You have to hand it to the Iranians. Their leaders may be borderline psychos but they are shrewd psychos. I sense a sort of "good cop, bad cop" thing beginning to play out over there. Sort of like the Chinese Good Cop-North Korea Bad Cop model. On the one side we have President Ahmadinejad (and incidentally, can we keep the surnames to a max three syllables please my ancient friends? We infidels here in America stumble badly after the third syllable and are likely to start mocking you in defense of our ignorance, if you get my drift). Anyway, President Ahmadinejad plays the bad cop by goading the West and the Arab's even more ancient foe, Israel. But, wait, he is symbolically reined in by the Supreme Good and Holy Cop, the ayatolla. This is like Dracula telling The Mummy to chill.
The Mummy, only partially wrapped, says the Holocaust didn't happen. That it's a fabrication whose intent is to incentivise the West to create the New Improved Land of Israel pretty much in the same area it was in Biblical times. He further proves his skill at manipulating the Major Media Morons by inviting the world's experts to convene and debate the subject. I can assure you, a debate will have the Major Media Morons, including many Jewish "sophisticated - progressive" 3M's, saying things like perhaps Speilberg et al. were wrong, perhaps five or six million Jews were not really slaughtered at all. Perhaps only a few hundred or a few thousand were gassed or incinerated. Maybe just a dozen or two. By accident. See? It didn't really happen after all.
When I was a teenager, oh so many years ago, there was a dry cleaning - tailor shop in my neighborhood. My grandfather befriended the proprietor, a quiet, diminutive old man who I also came to know from my frequent visits to his shop as a customer. I recall the place was a little spooky. Often when I'd stop in, I'd see two little gaunt white faces peeking out from behind a curtain which separated the shop area from the back. The tailor introduced them as his son and daughter. They must have been no more than nine or ten at the time. Even though I was just a teen myself, I could tell these poor kids were very troubled. They did not speak much, they looked terribly underfed and appeared as if they never played out in the sunlight. I hate to say it but they reminded me of the pictures I had seen on tv of the Holocaust survivors. One day, I asked the tailor where their mother was. He looked me square in the eye, sizing me up as to whether or not I was old enough or intelligent enough to understand the story. He decided I was.
"She's dead," he said. With measuring tape hung about his neck and straight pins held between his lips, he proceeded to tell me that she was murdered right before his eyes. He and his wife were Polish Jews who were picked up and put on a train straight to one of Hitler's death camps. When, after interrogation, the camp staff learned he was a tailor they decided to let him live. They needed tailors to maintain the German uniforms. But apparently they had no use for his wife. So they killed her right before his eyes. It was the kind of story that makes you grow up right on the spot. I don't think I spoke or even swallowed for three minutes after he ended his story.
How did the children survive? I don't recall the details. It's possible that they were hidden before the couple was arrested and he retreived them after the war. Or possibly they were his adopted children from others who were slaughtered in that camp. I do not know. But I do know this: the Holocaust happened, and you better believe it and keep believing it because in the months to come there may be some trying to convince you that it didn't.
There were almost 50 million people killed in WWII. Did you catch that number? Almost 50 million. Over 17 million able-bodied young men in the military. 18 million civilians. And over 12 million people were killed by the Nazis. The dead were Germans, Poles, Russians, Jews of many nations, Americans, Japanese, Chinese, Brits, Italians, Northern Africans, Arabs and just about every other nationality on the planet. The Germans attempted to eradicate the Jews - and Christians as well. Oh yes, Christians as well. When the Russians entered the Nazi camps in Poland, they discovered enough Zyklon B crystals to kill 20 million more people. But there were fewer than three million Jews remaining in Europe. Hitler and his crew had already murdered 5 million Jews and 7 million Christians, but contemplated killing 20 million more. This is what happens when great nations appease psychopathic dictators who have WMD's and delusions of world domination.
Islamic fundamentalists may not have delusions of world domination. Maybe they just have plain ol' revenge on their minds. Ancient revenge for the way The Bible describes how Abraham and Sarah treated Ishmael. If you have not read this part of The Bible, I urge you to, as Ishmael is considered by some to be a seminal figure. And the fundamentalists may have it in their mind that "revenge is a dish best served cold." But, either way, I can think of another Biblical admonishment that applies here, and I will paraphrase it here to make clearer how it applies. "If you learn that a man is planning to sneak into your tent to kill your family, sneak into his and kill him first."
