Wishing Hitler had finished  killing all of us? That’s just evil.

David Romero, Executive Director Radio Globo, September 25, 2009
In a radio interview regarding his alleged investigation into the “involvement” of Israeli officials in the Honduran crisis Romero said:

“I have asked myself, is there a Honduran, whether on military uniform or not, capable of doing what they are doing there – trying to poison the President of the Republic? I have realized that they cannot be accomplices. But when a Honduran finds someone to help him do evil, I believe he can do evil.

“There are times when I ask myself if Hitler was or not correct in finishing with that race with the famous Holocaust. If there are people that do damage in this country, they are Jewish, the Israelis. I want to name, this afternoon here in Radio Globo, by name and last name, who are the two officers of the Jewish army who are working with the Armed Forces of our country and who are in charge of carrying out all these conspiracy activities and undercover actions and everything else that is happening to the President of the Republic.

“After what I have learned, I ask myself why, why didn’t we let Hitler carry out his historic mission. Forgive me for the grotesque expression. But I ask myself after I have realized this and many other things. I believe it should have been fair and valid to let Hitler finish his historic vision…” (via ADL)

Luckily, others in Honduras have been quick to condemn such statements, but, as the old Talmudic teaching goes, you can’t take an arrow back once it has left the bow.

In reaction to the anti-Semitic rants on Radio Globo, [Adolfo] Facusse, a Honduran-Arab national, stated that “Jews are our cousins and we will not tolerate such language.”

But this is a dreary book. Its author has a completely axiomatic mind that is quite content to maintain itself in a permanent condition of apocalyptic excitation. His perspective is so settled, so confirmed, that it is a wonder he is not too bored to write. The veracity of everything he believes is so overwhelmingly obvious to him that he no longer troubles to argue for it. Instead there is only bewilderment that others do not see it, too…“Why Are Jews Liberals?” is a potted history followed by a re-potted memoir.

I haven’t read the book (and really don’t intend to), so I can’t comment on the accuracy of this review. I can only add my own brief two-cents in answer to the premise of the book, which is that Jews should be Conservatives because Judaism is historically more aligned with the mission of the Neocon worldview. I wonder what the some of the Communist Jews of Cuba would say to this (if they had access to free expression). I heard many comparisons to the messianic mission of Judaism and the messianic mission of communism. What about the Socialist Kibbutznik’s of Zionism? Or the Rabbi’s who regularly march for human rights/economic rights/environmental rights? I hate arguments that try to reduce Jews and Judaism to one thing or one set of interests. If our history has proven anything, it is that we are a people of infinite variation capable of carrying multiple concerns at the same time and working toward the fulfillment of a more a just and equitable world as we or our texts or our traditions or our God conceives it. Narrowing that to Republican party reduces Jews and Judaism to a political football, punted from one side of the field to the other as the fortunes of this or that nation change. We’ve been there too many times in our history to let Norman Podhoretz shout us back there. As a people we have more important work to do. To quote the end of Wieseltier’s review:

The question of whether liberalism or conservatism does more for the helpless and the downtrodden, for the ones who are not like us, will be endlessly debated, and it is not a Jewish debate; but if the answer is liberalism, then the political history of American Jewry is neither a mystery nor a scandal.

So the Chinese have forged Israeli fruit, sold it to Iran, where authorities discovered it and became briefly outraged that some of their own would do business with Israel. The situation has resolved itself, but it does suggest the absurdity of both the mistrust between Israel and Iran (Zionist fruit?) and the really weird inclination for forgery and fraud in the Chinese economy. On a more scary note, Iran has apparently arrested several people for preparing terrorist attacks around the June elections, and is accusing them, as usual, of being “Zionist Agents.” Iran does tend to accuse everyone of being Zionist agents, but still, a scary development, especially considering the other prisoners they are holding at Evin Prison.

Amnesty International says that prison holds hundreds of the thousands of political prisoners in Iran. In 2003, Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian-Iranian photojournalist, was beaten to death there.

In other “fruit” controversies, the 11th Annual Tel Aviv Gay Pride Parade is coming up, and two couples (one gay men, one lesbians) will get married at the parade, even though their union will have no legal standing. Though Right-wing foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman has “come out” in favor of civil unions because they serve his main constituency, Soviet immigrants, many of whom are not considered halachically Jewish and have trouble marrying thanks to the religious authorities choke hold on marriage in Israel (Israel does recognize same-sex marriages performed outside the country), his proposal doesn’t do much to help to help the gay community, as it wouldn’t really make marriage a civil affair, and the Orhtodox rabbinate would maintain control (though perhaps they’ll come around on the gay thing one day).

The one thing we can be sure of is that Iran, which has survived stand-offs and open warfare with several nations in the 30 years since its revolution, while developing technologically and economically, is a nation that is very shrewd about self-preservation. The mullahs may be distasteful theocrats, many of whom are corrupt, many more of whom suffer from a virulent strain of religious chauvenism and, some of whom are indeed anti-Semities. Some of them are also real scholars. Some of them are thoughtful, intelligent men who genuinely want what is best for their people and for God’s creation as they understand it. I have sat down with Mullahs in Iran who are not merely tolerant of diverse religious and political views, but respectful of them (including Jews and humane supporters of Israel). The Iranian regime is not a monolith, though it tries to present itself as one. With a massive population of young people who long for more freedoms and for long lives, I don’t see the apocalyptic strain having much currency in Iranian politics, especially in an election year. I do, however, see it quite a bit in the right-wing of Israeli society. The continued settlement of the West Bank and the support of the most extreme religious settlers by some elements in the Israeli government  has endangered Israeli democracy far more than Iran. In fact, it looks a lot like Iran, with the more extreme elements of both societies providing aid and comfort to those who seek violent conflict in the Middle East. In Iran there has been more open support for Hamas and Hezbollah, the former of which does have genocide as its goal, but there is little sunlight between the ideas of Hamas and the ideas of Israel’s Kach party and its descendants.

But these elements are not the mainstream of either society, and it is wrong to characterize all of Iran as mad Mullahs, just as it is wrong to characterize all of Israel by the Hebron settlers. Of course, policy and politics in both countries needs to account for those elements, but those calculations are part of their bid for survival, not their attempt to martyr themselves on a national level. Just as the courageous young Israelis who serve in the IDF (and the few who refuse to do so) are all struggling for the physical and spiritual survival of their nation and their families–their conception of the good life–so are the young people in Iran. Writing them off in favor of the “mad mullahs” theory writes off a valuable solution to this problem.

Far more accurate than Bibi’s terrifying prognastications and fear-mongering, however, is a little bit of game theory (which is also gaining currency among US officers in Afghanistan ). Have a look at this model of what Iran is likely to do vis a vis its Nuclear Program and its apocalyptic leaders from Bruce Bueno de Mesquita of NYU. Unlike knee-jerk fear and political expediency, this theory at least takes actual societal data into account and has a far better success record than PM Netanyahu. He’d do well to study it. Because it states that, by 2011, the apocalyptic trend in Iran is likley to lose major influence, the moneyed-class is likely to see an ascendency in power, and the nuclear program is extremely likely to tend toward civilian purposes. He’s not basing this on make-believe; he’s got the math to back it up. It may not be correct, but it should not be ignored.

Of course, some argue that this ridiculous government in Israel right now is doomed to failure anyway. Bloated politics may be standing in the way of peace in the Middle East and might even undermine Israel’s survival. When power becomes the raison d’etre for a state, it has not only lost its soul, it has lost its future, because power, as history teaches (and Jewish history certainly teaches), comes and goes. I am worried.

And Palestinian youth are worried too: 70% of them polled do not support violence as a solution to this conflict. 80% are depressed, and they are largely defining themselves by religion, rather than my national identity, which could be good or could be bad, depending on who engages these youth. Someone should, however, engage them. There are partners for peace out there, and the new foreign minister of Israel would do well to support, rather than antagonize them. As I’ve written about at length (and as common sense dictates), marginalized youth, when not engaged constructively, will certainly be engaged destructively.

On another note, this story about the Amish touring Crown Heights with the Hasidic community tickled me.