathizer as does having one's circle of friends and business partners being Nazi party members and otherwise supportive of the Nazi party. My apologies to the ADL but there is just so much evidence that cannot be described as "rumor". The eugenics involvement remains undocumented though it was, as others here have said, a popular notion of that day and likely that the Bushes were in agreement with those ideas if not actually at the forefront of it as they were after WW2 in the forced sterilization movement here and abroad.

Please note that three of the 7 shareholders of Union Banking are openly members of the Nazi party though not Prescott. Around the time Fritz Thyssen, (who I think may have had a change of heart or new insight into the monster they had created that was about to destroy Europe and everything good about Germany), was arrested Henry Ford was receiving a medal from Hitler (via envoys in Dearborn, Mich.)



1938

[Raskolnik]

68. More!?

Famous Americans such as Henry Ford and Prescott Bush had more to do with the Holocaust than Hitler.

That is patently, utterly, and completely ridiculous.

[noel adamson]

87. Is Not!

Hitler was their hireling and I have offered documentation of both the nature and the degree of their involvement which you have not refuted with your redundant use of adverbs. Nor can you.

[enigma000]

88. Now that's historical revisionism

So the whole Nazi Germany / WWII thing was an American driven and financed plot. Those poor Germans: Hitler, Himmler, Eichmann, Gorbels - just American pawns. Must be gratifying to know that the Germans were completely innocent during this period. I guess Stalin was a willing dupe too - not seeing the real enemy was America and not Germany.

[noel adamson]

111. He He...I didn't say that I said the Nazis would have remained

a small band of fringe kooks if not for massive financial backing from big American industrialists. Thyssen was German and maybe the main man, financially, behind Hitler. The Bush family would be second rate plumbers or car salesmen if not for the support Prescott got from his father in law George Walker after he (Prescott) lost his much of his inherited fortune. Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and other supporters of our modern day corporate fascism might still have large followings and money garnered from televangelism but I think not nearly the influence they have now because of being so useful to their corporate masters.

The German people were not completely innocent just as the American people are not completely innocent of voting for this administration but we have certainly been brought to a simmer by the likes of, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and the endless emergency. The German people really believed the Reichstag had been set on fire by communists, that Jews were largely responsible for their poverty and God knows what else because they believed Goebles just as people here now believe Karl Rove and the aforementioned media hate mongers. Who would believe that one's own government would be capable of such a monstrous act as blowing up such a great icon as the Reichstag? Or that they would methodically take advantage of the German people's wounded ethnic pride to stir up hatred of others?

You cannot ignore the open and extreme ant-semitism of Henry Ford and his powerful influence on Hitler who kept a photo of Ford on his desk and wrote Mein Kampf shortly after (1924) the money, arms, uniforms and vehicles started to flow into Hitler's organization from Mr. Ford first (1920) and then, later (1924) German Fritz Thyssen and the Harriman organization which included Prescott Bush, George Walker and members of the Nazi party.

You should also consider the words of Major General Smedley Butler in his "War is a Racket" when he says that he had really been working for Wall Street, and elsewhere when he says that he had led invasions of Nicaragua and other countries at the behest of Brown Brothers Harriman strictly to exploit the peasants and other resources of those countries.

George Herbert Walker's Hamburg-Amerika Line subsidized a wide range of pro-Nazi propaganda efforts both in Germany and the United States and was investigated by congress in 1934 for doing so. one link...there is now a wealth of information on this subject on the internet.

Stalin is not likely to have ever considered that America was his friend even when we were the enemy of his enemy. And "we" meant FDR and our parents and grand parents who fought Hitler, not Republicans like John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, Prescott Bush and many others who worked with them as major players.

[Raskolnik]

89. You can't possibly believe "Hitler was their hireling", can you?

Prescott Bush made money from the Nazi rise to power. Brown Brothers Harriman made money dealing with the Nazi-controlled holding companies long after they had moral responsibility to cut their ties, and they made money after after they had a legal obligation to cut their ties. For this, the Bush family should have been shamed. Unfortunately for us all, they were not.

Contrary to what you have been arguing, American industrialists did not control the internal political workings of Weimar Germany. You seem to have a cartoonish vision of Henry Ford and Prescott Bush simply deciding to install a National Socialist government in Germany. Unfortunately for you, there is not a single reputable historian that gives any credence whatsoever to that theory.

Hitler was no one's "hireling". Throughout the 1930's, there were politicians and industrialists that thought (as apparently you still do) that they could use the National Socialists for their own ends. Each and every time, however, it turned out that it was Hitler using them for his own purposes. Outsiders' interests, whether they were financial (BBH) or philosophical (Henry Ford) certainly converged from time to time with those of the Nazis. To translate that convergence into a causal relationship, however, fundamentally misinterprets history.

I suggest you read some history and get a better grip on how and why National Socialists came to power. Richard Evans' "The Coming of the Third Reich" is quite good. As is William Allen's "The Nazi Seizure of Power". And if you want to find out how wrong you really are about the charge of "hireling", you should probably read Joachim Fest's biography of Hitler.

[noel adamson]

99. Hitler may have been out of control but he would have remained a

David Duke if not for his financial backers and his backers certainly held his "eugenics" views. Again, Henry Ford and his virulent anti semitism alone are a great example of this and Hitler's evil nature was well known early on. Now "hireling" may not be accurate in this case just as calling Saddam Hussein a hireling because our government supplied him with billions of dollars worth of WMDs in the 80s but he served the interests of the right wingers running our government. Possibly better than a hireling; no retirement benefits necessary. Pinochet would not have been installed as a military dictator of Chile if he had not had a philosophical agenda and predisposition to the extreme viciousness that Kissinger and his cohorts did not find useful. The fact that Wall Streets darker powers have always favored the "stability" of iron fisted dictatorships is hardly a secret nor is their influence over our government.

The Nazis, National "Socialists", were certainly aided in their nationalistic cause by the loss of WW1, the back breaking reparations they were forced to cough up and then the depression but Hitler and his followers would have remained a David Duke level character if not for the massive backing of these industrialists who knew damned well what he was about. It was not long after Ford and the rest began financing him that he wrote Mein Kampf for one thing.

Unfortunately for you, there is not a single reputable historian that gives any credence whatsoever to that theory.

And who declares the establishment of their "reputation"?

I thank you for your intelligent arguments and stand corrected on some important points but do believe that the people I have mentioned and others in their circle were more complicit than is generally accepted.

[treestar]

51. Is this story at least true?

The Jews wearing the star was false.

But it is 60 years later, and just as many victims were nonJews.

There were six million other victims of the Holocaust. Time that was recognized.

Do the Germans have to feel guilty forever? I would say those alive today even the very oldest ones were children at the time.

Most of the Germans of today were just not born yet. They seem to be a liberal set of people. I think they should get on with their lives without feeling they owe anything to the ancestors of the victims of the Holocaust. It will just promote bitterness to keep it up when they weren't around at the time. And that leads nowhere good.

[noel adamson]

53. Guilt should be assigned to those who allow fascism to continue...

... regardless of nationality, age or other factors. That it is on the rise in America which is so powerful is potentially a far greater disaster than WW2 was especially considering our freakishly gigantic and nuke empowered military.

Germany and the rest of Europe seem to have had enough of a dose of fascism from Hitler and Mussolini to have taken a somewhat more democratic path but the U.S. has remained under the strong influence of a strong corporate fascist element going back to the Robber Barons and further.

[INDIA]

90. With that inane argument...

Bush should be praised for toppling Saddam

[RFKHumphreyObama]

59. What a pathetic imbecile the President of Iran is

The Jews are the centre of attention because they were the ones predominantly being persecuted, tortured, discriminated against and murdered. Thousands of innocent men, women and children were rounded up, whole families were destroyed or torn apart and lives ruined because of the horrific, evil and perverse ideology of the Nazis. Add to that the disabled people, homosexuals and communists who were persecuted and murdered and you have what amounts to one of the greatest, and quite possibly the greatest, tragedy in history

I'm sick of this idiot and his nonsensical, hateful, spiteful, evil rhetoric.

[Marie26]

61. Not to mention,

that he's said in the past that he doesn't believe the Holocaust occured at all. He really needs to make up his mind.

[President Kerry]

108. Nice observation..

Sometimes lunatics lack the most basic sense of logic, and you just pointed it out.

[Rex]

69. Get your ass to Auschwitz and then say if it happened or not.

What a stupid thing to say. I doubt modern Germans feel guilt for what their grandparents did. It is wrong to blame the future on the past.

[fujiyama]

70. This guy is truly vile

and I am disgusted when I see posts on DU in support of this madman. I suppose it's the old mentality of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".

It's really amazing what lengths some go to apologize for this guy..."He doesn't really hate Jews. He hates Zionists". Spare me the fuckin excuses...

He's not trying to create constructive dialogue. He's being a mean spirited ass hole. Fuck him and fuck his defenders.

[Endangered Specie]

71. So by making this statement Amhmadinejad is actually saying

the holocaust DID IN FACT happen, but then goes on to reiterate doubts? How can you feel guilty over something that 'didnt happen'?????

FLIP FLOP FLIP FLOP

[Name removed]

75. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Mnpaul]

80. Read the translations of his speechs

Juan Cole on the "wipe Israel off the map" thing
http://www.juancole.com/2006/05/hitchens-hacker-and-hitchens.html

And these two speeches
http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=iran&ID=SP108406
http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=iran&ID=SP114806

Search Google for "ahmadinejad wipe Israel off the map" and you will see where this garbage comes from.

[Marie26]

83. Mistranslations?

Would you consider Al-Jazeera to be a biased, pro-Bush Administration source? No. Here is their translation:

"Ahmadinejad: Wipe Israel off map."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has openly called for Israel to be wiped off the map...
"As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map," said Ahmadinejad, referring to Iran's revolutionary leader Ayat Allah Khomeini. His comments were the first time in years that such a high-ranking Iranian official has called for Israel's eradication, even though such slogans are still regularly used at government rallies.

In September, Bahrain announced it was ending a decades-old law banning trade ties with Israel. The modest but unprecedented steps were seen as a response to Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in September. Nevertheless, Ahmadinejad said, "There is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will soon wipe off this disgraceful blot (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/15E6BF77-6F91-46EE-A4B5-A3CE0E9957EA.htm

Just to remove any possible doubt about his intentions here, Ahmadinejad made sure to pose in front of a banner in English:



Here's another speech translation, from the same source you quoted above:

Iranian President Ahmadinejad on the ‘Myth of the Holocaust’ -

Ahmadinejad: "As I have said before, as far as several aggressive European governments are concerned, and as far as the Great Satan (the U.S.) is concerned, it is permissible to harm the honor of the divine prophets, but it is a crime to ask questions about the myth of the Holocaust, and about how the false regime occupying Palestine came into being.

"On the basis of this myth, the pillaging Zionist regime has managed, for 60 years, to extort all Western governments and to justify its crimes in the occupied lands - killing women and children, demolishing homes, and turning defenseless people into refugees.

"When we protest to the {Europeans}, they say: 'There is freedom in our country.' They are lying when they claim they have freedom. They are hostages in the hands of the Zionists. The people of Europe and America are the ones that should be paying the heavy price of this hostage-taking.

"How come it is allowed to harm the honor of the prophets in your country, but it is forbidden to research the myth of the Holocaust? You are a bunch of tyrants, who are dependent upon the Zionists and who are held hostage by them.

"We proposed the following: If you are not lying, allow a group of neutral, honest researchers to come to Europe, and to talk to people, examine documents, and let people know the findings of their research about the Holocaust myth. You have even prevented your own scholars from researching this issue. They are allowed to study anything except for the Holocaust myth. Are these not medieval methods? Even today, a group of people convene and declare: 'We rule that the Holocaust happened, and everybody must think the same.' This is a medieval way of thinking."

http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP109106

And, from the article the OP posted above: "Asked by Der Spiegel, in its cover story entitled "The man the world is afraid of", whether he stood by his earlier view the Holocaust was a myth, Ahmadinejad said: "I only accept something as the truth if I am truly convinced of it.

"In Europe there are two opinions on it. One group of researchers who are by and large politically motivated say the Holocaust happened. There is another group of researchers who have the opposite view and are by and large in prison for that."

So, his position seems to be, he doesn't think the Holocaust occured, but if it did, Germans shouldn't feel bad about it.

[Zynx]

96. I wish DU would wake the hell up about this guy.

Disgusting, dangerous human being.

[savemefromdumbya]

77. This fellow is probably paid to say that

[noonwitch]

91. Of course, the Holocaust is not the fault of today's Germans

And they do bear the brunt of the negative image passed down through the decades. At least they're not portrayed as drunks, like the Irish, or dumbasses, like the Poles!

I hate it when a guy like Iran's president uses something slightly legitimate like that to justify the hatred of any group, in this case, jews.

[951-Riverside]

94. Ahmadinejad SHUT UP JUST SHUT UP!!!!!!

I'm sick of Bush and Ahmadinejad they love to talk shit just to appease their small "base".

[zreosumgame]

101. thanks for the 'input' Mr O'Rielly...

[geek tragedy]

105. No, thank you, Mr. "The Jews marketed their victimhood."

Which far-right organization did you borrow that lovely phraseology from, just out of curiousity?

[wordpix2]

128. and thank you, GeekTragedy. Really.

:hug:

[Name removed]

137. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[PsychoDad]

115. Here's the Spiegel Interview with AhmadInejad

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0%2C1518%2C418660%2C00.html

Seems to me that the thrust of AhmadInejad's argument isn't that the Holocaust didn't happen. but is "If the Holocaust happened as it is claimed to have, why are the palestinians the ones who have been punished for it? Why were they the ones made to suffer for something they had no connection to. Wasn't it the nazis who were responsible if it did happen? Why are palestinian Men, Women and Children the ones forced to lose their homes and lives over it"?

"Why are the Jews, and the west, punishing the Palestinians for the Holocaust"?

That's his question. Read the interview.

[951-Riverside]

117. Answer:

They aren't.

Now its Bush's turn.

Reporter: Why are we still in Iraq?
Bush: We were attacked on sept 11th and iraq is part of the war on terrorism, iraq is a haven for foreign terrorists thats why we went there.

AhmadInejad to appease his minority base blames everything on the jews.
Bush to appease his minority base blames everything on terrorism.

[Marie26]

127. Actually,

his thrust is that the Holocaust is a politically motivated myth, that he doesn't think happened, and the Zionists are keeping anyone from telling the "truth" about the non-Holocaust. And that the "Zionists" are exploiting this myth for Israel, when really, all those Jews should be sent back where they came from. He's very clear about his beliefs. (I made a little compliation of his speeches in post #83). What isn't clear is why people would feel compelled to twist those beliefs to give this guy any creditibility.

(The link doesn't work).

[Kellanved]

119. Pardon?

Frankly: It's none of his business to comment on whatever or not Germans should feel guilty. We do and I wish there would be more action based on that.

[blonndee]

172. Isn't it part of German educational curriculum to learn

about the Holocaust? And aren't there lots of public service-type organizations and advertisements about it? I think I remember reading about this recently--that Germans are determined never to allow such a thing to happen again and so make it a point to keep the Holocaust victims (Jewish AS WELL AS THE MILLIONS OF OTHERS) and events in their history? I read that, but was wondering how true it was.

I wish that we had a similar type of history/awareness. I didn't learn of what my own country was capable of until about 5 years ago.

[maddezmom]

173. locking

No longer breaking news and discussion has gone off-topic.