There is no more sensitive subject for Jewish people than the holocaust. To use that horrendous time to pump up anti-Iranian sentiment in a way that defies current reality is indeed disingenuous.
The second holocaust will be quite different. One bright morning, in five or 10 years, perhaps during a regional crisis, perhaps out of the blue, a day or a year or five years after Iran's acquisition of the Bomb, the mullahs in Qom will convene in secret session, under a portrait of the steely-eyed Ayatollah Khomeini, and give President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, by then in his second or third term, the go-ahead.
First of all, anyone who still believes the myth that Ahmadinejad said he wanted to "wipe Israel off the map' needs to be corrected. The mainstream media continues to repeat this lie and it definitely comes in handy for people like Benny Morris who want to rachet up the rhetoric against the Iranian regime by instigating a belief in a 'second holocaust' and politicians like Benjamin Netanyahu who on Sunday said that he wants to bring Ahmandinejad to trial for 'inciting genocide' based on the misinterpretation of that quote. Netanyahu joins Morris in promoting the fear of a 'second holocaust' while conveniently ignoring the fact that Shimon Peres actually did say that "the president of Iran should remember that Iran can also be wiped off the map." So, who's really threatening annihilation?
Netanyahu, a former Israeli prime minister, said he had already discussed the initiative with diplomats, adding that he planned to visit Britain this week to lobby lawmakers there.
"I want to call on the world, the world that did not stop the Holocaust last time, (to) stop any attempt at a future Holocaust this time," he said.
He, of course, will most likely find energetic support from the Bush administration.
But this type of revisionist history by Morris will certainly not be welcome by the allies who fought in WWII:
BUT THE Iranians are driven by a higher logic. And they will launch their rockets. And, as with the first Holocaust, the international community will do nothing. It will all be over, for Israel, in a few minutes - not like in the 1940s, when the world had five long years in which to wring its hands and do nothing.
This is coming from a professor of history, remember. And one who thinks he can now predict the nuclear annihilation of Israel while not suggesting even once that serious efforts at diplomacy ought to be considered. And, while doing so, he writes off virtually anyone who might be able to influence the course of events - choosing instead to play to his peoples' worst fears. He offers absolutely no viable solutions, preferring to spread his doomsday theory.
Mr Morris has a long and controversial history. Here are some of his past quotes:
Morris takes Ben-Gurion to task for not doing the job more thoroughly:
I think he made a serious historical mistake in 1948. Even though he understood the demographic issue and the need to establish a Jewish state without a large Arab minority, he got cold feet during the war. In the end, he faltered. If he was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. [...] my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country -- the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. If he had carried out a full expulsion -- rather than a partial one -- he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations."
There is no question in his mind of the legitimacy of the Zionist project:
The desire to establish a Jewish state here is legitimate, there was no other choice. It was impossible to leave a large fifth column in the country. [...] Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history.
You have to put things in proportion. These are small war crimes. All told, if we take all the massacres and all the executions of 1948, we come to about 800 who were killed. In comparison to the massacres that were perpetrated in Bosnia, that’s peanuts. In comparison to the massacres the Russians perpetrated against the Germans at Stalingrad, that’s chicken feed. When you take into account that there was a bloody civil war here and that we lost an entire 1 percent of the population, you find that we behaved very well. [1]
So, while he is lashing out at the Iranian regime for what it might do to Israel, he actually supports the 'annihilation' of people like the American Indians for the so-called greater good.
When it comes to psychological projections, Morris is a classic case and the fiery, reckless Ahmandinejad, who does himself no favours, is a perfect target.
Related: If Iran is ready to talk, the US must do so unconditionally
Misquoting Ahmadinejad is worse than taking Khrushchev out of context for a second reason. Although the Soviet Union had a collective leadership, the pudgy Russian was the undoubted No 1 figure, particularly on foreign policy. The Iranian president is not.
His predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, was seen in the west as a moderate reformer, and during his eight years in office western politicians regularly lamented the fact that he was not Iran's top decision-maker. Ultimate power lay with the conservative unelected supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Yet now that Ahmadinejad is president, western hawks behave as though he is in charge, when in fact nothing has changed. Ahmadinejad is not the only important voice in Tehran. Indeed Khamenei was quick to try to adjust the misperceptions of Ahmadinejad's comments. A few days after the president made them, Khamenei said Iran "will not commit aggression against any nation".
The evidence suggests that a debate is going on in Tehran over policy towards the west which is no less fierce than the one in Washington.
You will not hear that from Benny Morris, Benjamin Netanyahu or the other neocons though as they push for a so-called military solution to their issues with Iran. They are all playing a very dangerous game.
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