The Return of Nazism

It's back, despite the cries of "Never again":

The Jews everywhere are “the Muslim’s bitter enemies,” said a prominent Islamic leader. Throughout history, the “irreconcilable enemy of Islam” has conspired and schemed and “oppressed and persecuted 40 million Muslims,” he said. In Palestine, the Jews are establishing “a base from which to extend their power over neighboring Islamic countries.” And, he proclaimed, “This war, which was unleashed by the world Jewry,” has provided “Muslims the best opportunity to free themselves from these instances of persecution and oppression.”

Sound like Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah? Or perhaps Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Nope. It was the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Husseini, in 1942. An ardent Nazi supporter, Husseini delivered his speech at the opening of the Islamic Institute in Berlin, one day after the Allies denounced the Nazis for “carrying into effect Hitler’s oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe.” Husseini’s address was approved by Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Joseph Goebbels was in attendance. The Reich press office widely distributed the comments.

President Bush undoubtedly didn’t have any of this in mind when he dubbed our enemies in the war on terror “Islamic fascists.” But his comments — analytically flawed as they may be — added some much-needed moral clarity to our current struggle. They also helped to illuminate a much-overlooked point: Islamic fundamentalism and Nazism are historically and intellectually linked. (When the Israelis caught Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Final Solution, a leading Saudi Arabian newspaper read: “Arrest of Eichmann, who had the honor of killing 6 million Jews.”) Perhaps unsurprisingly, Bush’s remarks seem to have struck a nerve.

The Saudi government warned “against hurling charges of terrorism and fascism at Muslims without regard to the spotless history of Islamic civilization.” Of course, no civilization is without sin, but it takes particular chutzpah for the Saudis to preen, considering their civilization is as spotless as a leopard.

Olmert and Bush's horribly weak performance in Lebanon virtually guarantee that anti-Semitism will explode. And as in the pre-Holocaust days, Americans can't even bring themselves to call the murder of Jews anything but a random act of the mentally ill.

Unfortunately, this particular mental illness is contagious---no, it's positively virulent.

But Jews don't fit politically-correct notions of victims any longer---they're too successful for that, and the Holocaust is now something Steven Spielberg references obliquely while glorifying money-grubbing Nazis.

And why should the Israelis be allowed to fight for their survival when we're not sure Americans should?