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Politicians Who Abuse the Holocaust Should Be Sanctioned
Brazil’s new President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva gestures as he is sworn in at the National Congress, in Brasilia, Brazil, January 1, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Jacqueline Lisboa
JNS.org – The Israeli government was absolutely right in its decision last week to announce that Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva—known to the world as “Lula”—is persona non grata in the Jewish state in the light of his disgraceful comparison of Israel’s defensive war in Gaza with the Nazi extermination of 6 million Jews. By the same token, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a grave mistake in proceeding with his meeting with Lula in Brasilia only a few days after the Brazilian leader made his offending remarks.
The key point to bear in mind regarding Lula’s comments is that there was no ambiguity at all; in his view, Israel’s actions in Gaza are a carbon copy of the Holocaust inflicted by the Nazis.
“What’s happening in the Gaza Strip isn’t a war, it’s a genocide,” Lula declared on the sidelines of an African Union summit in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. “It’s not a war of soldiers against soldiers. It’s a war between a highly prepared army and women and children.” There was only one historical parallel appropriate for the current situation, he continued: “When Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”
Frankly, it feels insulting to have to push back against such an outburst. Insulting and demeaning to have to explain that the goal of destroying the “international Jewish conspiracy” lay at the core of Nazi ideology; that before the extermination began, Nazi Germany initiated the legal degradation of the Jews, conferring subhuman status upon them through the 1935 Nuremburg Laws; that the Nazis built an entire network of concentration and extermination camps dedicated, in the main, to the enslavement and murder of Jews from all over occupied Europe; that the Nazis were so obsessed with murdering every Jew under their control that they actually accelerated the killing even when it became clear that the war was lost for them. There is no comparison here with Gaza. Indeed, there are very few historical events that warrant any kind of comparison with the Holocaust—the 1994 genocide in Rwanda might be one, for example—and absolutely none that justify the exact analogy drawn by Lula.
Nonetheless, Blinken went ahead with his meeting with Lula, fully aware of what had been said. Indeed, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller was asked about Lula’s comments ahead of Blinken’s departure for Latin America. “Obviously, we disagree with those comments,” he responded. “We have been quite clear that we do not believe that genocide has occurred in Gaza. We want to see the conflict ended as soon as practical.”
All very well, but the U.S. government should do more than just disagree. It should condemn. It should point about that abusing the Holocaust as Lula did is as morally repugnant as denying the Holocaust together and arguably more insidious since it mocks the historic victimhood of the Jews by casting them as no different from their murderers.
Perhaps Blinken did tell Lula forcefully that what he said was wrong; we will never know, as no record of their discussion has been published. What we have been told by Lula’s adviser, Celso Amorim, is that Blinken opened that part of their exchange with a reminder that his stepfather, Samuel Pisar, had survived the Holocaust.
Again, we can only speculate, but maybe, to offer a more generous interpretation, Blinken felt that Lula would shift his understanding of the Holocaust if only he had a better grasp of its nature and enduring impact on subsequent generations of Jews. If this was the case, then it was hopelessly naive.
Lula is many things, not least a crook who went to jail for corruption before being exonerated on a technicality, without disproving the original accusations against him. However, he is not an idiot. He knows about the Holocaust and has had the privilege of visiting Yad Vashem in Jerusalem—Israel’s national memorial to the Shoah—while on a state visit to Israel in 2010. Yet this was the same visit during which he insulted his Israeli hosts by refusing to visit the grave of Theodor Herzl, the founder of the modern Zionist movement. Whatever he gleaned at Yad Vashem, this was either forgotten entirely or repurposed for his vile comments while in Ethiopia.
If American and Western leaders are serious about tackling antisemitism, they must do so first of all among their peers. Just as we expect university administrations to sanction college professors who abuse the Holocaust for the purpose of attacking Israel, we should demand the same from politicians; after all, Lula was far from being the first offender in this regard. In the last year alone, the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has claimed, “They used to speak ill of Hitler. What difference do you have from Hitler? They are going to make us miss Hitler. Is what this Netanyahu is doing any less than what Hitler did? It is not.” Meanwhile, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, never misses an opportunity to invoke the Nazi analogy. On a visit to Germany last year, he did exactly that while standing next to Chancellor Olaf Scholz at a press conference, sneering in answer to a question from a journalist that Israel had committed “50 massacres, 50 holocausts” since 1947.
At best, we get condemnation. Scholz later declared himself “disgusted” by Abbas’s comments, but he didn’t declare the Palestinian leader persona non grata. Similarly, Erdoğan’s repulsive barbs also meet with rhetorical disapproval, but no more. If anything, those leaders tempted to also make the comparison may well feel emboldened by the knowledge that those who have already done so get away with it!
Just as a university president who can’t offer a simple condemnation of antisemitism doesn’t deserve to be in office, a political leader—whether elected or not—who compares Israel with Nazi Germany doesn’t deserve to be treated as a diplomatic partner. For years now, we’ve allowed Lula, Erdoğan, Abbas and those of their ilk to spit on the graves of 6 million Jews with impunity. Israel, the state built with the blood and toil of survivors, has now said that enough is enough. If there is any decency left in this world, other governments will follow its lead.
The post Politicians Who Abuse the Holocaust Should Be Sanctioned first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Palestinian Detained after West Bank Terror Ramming
Illustrative: Israeli police at the scene of a car-ramming terrorist attack near a market in Jerusalem on Monday, April 24, 2023. Photograph: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters.
JNS.org – A Palestinian rammed his vehicle into a cop car in the West Bank on Saturday in what the military was investigating as a terror attack.
The incident occurred at the Eli gas station, the scene of repeated acts of terrorism against Israelis.
“A Palestinian vehicle accelerated towards a police car and collided with it, there were no casualties,” according to the Israel Defense Forces.
“Troops caught the terrorist and transferred him to security forces for further investigation,” added the statement.
On Sunday, three Israeli police officers were killed in a drive-by shooting near the Tarqumiya checkpoint, some 7.5 miles northwest of Hebron in Judea.
They were named as Chief Inspector Arik Ben Eliyahu, 37, of Kiryat Gat, who is survived by his wife and three children; Command Sgt. Maj. Hadas Branch, 53, of Sde Moshe, who is survived by her husband, three children and granddaughter; and 1st Sgt. Roni Shakuri, 61, of Sderot, who is survived by his wife, daughter and granddaughter.
Shakuri’s other daughter, 1st Sgt. Mor Shakuri, 29, was killed on Oct. 7 while battling an attempt by Hamas terrorists to take control of the police station in Sderot, in southern Israel near the border with Gaza.
The post Palestinian Detained after West Bank Terror Ramming first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Ukraine Concerned at Reports of Iranian Ballistic Missiles to Russia
A missile unveiled by Iran is launched in an unknown location in Iran in this picture received by Reuters on August 20, 2020. WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on Saturday it was deeply concerned by reports about a possible impending transfer of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia.
In a statement emailed to reporters, the ministry said the deepening military cooperation between Tehran and Moscow was a threat to Ukraine, Europe and the Middle East, and called on the international community to increase pressure on Iran and Russia.
CNN and The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Iran had transferred short-range ballistic missiles to Russia, citing unidentified sources.
Reuters reported in August that Russia was expecting the imminent delivery of hundreds of Fath-360 close-range ballistic missiles from Iran and that dozens of Russian military personnel were being trained in Iran on the satellite-guided weapons for eventual use in the war in Ukraine.
On Friday, the United States, a key ally of Ukraine, also voiced concern about the potential transfer of missiles.
“Any transfer of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia would represent a dramatic escalation in Iran’s support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” White House National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett said.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York said on Friday that Tehran’s position on the Ukraine conflict was unchanged.
“Iran considers the provision of military assistance to the parties engaged in the conflict – which leads to increased human casualties, destruction of infrastructure, and a distancing from ceasefire negotiations – to be inhumane,” it said.
“Thus, not only does Iran abstain from engaging in such actions itself, but it also calls upon other countries to cease the supply of weapons to the sides involved in the conflict.”
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Pakistani Man Charged with Planning Terror Attack Against NY Jews on Oct. 7 or Yom Kippur
The flag of the ISIS terrorist group. Image: Reuters/Alaa Al-Marjani/File Photo.
JNS.org – A Pakistani national, whom Canadian authorities arrested on Wednesday, planned to carry out an ISIS-styled, mass shooting terror attack against Jews in New York, the U.S. Justice Department alleged on Friday.
Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, 20, who also answers to Shahzeb Jadoon, “attempted to travel from Canada to New York City, where he intended to use automatic and semi-automatic weapons to carry out a mass shooting in support of ISIS at a Jewish center in Brooklyn, N.Y.,” per the complaint.
Khan allegedly distributed ISIS videos and literature and expressed support for ISIS on social media and via encrypted messages. Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham is a U.S.-designated terror organization.
The defendant allegedly wrote that he wanted to target “Israeli Jewish Chabads … scattered all around,” per the 19-page complaint.
The Justice Department alleges that Khan “conveyed that he hoped to carry out this attack on or around Oct. 7, 2024—which Khan recognized as the one year anniversary of the brutal terrorist attacks in Israel by Hamas, a designated foreign terror organization, which, on Oct. 7, 2023, launched a wave of violent, large-scale terrorist attacks in Israel that resulted in the deaths and hostage taking of hundreds of civilians, including American citizens.”
Khan allegedly told undercover officers that he wanted to “go for Oct. 7 or Oct 11, Yom Kippur, a major festival for the Jews,” per the complaint. “Khan emphasized that ‘Oct. 7 and Oct. 11 are the best days for targeting the Jews,’ because ‘Oct. 7 they will surely have some protests and Oct. 11 is Yom Kippur,’ and ‘they don’t have any other major festival then till next summer.’”
“In selecting New York City as his target location, Khan told the undercover law enforcement officers that ‘New York is perfect to target Jews’ because it has the ‘largest Jewish population In America,’ and, as such, ‘even if we don’t attack a event, we could rack up easily a lot of Jews,” the complaint adds.
The defendant told the undercover officers that “he intended to kill as many Jewish civilians as possible, proclaiming that ‘we are going to New York City to slaughter them,’” per the complaint, which added that Khan allegedly sent a photograph “of the specific area” where he planned to attack to the undercover officers.
Per the complaint, Khan also allegedly told the undercover officers not to wear beards, so they wouldn’t attract attention, and that “you guys will even have to attend some synagogue or Chabad sessions” to “check the insides of the buildings.” He told them it was necessary to identify emergency exits in buildings, “so we can trap them and kill them inside,” per the complaint.
“In addition, Khan also explained that they should not record their ISIS allegiance video, or ‘bayah,’ until later because it would run the risk of them being caught by law enforcement prior to the planned attack,” the complaint alleges.
One of several cities that Khan flagged had “more relaxed” gun laws, he allegedly told the undercover officers.
“What’s the point of living till you’re 70 and dying on a hospital bed when we can attain shahadah in our youths, Inshalah,” he said, per the complaint. (The complaint defines the first term as a declaration of faith and the second as God willing.)
“The defendant is alleged to have planned a terrorist attack in New York City around Oct. 7 of this year with the stated goal of slaughtering, in the name of ISIS, as many Jewish people as possible,” stated Merrick Garland, the U.S. attorney general.
“Thanks to the investigative work of the FBI, and the quick action of our Canadian law enforcement partners, the defendant was taken into custody,” Garland said. “Jewish communities—like all communities in this country—should not have to fear that they will be targeted by a hate-fueled terrorist attack.”
The post Pakistani Man Charged with Planning Terror Attack Against NY Jews on Oct. 7 or Yom Kippur first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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