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Thu. May 02, 2002

Lost Credibility and Overblown Rhetoric

Lost Credibility and Overblown Rhetoric – First the Palestinians (specifically, Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat, their main mouthpiece during Arafat’s ”detention”) swore to the world that over 500 civilians had been massacred in Jenin. Turns out the truth was far far different: 53 dead, 7 to 22 of them non-combatants (depending on who you believe). Yet the word ”massacre” has never gone away, nor has Mr. Erekat stepped forward to say, ”you know, we got a little carried away with those initial numbers.”

But some of the Palestinians don’t let the lack of bodies stop them from trying to generate some pity press: "The Israeli military on Thursday released film of what appears to be a fake funeral in Jenin. The film, taken by a pilotless plane, shows a man being wrapped in a blanket, put on a stretcher and carried in a funeral procession. Col. Miri Eisin of army intelligence said it was one of several similar incidents."

Then we have Yasser Arafat, he of the measured words, who when he first met the press in his compound in Ramallah, immediately spouted that the Israeli’s are "racists and Nazis" and stormed out of the room.

Good to see you too, Yasser.

Today was a fitting day for me to read James Lilek’s quote, ”In the future, everyone will be Hitler for 15 minutes.” Yes, you, too, may be called a ”Lot Hitler” this Christmas by some lady who spotted the parking place you took from a quarter mile away, and deemed it hers. Ask someone if they’d mind taking their cigarette outside your home, and you’re a ”Smoking Nazi.” Animal rights advocates proclaim Thanksgiving a Turkey Kristallnacht, a greyhound race track is a Doggie Dachau, etc.

It’s so easy to sling around comparisons that do nothing to describe current reality, they just grasp at the straws of ugly historical precedent to provide a PR spin, and minimize the Very Real Evil of the past. Israeli’s are Nazis and Sharon is Hitler. Mr. Lileks gets it in his e-mail: "I wrote back that when ’Sharon lays the train tracks to send 90% of the Arabs to the camps to be gassed, let me know.’ [...] When the mosques are burned and the minarets toppled and the babies thrown in the air and speared on bayonet point, Sharon will be Hitler."

Thursday, Arafat called Jenin "the new Stalingrad", and it makes me want to wretch. In Jenin, a ”battle” that lasted maybe a week, a couple hundred houses were damaged, and 53 Palestinians were killed, most of whom were combatants. The battle of Stalingrad ground on through a fall and a hard winter, over half a year. It laid waste to the entire region. The opening artillery barrages killed 40,000 civilians. "The Germans lost 147,000 men and 91,000 were taken prisoner. The Red Army paid a huge price for victory, some half million men were killed in the battle." [source] And tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed, back before they even knew … or cared … what ”collateral damage” meant.

There is no equivalence at all between these two cities and events. And there is no power currently holding sway on this planet that approaches the wholesale evil of the Nazi empire. It’s non-pareil. Yet we hear more and more ”Nazi this” and ”Hitler that.” It’s a rhetorical epidemic, but it’s outside historical reality. It’s just ugly spin that devalues honorable lives lost long ago.

And I’m sick of it.