Israel Matzav

Has Germany Internalized Holocaust Lessons?

At JPost.com, Caroline Glick says that Germany's warm invitation to Iranian nuclear aspirant Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to attend the World Cup Soccer tournament - despite his threats to use and to spread nuclear weapons technology - shows that Germany has still not internalized the lessons of the Holocaust:

Germany's refusal to place any sanction on Iran is disturbing, because as German political scientist Matthias Kuntzel argued in the Transatlantic Intelligencer last December, "If there is a western nation today that has the means to confront [Iran's nuclear weapons program] with effective sanctions, it is Germany."

Kuntzel notes, "Germany is today by far the most important supplier of goods to Iran and its exports are increasing at a steady 20 percent per year. In 2004, German exports to Iran were worth some €3.6 billion. At the same time, Germany is the most important purchaser of Iranian goods apart from oil and Iran's most important creditor."

GERMANY'S behavior toward Iran is a clear sign that for all its Holocaust memorializing, for all its anti-Nazi legislation, and for all its protestations of friendship with Israel and the Jewish people, Germany has not learned the lessons of the Holocaust.

The main lesson of the Holocaust is not that war is bad and must therefore be avoided at all costs. The main lesson of the Holocaust is that evil is bad and must be fought with every effective means. By trading with Iran and protecting Iran from those who point out its obvious dangers not only to Israel but to the entire world, Germany is protecting evil and thus advancing its cause.

The Germans are acting in a morally blind and thus immoral fashion when they apply the lessons to the Holocaust only against neo-Nazis. In pretending that the only way that the Holocaust can repeat itself is for Adolf Hitler, Jr. to become Chancellor of Germany, the Germans give themselves license to ignore Hitler's actual reincarnations. In mindlessly - yet patronizingly - squawking that all violence is bad and all peace is good, the Germans allow themselves the odious privilege of impugning the honor, nobility and morality of Israelis and Americans who fight Islamiofascists by pretending there is no moral distinction between our soldiers and Islamofascist fighters who incinerate innocent people. They pretend it is possible to appease a murderer like Ahmadinejad, just as 70 years ago, at the 1936 Olympics others maintained that Hitler was someone who could be trusted to keep his word.

Read the whole thing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:54 AM