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Deep Denial: Why the Holocaust Still Matters

[New Republic] Michael B. Oren - In his recent speech to the UN General Assembly, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu focused in his opening remarks on the Holocaust. "One-third of all Jews perished in the great conflagration of the Holocaust," Netanyahu reminded the delegates. "Nearly every Jewish family was affected, including my own." He went on to assail President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the world's premier Holocaust denier, who had addressed the same assembly the previous day, as well as those ambassadors who did not walk out on him. "Have you no shame?" Netanyahu upbraided them. "Have you no decency?" Recognizing the murder of six million Jews more than six decades ago is, in fact, vital for understanding the supreme dangers posed to six million Jews in Israel today by a nuclear Iran and by the Goldstone Report. Reasserting the factuality of the Holocaust is a prerequisite for peace. Israel and its citizen defense forces represent the most palpable means for redressing the Jews' inability to defend themselves that led to the Holocaust. Where Ahmadinejad leaves off, the Goldstone Report persists. Instead of probing Hamas' deliberate effort to maximize Israeli civilian casualties by firing more than 7,000 missiles at Israeli towns, the judges interviewed handpicked Hamas witnesses, several of them senior commanders disguised as civilians, and uncritically accepted their testimony. Israel will, of course, continue to defend its citizens. No amount of vitriol will compel Israel onto a course of self-destruction. But having twice withdrawn unilaterally to recognized borders and received only onslaughts in return, and having suffered censure for protecting themselves from that aggression, Israelis will understandably recoil from additional retreats that will leave them vulnerable. Israelis, moreover, will not withdraw from any territory liable to become staging grounds for terrorist groups empowered by international agencies and convinced of their ability to murder Israelis with impunity. By reaffirming Israel's right to safeguard its citizens, Prime Minister Netanyahu has demarcated the only path to peace. The writer is Israel's ambassador to the United States.
2009-10-08 06:00:00
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