Maybe I should designate a month for looking at Second World War analogies, kind of like I do in April with Confederate "Heritage" Month. How can any one war yield so many bad historical analogies?
Alan Dershowitz has come up with one of the loopiest ones I've ever seen: Lebanon Is Not a Victim Huffington Post 08/07/06.
The Christian, Druze and other non-Shi'a-Muslim population of Lebanon, he says, are like Nazi sympathizers in Austria in 1938. Or a lot of them are, or something like that. Somehow, some way. That is just so goofy it boggles the mind.
Then also says, "The Nazi party too provided social, economic and educational services to the poor in Germany and Austria." What, did he go out on a drinking binge with Mel Gibson? Well, yeah, Christian-nationalist home schoolers in the US today provide "educational services", too. They could relate to the Nazis' reverence for the Kinder, Kueche, Kirche (children, kitchen, church) ideals for girls, too.
But it's too goofy to ever bother to dissect. Steve Gilliard says, "One day, Dershowitz will regret writing all this nonsense."
And I'm really not interested in suggesting talking points to either side in the Israel-Lebanon War. The whole thing is too disgusting, and it's very likely to get a lot more Americans killed in Iraq due to the political shock waves.
But, I will suggest that if you're trying to write polemical points for Israel, bringing up reminders of Germany's Anschluss (annexation) of Austria in 1938 might not be the best thing to do. Because the main annexation activities are going on in the Middle East right now are in the Israeli settlments in the occupied West Bank.
I'm just saying.
1 comment:
Dershowitz is unbalanced. He makes some good points, but sometimes he is just way way off track.
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