Jew Says Holocaust Over Used

An Op-Ed in the New York Times by Ami Eden, the national editor of The Forward, a Jewish publication, strikes the correct tone regarding the Holocaust. He recognizes that the Holocaust has been over marketed, and is therefore losing its moral value. He says:

"Jewish organizations and advocates of Israel fail to grasp that they are no longer viewed as the voice of the disenfranchised. Rather, they are seen as a global Goliath, close to the seats of power and capable of influencing policies and damaging reputations. As such, their efforts to raise the alarm increasingly appear as bullying."

He says later:

"One protester, Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, called on the [British] prince [Harry] to make amends by traveling to Poland for the Auschwitz ceremony.

"This is exactly the wrong approach. By playing the Holocaust card against Harry, Jewish critics deflected attention from how Harry had insulted the memory of the millions of Britons who suffered during World War II; they also risked squandering a diminishing supply of hard-won moral capital better spent in the fight against terrorism and the rise in Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism."

Well said! I think he strikes the right chord. I hope other Jews, who are so quick to condemn Gentiles as anti-Semites for comments that are political or moral, or simply thoughtless, but that are not about Jews as a religion or a race, will take his advice to heart.

His comment about Jews as bullies is particularly important to me because I am concerned that many people within, or close to, the Bush administration pushing for war in Iraq were Jewish: Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, and many other neo-cons. It's arguable that Iraq is a Jewish war, not an American war. Bush gave in to Jewish pressure; ordinary Americans supported it once it started, but Jews were responsible for starting it.

More Jewish Influence on US Iraq Policy

The New York Times today has an article on parallels between Iraq and Vietnam. It says that shortly after the US invasion of Iraq, talk of comparing Iraq and Vietnam was forbidden. Now, however, the article says, "Nearly two years after the American invasion of Iraq, such comparisons are no longer dismissed in mainstream political discourse as facile and flawed, but are instead bubbling to the top."

Then the article goes on to quote Tony Lake, giving the liberal, Democratic view, and Michael Rubin, giving the conservative view. The article says, "Michael Rubin, a conservative scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who recently returned from Iraq, published an op-ed piece in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Friday in which he noted that Arab television in Baghdad routinely showed archival footage of American diplomats fleeing Saigon, as if to suggest that whatever Mr. Bush may say about America's staying power, 'it is weak.'"

Why is the AEI writing about American policy in an Israeli newspaper? Israel is not America's 51st state. It's another country, which has a very strong interest in the US killing Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere. I think that America must do what is best for its own self-interest, not what is best for Israel. We should not confuse the two. And policy advisers should not confuse the two, or if they want to do so, they should declare themselves agents of a foreign government.

Jews Complain Allies Allowed Holocaust

According to the report in the New York Times about the Holocaust memorial service in Poland on Thursday, Israeli President Katsav said that the allies "did not do enough" to prevent the killing of Jews in World War II.

Unfortunately, this strikes me as ungrateful. I saw the criticism of FDR at the Holocaust Museum in Washington. I support FDR's and Churchill's decision to go slowly on the invasion of Europe to preserve the lives of Allied troops. I can understand Jewish frustration that Jews died while the Allies were organizing D-Day, but the alternative would have been many more deaths of Allied soldiers in the invasion. Jews must take some responsibility for their own fate. One of the Holocaust vignettes I saw on TV was of a Jew who was a barber at Auschwitz, shaving German officers. He said he could have killed one of them, but then he would certainly have been killed himself. He decided it was more important for him to live; why shouldn't allied troops be allowed to live as well?

The allies also abandoned Eastern Europe to live behind the Iron Curtain for fifty years after World War II. This was mainly because the Allies really needed the Soviet Union in the alliance. The Soviets lost millions of people in the war, but the war in the East sapped German strength, making victory in the West possible, or at least easier. It was another trade off to save the lives of Allied troops. The Jews were not the only ones who suffered; many millions of East Europeans were sentenced to live most of their lives under Communism.

Civil Service on Its Way Out

The Washington Post reports that the civil service system is on its way out at the Department of Homeland Security. Civil service was introduced a hundred or so years ago because the old patronage system resulted in so many abuses. But Bush wants patronage. No more independent thinking! If you don't support the Bush political view, you're fired, or certainly not promoted.

Bush at first fought the law creating the Homeland Security Department because it included civil service protections for its employees. Now it's clear why he opposed it so strongly. It was his chance to get political patronage re-introduced widely into the federal government. Already there are thousands of "Schedule C," senior, policy-related jobs that are exempt from the civil service. That's not enough for Bush. If there were more Democrats in the House and Senate, there might be some chance of resisting his onslaught, but probably not now.

The article says the system at Homeland Security will become the model for all government agencies. One question: Why would one of the worst managed bureaucracies in the government become the model for the other, better functioning bureaucracies?

Presumably, the important thing to Bush is loyalty, not results. Just look at Iraq. Is that a successful war? But to the Bushies, it's the most successful, wonderful war ever. Forget the fact that Iraqis are leaving in droves because of the lack of security, electricity, water, gasoline, etc. It took George Bush to make Saddam Hussein look like a good government leader.