Bad Things

In the words of conservative commentator, Charle Krauthammer, Barack Obama's comments at last week's Nation Prayer Breakfast were both "banal and repulsive." Banal because Obama's comments sound like the words of a 17 year-old who comes to learn that throughout history, atrocities have been conducted in the name of religion and thinks this discovery is somehow original and illuminating. And repulsive because Obama compares Christian behavior during the crusades and inquisition, events that happened 1000 and 500 years ago with events that occurred last week—intellectually dishonest as well as historically questionable. Jack Colman makes an interesting comment about the prayer breakfast comments:

[Consider] Obama as president during World War II, after receiving intelligence reports that Nazi Germany was engaging in industrial-scale extermination of Jews -- 'Hey, who are we to judge after what we did to the Indians?'

The frightening thing is, given Obama's recent behavior vis a vis Israel, it's more that a little likely he would have said exactly that.

Since this president has opened the door to historical references along with subtle vilification of Israel, let go back not 1000 years, not 500 years, but less than 80 years—to the Nazi atrocities committed against the Jews. Let me first say that I have, on a number of occasions in this blog, suggested in the strongest possible terms that radical Islam is the Nazism of the 21st century—exhibiting all of the characteristics that could lead to the death of tens of millions of people. I have also noted that the current left-leaning media treats radical Islam in much the same way they treated the Nazis during the 1930s.

In a worthwhile article, Daniel Greenfield provides a little history lesson and some commentary. He writes:

[During the second world war] the Mufti of Jerusalem had come to Europe urging the extermination of the Jews.

“This is your best opportunity to get rid of this dirty race… Kill the Jews,” the Mufti had ranted to fellow Muslims.

On the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the ghosts of Eichmann [who was a friend of the Muslims and received a sympathetic hearing from them] and the Mufti of Jerusalem, who had visited [Nazi] gas chambers while the Holocaust was underway, still linger there.

Greenfield notes that Hitler's Mein Kampf, a book banned in Germany, sold 911,000 copies in Egypt alone and countless more in other Arab Muslim states. Then he writes:

... Muslim Brotherhood godfather Sayyid Qutb had written his own Mein Kampf titled, “Our Struggle against the Jews” in which he claimed that Allah had sent Hitler. The claim has more recently been repeated by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Yusuf al-Qaradawi on Al Jazeera in ’09.

“The last punishment was carried out by Hitler… Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers [Muslims],” he said. Today everyone [in the West] agrees that the Nazis were evil. By the fifties, even Eichmann’s fellow Nazis were looking to jettison the Holocaust and improve their brand. But the Nazis back then were often treated the way that Muslims are today.

Media coverage [in the 1930s] emphasized distinctions between the radical and moderate Nazis. (Hitler was, of course, a moderate.) Nazi grievances were treated as legitimate. Their crimes were lied about and covered up.

In 1933, the Associated Press’ wire report claimed that the persecution of Jews had already ended. Another wire story headlined “Jew Persecution Over Says Envoy” cited Secretary of State Hull’s relief that the Hitler regime was doing its best to curb further persecution of the Jews.

Hull would later apologize when the Republican Mayor of New York City referred to the Fuhrer as a “man without honor”. Mayor LaGuardia might have been suffering from Fuhrerphobia.

Jewish protests were treated as shrill and baseless alarmism.

“U.S. Investigation Shows No Cause for Protest,” the AP headlined its coverage.

“Notwithstanding assurances given by German government leaders and by Hull that the Nazi excesses against the Jewish race had ceased in Germany, Jewish leaders went ahead with plans for mass protest meetings,” another wire story read. “All requests that these meetings be canceled fell on deaf ears.”

A week before the story, the first official Nazi concentration camp of Dachau had opened.

The media coverage should sound familiar. It’s how Iran’s nuclear buildup is being covered. It’s how Muslim violence against Jews is covered. It’s discussed reluctantly and immediately dismissed. Jews are written off as pests who refuse to listen when [Secretary of State, John] Kerry, like Hull, tells them there’s nothing to worry about.

That is how the Holocaust really happened.

Auschwitz just shows us the final stage. It doesn’t show us the sympathy for the Nazis, the willingness of some on the left to see them as allies in overturning the existing system and the anger at the selfishness of the Jews in putting their own desire not to be killed ahead of world peace.

Gee ... sort of sounds like today's media who parrot the Obama administration's line that Bibi Netanyahu's visit to speak to Congress on Iran (another hotbed of Muslim anti-Semitism) is somehow provocative or selfish. Yeah, arguing that Obama and his Team of 2s are negotiating a "peace" that will put Israel in jeopardy of being annihilated is really selfish, isn't it?

History repeats, and it's doing so today. We have a president who seems determined to whitewash the danger of radical Islam (so much so that he refuses to use the phrase). His trained hamsters in the media follow along, acting very much like the AP during the 1930s. And his party? Rather than admitting that they have a leader who has become increasingly hostile to Israel and increasingly conciliatory to the radical Islamic Iranian regime, they follow his lead. Problem is, Barack Obama and his team of 2s have been consistently wrong about virtually every foreign policy issue they have addressed. If they are followed for two more years, and if the next president continues along their path, bad things‚ very bad things—will surely happen.