Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Holocaust Remembrance Day: May 1, 2008

Six torches are burning in Israel: one for each of the 1,000,000 Jews killed by the national socialist party in Germany during WWII.

Never Forget Lessons From the Past

"Prime Minister Ehud Olmert lashed out at Holocaust deniers during a ceremony to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day at Yad Vashem on Wednesday saying, 'The voices of those who deny the Holocaust are also being heard. To them, the haters, the deniers, and all the conspirators of evil and to all of those who allow them to function within their realms, we say today: This shall never happen again.' "

" 'Sixty-three years have passed since the Satanic factories of death of the Nazis and their collaborators seized to operate, yet with the passing of time, the dimensions of the Holocaust still remain beyond comprehension, unfathomably shocking, unacceptably chilling,' Olmert told the service at Yad Vashem.

" 'Who would have believed that 63 years later, hatred of Jews and Israelis would rear its ugly head in so many different places around the globe, provocatively and venomously, inciting hatred?" he asked."

" 'If the countries of the world had dealt with the Nazi threat in a timely, sober way, they could have prevented [Nazi leader] Hitler from degrading them and murdering tens of thousands of people," Peres said. He added that had Hitler acquired nuclear capabilities, the world would have been destroyed then.

" 'It is possible that we were too late in erecting the state. And we paid a heavy price,' he said, adding: 'It's forbidden to be late in history.' " [emphasis mine]
The Holocaust Remembrance Day observances came with criticism of American policy.
"Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi on Wednesday echoed Peres' sentiment regarding the importance of stopping global military threats.

"During an address former Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp on the second day of an official visit to Poland, Ashkenazi spoke of the U.S. decision not to bomb the camp during World War II despite knowing of the horrors taking place there.

" 'And today, they don't know what is happening in Iran?' the IDF chief posed."

The War on Terror is not World War II. Osama bin Laden is not Adolph Hitler. The Ayatollahs of Iran are not the leaders of the Empire of Greater Imperial Japan. 1
But I think that parallels can be drawn.

Then
Now
Pro-"Aryan" Germany allied with a very non-"Aryan" Japan
Pro-"Islam" Iran seems to be making arrangements with non-Islamic Russia
Germany systematically exterminated 'inferior' people - including Jews
"Death to the Jews! Death to the great Satan America!" has been popularized by Islamic enthusiasts in Iran and elsewhere.

One-to-one match? Certainly not. I think the parallels are worth considering, though. I also think it would be well to think about what is at stake, if Americans and others decide to wait and see what the likes of Al Qaeda and the Taliban do next. Or, hope that these dedicated terrorists will become good and tolerant neighbors. (It's late in the day, April 30, 2008, as I'm writing this.)
1 Yes, I know. That's English. Sort of. As far as I can tell, that's Dai Nippon Teikoku, phonetically, in Romanji. Or, in English, Great Imperial Japan, or officially the Empire of Greater Japan or maybe Greater Japanese Empire. But, more people know the outfit as Imperial Japan or the Japanese Empire. I could post the name in too character systems used in Japan, but you might not have the right font to handle them.

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Blogroll

Note! Although I believe that these websites and blogs are useful resources for understanding the War on Terror, I do not necessarily agree with their opinions. 1 1 Given a recent misunderstanding of the phrase "useful resources," a clarification: I do not limit my reading to resources which support my views, or even to those which appear to be accurate. Reading opinions contrary to what I believed has been very useful at times: sometimes verifying my previous assumptions, sometimes encouraging me to change them.

Even resources which, in my opinion, are simply inaccurate are sometimes useful: these can give valuable insights into why some people or groups believe what they do.

In short, It is my opinion that some of the resources in this blogroll are neither accurate, nor unbiased. I do, however, believe that they are useful in understanding the War on Terror, the many versions of Islam, terrorism, and related topics.