Is History Repeating Itself in Israel-Palestine?
If we consider what happened 80 years ago, we must draw some potentially horrifying conclusions.
I recently had a discussion with a friend who maintained that “Israeli society is superior in nearly every way” to that of the Palestinians. “They’re better educated and organized,” he observed.
That got me thinking.
Germany of the 1930’s was by every measure the most cultured, sophisticated, technologically advanced, literate, modern, unified, confident society in Europe, if not the world.
Their military was without peer, as were their weapons systems and platforms. Sound familiar?
Like the Israelis, the Germans under Hitler were truly, to use my friend’s phrasing, “superior” to all those around them. At least, they certainly thought so.
And that feeling of superiority led them to some very dark places indeed.
You see, whether it is by dint of having “pure Aryan blood” or by being “God’s Chosen People”, when a society believes they are a “Master Race”, they start permitting themselves all sorts of atrocities and pitiless cruelty against those they consider to be subhuman Untermenschen — or to use the words of Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, “human animals”.
Extermination thus becomes the order of the day. Hitler believed he was doing the world (us) a favour by ridding it of the Jews. The Israeli rhetoric is hauntingly similar regarding the Palestinians, who are now, according to the Likudniks, “all Hamas”.
Irony abounds. Any historian properly acquainted with the situation in Gaza would have to admit that the closest historical analogue to that sad place is the Warsaw Ghetto in WWII. Like the Nazis, the Israelis have turned a city into a prison, controlling everything that goes in or out, even calculating the number of calories needed to keep the population just above the starvation line.
Like the Jews, the Gazans are building tunnels and even organising uprisings — futile attempts to fight back against a clearly “superior” regime.
And, like the Jews, the Gazans fight even knowing they will lose, because they have abandoned all hope of rescue or release. “Die quickly or die slowly” is once more the horrific choice facing an imprisoned people.
We all know how the Warsaw Ghetto ended. And it looks like the same fate awaits the Palestinians, if Bibi and his band of Zionist fanatics have their way.
The Nazis wanted to recreate Grossdeutschland or “Greater Germany”. The Zionists want to re-establish Eretz-Israel or “Greater Israel”. In both cases, these “superior” societies believed it is their birthright to conquer others. In the first case, that attempt at hegemony led to a world war. One can only wonder whether the current incarnation of such an evil will have the same result.
#End.
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I think you've drawn the correct parallels between modern Israel and the Third Reich. Ironic isn't it? Perhaps that's what happens to formerly persecuted peoples--they pass this sense of persecution along and project their hatred onto a fabricated enemy.