Posted on 12/07/2004 2:14:35 PM PST by Alouette
Six decades after the mass extermination of six million Jews in the Holocaust by Nazi Germany, more than 50 percent of Germans believe that Israel's present-day treatment of the Palestinians is similar to what the Nazis did to the Jews during World War II, a German survey released this weekend shows.
51 percent of respondents said that there is not much of a difference between what Israel is doing to the Palestinians today and what the Nazis did to the Jews during the Holocaust, compared to 49% who disagreed with such a comparison, according to the poll carried out by Germany's University of Bielefeld.
The survey also found that 68 percent of Germans believe that Israel is waging a "war of extermination" against the Palestinians, while some 32% disagreed with such a statement.
In a first reaction, the chairman of Yad Vashem's directorate Avner Shalev said Tuesday that the poll's results, which he termed "very worrisome," were indicative of a long-suppressed felling of anti-Semitism among the mainstream "so-called liberals" population which now, under the coating of anti-Israeli criticism, are becoming legitimate again. He added that the poll's results, which he said any objective person would repudiate, are also the result of the release of pent-up feelings of guilt built up from the Holocaust.
"The energies which bring about such answers come to protect feelings of guilt," Shalev said. 62 percent of respondents in the poll said that they were sick of "all this harping" of German crimes against Jews, while 68% said that they found it "annoying" that Germans today are still held to blame for Nazi crimes against Jews.
The survey, which aimed to determine what is "the cut off point" between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism, finds that while "classical" anti-Semitism in Germany is on the wane, secondary anti-Semitism, often couched in anti-Israel views are on the rise, especially among the Left.
The German researchers who conducted the polls conceded that the results showing a majority of Germans equating Israel's Policy with Nazi Atrocities "may be worrying," but concurred with Yad Vashem's Shalev that the media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinians conflict has made such analogies part of the public discourse.
"When you see an image in the newspaper, in a caricature, which is repeated day in and day out that Sharon is equal to Hitler than the image catches in your head because maybe you do not like Jews so much or maybe you hate Jews, and than this works out excellent," Shalev said, stressing that education of the young generation was the key to stemming such a tide.
In the survey, 82 percent of the respondents polled said that they are angered by the way Israel is treating the Palestinians, while 45 percent of those polled said that considering Israel's policies it was "no surprise" that people were against them.
The telephone poll of 3000 "non-migrant" respondents, which was taken in May and June, did not come with a margin of error.
"This is a very sad commentary about what is happening in Europe today which needs to send a very strong warning signal about how much work needed to be done to deal with these attitudes," said, Dr. Ephraim Zuroff, the Israel director of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Due in part to its blighted history, Germany is generally considered to be one of the more supportive countries of Israel in Europe.
I don't think we'd have to kill anything like 1.3 billion before the rest recanted their foul belief system. Remember, most were converted at the point of a sword, or with the promise of spoil.
They don't hate us!
We are just at fault for everything.
war on terror
Osama
high oil prices
AIDS
Proliferation of weapons
poppy production in Afgan.
corrupt gov. in Columbia
many many more, it's all our fault.
Red6
Might have taken care of that whole half century cold war.
Patton got himself in enough trouble with the 1940s press. He'd probably not have made general in todays army.
Naw, we did right nuking the Japanese. It's just a shame we didn't have 'em ready in time to irradiate Dresden and Munich.
Seems to be a stupidity pandemic.
It's hard to believe he was almost sent home after he slapped that soldier. How many more American soldiers would have been killed if Patton had been sent home early?
Yeah, and Roosevelt knew the attack on Pearl Harbor was coming and did nothing about it.
Eh? I was writing about the economic and political situation that led up to WWII. I didn't spout some of Hitler's Mein Kampf. How you come to call what I wrote anti-Jew rhetoric is beyond me.
So lets just look at the German Nation/State then. There most certainly IS a German CULTURE.
Yep, watch "Sprockets", SNL and you'll understand them perfectly.
Except that you need to be a little more negative, dark and self mutilating. The best band from Germany at this time, why of course Ramstein.
Red6
Yes, and as it collaped the Soviets were raping, killing, and pillaging. Cutting off ears, cutting off noses, attaching electrical wires to genetalia and then turning up the current, shooting dogs, shooting cattle, razing villages and generally ravishing the countryside in a manner reminiscent of Jenjiss Conn.
Hod-damn, I wish we had treated the west that way. Instilled some fear into these hun barbarians.
Rollin' up on Uncle Joe before finishing off Britain wasn't very bright either, was it?
The Soviets had every right to be angry at the Germans but there's no justifying their actions as they moved west.
They aren't freaking sitting in refugee camps, these are cities. They just call them camps to get sympathy and money.
Yes leaving that giant unsinkable aircraft carrier called Britain in his rear wasn't his best move either. From there British and American bombers destroyed his war industry and pulled needed Luftwaffe planes away from the Eastern front.
Hell, they'da probly drummed him out of the service for that today! They'da tried, I know that!
Oh, that Rumsfeld quote is pure gold.
I don't know... I may have been speaking to the people you were talking about rather than you. Apologies up.
When the Germans heard Patton may lose his command for slapping a soldier they were convinced it was an Allied trick.
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