Israelis divided on invoking Holocaust against Iran

JERUSALEM, Oct 9: Israel was founded as the Jews' ultimate response to the Holocaust: the embodiment of a pledge, backed by diplomatic and military power, that the Nazi genocide would not recur.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Israeli leaders have long been quick to liken West Asian foes to Adolf Hitler -- Egypt's late Gamal Abdel Nasser, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, the Palestinians' former leader Yasser Arafat, and, currently, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has argued that Ahmadinejad, with his Holocaust denials and calls for the elimination of the Jewish state, ''speaks today like Hitler before taking power''.

Olmert's homeland security minister, Avi Dichter, urged the West to consider Iran's nuclear ambitions and ''imagine how World War Two would have turned out had Nazi Germany gotten the bomb''.

But some Israeli historians, military experts and even a government official caution that, by invoking the Holocaust too readily regarding Iran, the country risks a credibility crisis.

Though it has bested Arab enemies in past wars, Israel might be incapable of taking on Iran alone. Should the veiled threats of Olmert and others against Iran not be carried out, it could undermine Israel's long-standing posture of military autonomy.

''In Israel, likening someone to a Nazi in theory creates both legitimacy for attacking him, and a moral imperative to do so,'' said Ami Ayalon, a retired navy admiral who is now a senior member of parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee.

''But when it comes to a complex strategic issue like Iran, our leadership is liable to talk itself into a corner,'' he said.

''I say: If you're going to shoot, shoot. Don't talk.'' Ahmadinejad insists his country's nuclear programme is for energy needs only. He has denied seeking military confrontation with Israel, saying that he wants to see the ''Zionist regime'' dismantled, perhaps through universal Palestinian suffrage.

Such rhetoric rings hollow for many Israelis, not least given Iranian support for Islamic militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah, which advocate the Jewish state's violent demise.

A deeper grievance is Ahmadinejad's public questioning of whether Nazi Germany's slaughter of 6 million Jews took place.

''Denying the Holocaust is considered an existential threat in Israel,'' said historian Tom Segev. ''If we are looking for reasons to attack Iran, Ahmadinejad is certainly giving them.'' But he noted Israel's reversals on Arafat -- for decades describing him in Nazi-like terms, then embracing him during the 1993 interim peace talks, only to shun and threaten him after negotiations broke down in 2000 and a Palestinian revolt began.

''There are completely authentic Holocaust sensitivities as well as manipulations. Both exist in the Israeli psychology.''

HIGH STAKES

What makes for especially high stakes in the rhetoric vis-a-vis Iran is the potential for calamitous war with Israel, which is believed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal. ''Israel went nuclear under Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (in the 1950s) because of the Holocaust,'' said Avner Cohen, author of the seminal study ''Israel and the Bomb''. ''But to prevent another Holocaust, Israel must be in a position to threaten a nuclear holocaust. There are many ironies here.'' Another historian, Michael Oren, suggested that Israel's comparisons of Ahmadinejad to Hitler were not for domestic ears, but rather aimed to shore up Western resolve to curb the Iranian nuclear programme through the threat of UN sanctions.

Oren said Ben-Gurion made similar remarks to US President John F Kennedy about Egypt's missile programme in the 1960s. Persuaded, Kennedy pledged military aid to the Jewish state.

''I don't think Israelis need much convincing as to the threat posed by Iran,'' Oren said, adding that he saw Olmert's remarks on Ahmadinejad as ''a warning call to the world''.

That warning may have registered. At least one US senator has described Ahmadinejad in Nazi-like terms, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel has counselled her country to consider its past in pursuing a strong diplomatic stance against Tehran.

But according to one senior Israeli government official, Israel imperils potential European support by making Hitler comparisons on the continent where the Holocaust took place.

Amir Gissin, the Foreign Ministry's public affairs director, said a recent poll he commissioned found that most Europeans reject parallels drawn between Ahmadinejad and the Nazi leader.

''It seems that Europeans just can't make the association between 'their' dictator and this odd little character from the Middle East,'' Gissin said. ''Our conclusion was that personality parallels should be cut out -- on the continent, at least''.

Such sentiments are endorsed by Robert Rozett, a director of Israel's central Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem. He said Yad Vashem regularly comes out against ''inappropriate'', politically loaded references to the Nazi genocide in public discourse.

This has had many manifestations, from international and Palestinian criticism of Israeli military crackdowns in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, to Jewish settlers who likened their removal by Israel from occupied land to Nazi mass expulsions.

Another fact complicating the debate is that Iran has 25,000 Jewish citizens who, while subject to intensive state scrutiny, have seldom complained of severe persecution.

''There is room for comparison, but they (Ahmadinejad and Hitler) are coming from different places,'' Rozett said. ''We are very concerned about the Holocaust being trivialised.''

Reuters