On April 12th Jews the world over will gather to pray for the souls of six million of our brothers and sisters who were mass murdered by Nazi Germany between 1939-45. That genocide, today referred to as the Shoah, or Holocaust, is the most documented "crime against humanity" in history. But that has not stopped people like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from labeling the Nazi Holocaust as "myth" or "hoax".
This cruel and hateful tactic which has been raised to the level of statecraft by Tehran and is a staple of extremists of many stripes in the Internet's subculture of hate, has the desired effect of enraging the survivors of the Nazi Holocaust and the families of the victims, who feel as if their loved ones -- millions of whom were gassed and cremated -- are being violated again, even in death.
But then I read Dr. Issam 'Abd Al-Latif Al-Fulaij's essay in the respected and widely read Kuwaiti neswpaper, Al Watan: The Jews Do Not Understand the Language of Gentleness or Humanity; The Only Way to Deal with Them Is through Confrontation -- the Way Hitler Dealt with Them (Translated by MEMRI) I did not think there could ever be a greater cruelty or insult to the memory of 6 million innocents than denying their fate, but he has proven me wrong. For this 'journalist' seeks to turn history and reality on its head by depicting Adolf Eichmann, the key Nazi architect of the genocidal "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" as a person who "tried to help the Jews during Hitler's mass murders of them, and worked to smuggle out thousands in order to save them from death."
Yes, the same Adolf Eichmann who also deported tens of thousands of Gypsies to death camps, who saw to the deportation and murder of 100 children from the Czech village of Lidice as a revenge for the killing of a senior Nazi official, is depicted in your newspaper as a humanitarian whose kind deeds towards the Jewish people was perfidiously paid back through his kidnap, trial and execution by those devils in Tel Aviv.
In Dr. Al-Fulaij's parallel universe, he even morphs Eichmann, the ultimate bureaucrat of genocide, into a courageous crusader on behalf of Palestinians, placing these words posthumously into his soon-to-be-executed Nazi hero:
The fact that cuts me to the heart is that I helped to save you [Jews] from Hitler's crematoria and dealt with you humanely, while you dogs showed me the greatest villainy. The soil of Palestine is not your heritage or your land. You are no more than a gang of terrorists, murderers, and suckers of the blood of the nations. Nothing suits you better than to burn in Hitler's crematoria, so that the Earth will be liberated from your wickedness and your corruption, and so that the Universe will be blessed in being purged of your abominations. The day will come when an Arab Hitler will rise up against you who will utterly exterminate you and burn you in the oil[-fueled] crematoria, you dogs. [In fact,] it hurts me to compare you to dogs, since dogs are loyal, while you are not.
Dr. Al-Fulaij doesn't deny the Nazi Holocaust. Instead he urges Arabs to mimic its perpetrators: "The only way to deal with them is through confrontation, power, and violence - the way Hitler dealt with them. There is no use in doing them a favor. They do not recognize favors."
It would take more than this brief essay to deconstruct his hate and its impact on Eichmann's victims, living and dead. But perhaps a good place for Kuwaitis to start is by thinking about their reaction to an international campaign to restore the "good names" of Saddam Hussein and Chemical Ali...
By the way, I have submitted an op-ed response to Al-Watan. I will update this essay with their response...