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.
Look. The russians are more filthy, racist, evil, and murderous than even the Germans. We don't expect any better from russians.
Airstrip One, dude. Oceania is at war with Eurasia. Oceania has always been at war with oceania.
The Germans now, and for generation have been in complete denial concerning the atrocities of the Third Reich.
Comparing the IDF to the Nazis is an abomination!
Since we're in the realm of "what if's", in that case we could have let Patton had his way with the Soviets after the Soviets finished with the Germans! ;-)
>>>
...and MacArthur should have been allowed to finish off China, but, we all know what really was going on there...
"I think Allied pilots flew around Germany in 1945 just looking for targets."
Yeah, that is when they would shoot at anything that moved . . . cows, farmers, etc.
That was a sad degradation of the American policy in effect for most of the war in Europe: to bomb only targets of military significance.
Basically, after all the military targets were bombed, and the Luftwaffe was decimated and offering no resistance, they "had" to find something to shoot at . . . so the fighter/bombers straffed people and cows.
Too bad, because it endangered our pilots and cost ordnance -- to no military utility; and of questionable ethics.
"don't have any jews left to oppress"
another thread of the past few days was about the German government recruiting Russian Jews and settling them in Germany. The article included criticism, that those Jews should be going to Israel, and that Germany had no right to offer them such incentives to come to Germany, that they would rather go there than to Isreal.
The Allied air planners were convinced they could win the war with just air power. They were never going to bomb the Germans into submission just like the Luftwaffe wasn't going to bomb the British into submission in 1940.
"My recently acquired license plate, since NY state forced me to get a new one."
Good choice. I have a Bimmer, too. Great engineering. BTW my other car is an 18 1/2 year old Saab that I love; and hubby's is a Jeep Cherokee that needs a $2000 assembly every two months or so . . .
Germans had no incentive to be sorry for Nazi past. Denazification was over in 1948, Marschall Plan showered Germany with money for investment while England almost starved, ideologues of Nazism were left alone in German universities to spoil the next generations, BND was headed by Nazi spymaster Gehlen.
"if you don’t choose to change direction. "
true; but the firebombing of Dresden and other cities was quite devastating.
NOTHING was going to convince Hitler; and the rest of Germany was waiting for it to be over, and couldn't do anything to oust Hitler that hadn't already been tried.
"converted at the point of a sword, or with the promise of spoil."
quite right
"irradiate Dresden "
I've seen the pictures of Dresden after the fire-bombing. What more would you have wished?
And as for Munich -- hey, they have the Oktoberfest! ;)
"The Allied air planners were convinced they could win the war with just air power. They were never going to bomb the Germans into submission just like the Luftwaffe wasn't going to bomb the British into submission in 1940."
Not only that: they had a political agenda to fulfill. We DO have a USAF now, instead of an Army Air Corps. Bomber Harris, Billy Mitchell, et al -- I would not want to have to defend their view of strategic air terror-bombing as a way to win wars at the pearly gates . . . I will give it that they were "well-intentioned" -- but far too myopic about Air Power and not the whole picture -- including the idiocy of incinerating civilians as a strategic policy. IMO!!
scary!
I don't know if you saw that Ike movie A&E did but there's a scene where Ike explains to Churchill how stupid the air strategy is.
You mean, like I am sick of hearing that I am responsible for slavery in the US, if not world-wide?
At least in Germany, a lot of people are still alive that took part, either overtly or at least, tacitly; and so are children that lived through it.
"There most certainly IS a German CULTURE."
There is German culture, but it cannot be equated with or subsumed by the modern German nation-state.
German "culture" is language and poetry and music: Goethe, Beethoven, Mozart, Schiller, etc. It is love of singing. Love of parks. It is Christmas-time. It is Gemütlicht. Ein Prosit. An understanding of farming that equates to husbandry. Hand made toys from the Erzgebirge. A love of preparing food. A love of doing things properly.
What you are speaking of, I would guess, is the socio-political situation of the German nation-state, which is no doubt complex in itself. As has been pointed out, our view of that is colored by their media, which are liberal/socialist leaning. Take a conservative poster here on FR from lower Bavaria, and you could not distinguish him from a Bush red-stater.
It bodes us well to take cognisance of political trends in other nations, Germany included. It does not add to our ability to form intelligent foreign policy to base it on some racial stereotype of what "those Germans" are-and-always-have-been-like.
"The best band from Germany at this time"
Ah, but the top group is PUR! and they are . . . very uplifting . . .
" scene where Ike explains to Churchill how stupid the air strategy is"
didn't see it, but quite refreshing to know that. Good for him!
What many people don't know is that the Air Campaign was a separate Campaign -- not under Eisenhower. He did have some air support for the ground -- but the strategic air campaign was separate.
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