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Photo: Reuters
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer. Spicer who?
Photo: Reuters
Sima Kadmon

Why is Netanyahu ignoring Spicer’s Holocaust denial?

Op-ed: The Israeli prime minister’s silence in light of the White House press secretary’s Hitler comments leads to one conclusion—Netanyahu is more afraid of Donald Trump than he is of the possibility of another Holocaust.

It isn’t hard to imagine what would have happened had the American president been Barack Obama, had the White House press secretary been Josh Earnest and had the comments he made been even more moderate than the comments that Sean Spicer made Monday in front of a room filled with journalists.

 

 

What an outcry would have come out of Jerusalem. Wall-to-wall condemnations. Yad Vashem’s unofficial spokesperson, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would have jumped in front of the cameras and condemned that Holocaust denier, who represents, of course, the president’s anti-Semitic views—because how can his comments not be seen as President Obama’s stance?

 

These are different times, however. The president sitting in the White House is the man Netanyahu referred to as the best friend the Jewish people have ever had, and his speaker, who can be seen as nothing but a complete idiot and an ignorant person, doesn’t represent a thing in the Israeli prime minister’s eyes apparently. Spicer? Spicer who? Who is this Spicer guy and what does he have to do with anything? That’s the spirit prevailing in the Prime Minister’s Office in recent days. Or in other words, completely ignoring what he said.

 

Netanyahu. Is it possible that the prime minister’s Holocaust statements are simply a strategy he uses to control us? (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)
Netanyahu. Is it possible that the prime minister’s Holocaust statements are simply a strategy he uses to control us? (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)

 

That’s the only way to explain Netanyahu’s silence in light of the delusional comments made by the Trump administration’s official spokesperson, who said that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler didn’t use gas against a population during World War II. When he realized his mistake, Spicer tried to rectify it, only to make an even more embarrassing blunder, stating that unlike Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Hitler didn’t do it against his own people, and that he didn’t gas people on the streets but assembled them in “Holocaust centers.”

 

Even the man who accused the mufti of pushing the Nazi tyrant toward the final solution wouldn’t have ignored what appears to be a case of Holocaust denial, if one insists on not seeing it as pure anti-Semitism.

 

But Netanyahu is keeping silent. The man who has no problem spicing up his speeches with examples from the Holocaust, whether they are relevant or not, the man who lives and leads his people under the narrative of preventing another Holocaust—this man is suddenly dumbfounded when the White House press secretary makes comments that even known Holocaust deniers wouldn’t dare say.

 

The only thing we can conclude from this is that Netanyahu is more afraid of Donald Trump than he is of the possibility of another Holocaust. When he weighs his loyalty to the Republican president against his loyalty to Jewish history, the scales tip in favor of Trump.

 

Alternatively, it’s possible that the prime minister’s statements on the Holocaust are simply a strategy he uses to control us. The strategy of the fear and trepidation of another Holocaust which only he, Netanyahu, is capable of dealing with—which is why there is no escape from voting for him again and again.

 

It doesn’t really matter why Netanyahu didn’t rush to fix what needed fixing, to clarify what needed to be clarified, to condemn what had to be condemned. In Trump and Netanyahu’s world, where alternative facts are as important as real facts, it doesn’t matter if Hitler used or didn’t use gas, if he attacked or didn’t attack his people—because the current interest is to stand by the Trump administration, just like the previous interest was to warn us of another annihilation.

 

And once again we are learning that if a person hates Muslims and supports the settlements—and even if he doesn’t really support them—the Israeli Right will forgive any abomination, including anti-Semitism.

 


פרסום ראשון: 04.13.17, 21:32
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