The Nazi comparison

The most prominent Dutch idiotarian at the moment is without doubt Gretta Duisenberg who last Sunday wasted no time in blaming the Palestianian terrorist attack on Israel. Not content with that particular expression of her moral bankruptcy, she's been very chummy with terrorist leader Yasser Arafat, protectively wrapping her arm around him:

Appearing with Arafat, the ECB president's wife said she thought Israel should "give back the occupied territories" and said the PA chairman "hates killing."

"I think there should be peace and the military situation of the Israeli government should stop because their actions are terrible. You can't have peace when you have all these killings around. There should be dialogue and negotiations," she said.

Of course, the last time there were negotiations and dialog, Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat just about everything he wanted, but Arafat declined. Instead, he breathed new life into the terrorist campaign against Israel and help nourish the psychotic death cult that has now poisened the minds of many Palestinians. There is no reason to assume that any negotiations or dialog would have a different result now. Arafat, the Palestinians and the Arab world are still clinging to their fantasy of destroying the state of Israel. I know I've been overusing the term, but Gretta Duisenberg truly is Arafat's useful idiot.

But Gretta's on a roll. Her idiocy just compounds itself day by day. The latest revolting comments she made are causing another stir. She said today that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian terrories is worse than the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands (with the exception of the Holocaust). History clearly isn't her strongest point. The Dutch never tried to exterminate the Germans, they did not carry out terrorist attacks on Germans, they did set up the Dutch Liberation Organization whose aim it was the destroy the German nation. Israel was forced to fight wars in order ensure its very survival, because the Arab nations surrounding have been trying since 1948 to destroy Israel itself. The Nazi comparison is all the more despicable because it being directed at the Nazis' victims, and Gretta knows that full well. It's a calculated act of callousness. And her parenthetical qualification that excepts the Holocaust from this comparison is just a superficial attempt to pre-empt criticism. You cannot compare anybody to the Nazis-ex-Holocaust. Anti-semitism and the deliberate extermination of the Jews is the very defining feature of Nazism. Gretta's attempt to have it both ways is disingenous and despicable.

But of course, she was not done yet. She also said:

The cruelty of the Israelis knows no bounds. It's really no exception that they blow up the houses of Palestinians. The Nazis never went this far during the occupation of the Netherlands.

Yes, in their "boundless cruelty" the Israelis blow up the houses with the people inside them, right? Oh wait, they give them a chance to leave and not be physically harmed. When's the last time a Palestinian terrorist showed this much consideration for an Israeli life?

Onward through Gretta's phantom world of saintly Palestinians and villanous Je.., eh Israelis. Showing yet more historical illiteracy, she happily skips on to Jenin which was the base for many Palestinian terrorist attacks in which many dozens of Isrealis were murdered. She says:

This wall that Israel is building, is many times worse than the Berlin wall. It is terrible. It is much higher and goes over land that was taken from the Palestinians

Yes, it was taken from them in one of those wars in which the Palestinians and their friends tried to expunge Israel from the face of the earth, remember? And Ehud Barak was willing to give it back to the Palestinians (who never really owned it in the first place, as it was part of Jordan before the Six Day War). But the Palestinians prefer to strap on explosives and murder and maim as many Israelis as they can, reveling in their death cult. For good measure she also mentions that the situation is worse than it ever was for blacks in South Africa.

Historical illiteracy, a stupendous dose of gullibility, a never-ending supply of idiocy, utter callousness towards the Jews of Israel and complete moral bankruptcy; these are the ingredients that make up our highly sophisticated European intellectuals. Truly revolting.

Of course, since the protection of free speech is less strict in most European countries than in the US with its First Amendment, we have laws on the books which can impose various penalties on people who say things which are hateful. In response to Gretta's blather, several Jewish organizations are now saying they're going to sue Gretta Duisenberg under these laws. The head of the "Federative Jewish Netherlands" organization has said that he wants the courts to prohibit Duisenberg from "expressing hurtful or offensive sentiments about Jews or the Jewish people." Much as I sympathize with them, I strongly prefer the American absolutist approach to free speech. Shutting people up by means of court orders is dangerous and wrong. Therefore I support even the right of the utterly reprehensible Gretta Duisenberg to say these offensive and hurtful things.

UPDATE: LGF is on it too. Lots of good comments there.