Posted on 04/25/2006 12:14:07 PM PDT by anotherview
Apr. 25, 2006 2:55 | Updated Apr. 25, 2006 19:43
Never Again
As the nation marks Holocaust Remembrance Day, we remember history's greatest crime against humanity, the industrialization of murder that took the lives of six million Jews and millions of other people in Nazi concentration camps. We note the unfinished business relating directly to the Holocaust, including the failure of several countries - including Austria, Norway, Sweden, Syria and Ukraine - to prosecute still-living Nazi war criminals.
However what is striking about this day in 2006 is not so much that anti-Semitic violence and neo-Nazi movements persist in the world, or that Holocaust-deniers continue to hawk their wares. The task of keeping the memory of the six million alive and of combatting direct anti-Semitism will always be with us. And yet this task, as it is often narrowly defined, can hardly encompass the full meaning of the notion "never again."
"Never again" should be the world's promise to itself to prevent mass murders, ethnic cleansings and other organized atrocities. If so, it is a pledge that has not been kept. Millions died in the killing fields of Cambodia in the 1970s and in Rwanda and Bosnia in the 1990s, and the slaughter continues today in Sudan. If "never again" is the ideal, "again and again" is much closer to the reality.
Just a short time ago at the Pessah Seder, Jews read how "in every generation" a new Pharaoh rises to destroy us. This is usually seen as a quaint, broad brush characterization of history rather than a timely description of the present moment.
For "never again" to have meaning, however, it must be applied both as a universal principle of human rights and as a command to rise up and prevent genocides that loom on the horizon.
The world today is threatened by a new form of fascism no less potent than the one that swept through Europe and culminated in the Holocaust. As an article by German political scientist Matthias K ntzel in The New Republic reminds us this week, during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, Iran employed thousands of its own children as human minesweepers.
"In the past," the semi-official Iranian daily Ettelaat explained as that war raged, "we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15- and 16-year-olds. They went into the minefields. Their eyes saw nothing... And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone."
Such scenes would henceforth be avoided, the newspaper assured its readers. "Before entering the minefields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves."
K ntzel reports that since that war ended in 1988 these brainwashed youth, the Basiji, "have grown both in numbers and influence" and become the shock troops of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who himself reportedly trained Basiji.
"A younger generation of Iranians, whose worldviews were forged in the atrocities of the Iran-Iraq War, have come to power, wielding a more fervently ideological approach to politics than their predecessors. The children of the Revolution are now its leaders."
A new report from a committee chaired by Dan Meridor warns that if Iran is allowed to obtain nuclear weapons, a number of Arab states are likely to seek such weapons as well.
In the 1930s, when Hitler was on the rise but still could have been easily stopped, Winston Churchill warned that restrictions on German rearmament - in place since the previous World War - had to be enforced or else war would break out again.
Today, Iran is testing the will of the world just as Germany did then. In the current instance, however, if the West fails to defeat Teheran's death-loving Islamo-fascists before it is too late, they will have nuclear weapons.
"Never again" is now an imperative, perhaps more than anytime in 60 years.
pinging the pingers
But does the average "man in the street" in Tehran know this?
The Jews in Israel will not stand by and let this happen again..I wish I could say the same for the ones in this country..It seems some want to be prisoners again voting for the democrats is not healthy at all..
I am beginning to believe the "average 'man in the streets' in Tehran", unfortunately, doesn't know much much of anything!!
Are they being oppressed to the point that we don't hear anything from them? Allegedly, many of the younger ones would like a western style government. True, or not?
I'm not sure the leaders of Iran do.
The nutjob Iranian president is like a 6-year-old with a loaded gun.
Actually, there are 6-year-olds who can handle guns responsibly. The Iranian president is more like a monkey with a loaded gun.
Dear Israel,
Will you please nuke Iran? We don't seem to have the stomach for it.
Shalom,
America
Thank you for your post. As I wrote in another post earlier, it is imperative that we never, ever forget what happened 60+ years ago... I shared my experience visiting Auschwitz last year at http://www.cdod.blogspot.com. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly we humans tend to dismiss the horrors we have witnessed. I had the privilege of meeting the "last Jew of Gora Kalwaria", a holy town near Warsaw, that lost all of its Jews to Treblinka...he has taken it upon himself to mind the lonely and once-desecrated Jewish cemetery.
For "never again" to have meaning, however, it must be applied both as a universal principle of human rights and as a command to rise up and prevent genocides that loom on the horizon.
The full meaning of the notion "Never Again" also encompasses individual responsibility for one's own safety and that of those around you. Yes, that means owning firearms for protection of one's self, family and liberties. All too sadly, most American Jews just don't understand this (let alone agree with it). However, this one does...I own, shall we say, more guns than I need, but less than I want, and I regularly carry concealed. It helps a lot that I live in Texas, part of the United States of America, rather than in the Peoples Republic of New Jersey as I previously did. I will also educate my kids in self-defense when they are old enough to understand and do anything about it.
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You mean by the way the US and Israel are fighting this so-called War On Terror?
Right now I'd give the islamists odds 60-40 at best.
God help us all.
Standing there on that mesa, I could understand the oath.
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