Carlo Strenger Writes: The Holocaust must, by no means, be used for political purposes. Never, and by no one. It is time for Benjamin Netanyahu to stop misusing the Holocaust. I want to make it very clear: I do not compare Netanyahu’s use of the Holocaust to either the obscene abuse of Holocaust paraphernalia by Haredi demonstrators, nor to Glenn Beck’s smearing of George Soros.
But in order to protect the memory of the holocaust, Netanyahu must stop using it as a trump card to score political points. Doing so cheapens the Holocaust; it clouds the mind, and it distorts historical and political judgment.
Last week the world commemorated the seventieth anniversary of the Wannsee conference at which the Final Solution of the Jewish Question was formally adopted.
Netanyahu’s reaction: “The Israeli government has the right, duty and capability to prevent the elimination of the Jewish people and the Jewish state…. “There is no lack of bitter enemies today,” Netanyahu said. “The will to destroy the Jewish people has not changed. What has changed is our ability to defend ourselves and our determination to do so.”
This is precisely the type of overblown rhetoric that ultimately cheapens the Holocaust. Yes, the Iranian regime time and again threatens that it will erase what they call “The Zionist entity” off the map. Yes, anti-Semitism has not disappeared from the world. It is one of the many malignant forms of prejudice created by the primitive strata of the human mind.
