Lt Harry Welsh: [watching Dutch women being shorn of their hair] What did they do?
Van Kooijk: They slept with the Germans. They are lucky. The men who collaborated are being shot.
Band of Brothers Replacements 2001
One of the things we have seen a lot from the left in general and our Arab friends in particular is the re-writing of history when it comes to Israel and the Jews. This consists of both the rewriting of the ancient history of Jews in Israel to the rewriting of the events of Oct 7th last month.
This lie is not only designed to justify themselves but to avoid the uncomfortable truths. You see if the Jews have been in Judea since the days when Abraham was still called Abram and if they are not the oppressors that they claim then the Arabs have to see what they’re doing in the light of truth and then the decision to slaughter Jews in any way possible becomes not a righteous cause but a choice between good or evil and while many might well decide is it “good” claiming an religious imprimatur, other might see things as they are and repent, and we can’t have that.
Put simply it’s more comfortable living with history’s re-write than dealing with the uncomfortable realities of history
But while this rewrite of history is the Arab dilemma, our response to this and unwillingness to deal with it properly comes from a re-write of our own. A rewrite accidently illustrated by these words from of all people Nathan Sharansky:
Sharansky, an Israeli human rights activist who spent years in a Soviet gulag, said schools such as Harvard and Yale have become bastions of support for terrorism—a big difference from World War II, when the vast majority of the Western world opposed the Nazi regime.
“All the world was against the Nazi regime, and nobody was sorry with [it] being destroyed,” said Sharansky during a discussion with the Jewish Institute for National Security of America on Wednesday. “Today, the legitimacy for the regimes like Hamas is coming from Oxford, from Harvard, from Yale, from Penn, from all these centers.”
Emphasis mine
In a lot of books, movies etc these are the words of the west not only about how World War 2 was fought but what people thought of the Nazis and of the extermination of the Jews.
It’s not.
Before the start of World War 2 the Nazi regime was much admired by many in the west. Time made Hitler their man of the year. There were big fans of both Hitler and Mussolini in the US in both academic and political circles not to mention among the many German and Italian American communities (as a rule the Sicilians didn’t care for Il Duce as he cracked down on the Mafia but that’s another story…).
In fact I remember watching one of the Charlie Chan Movies: Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937) where his oldest son qualifies for the US Olympic swimming team for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and on the trip there is a mystery involving a murder and a stolen device made for the US Military. In the Germany Chan teams with a German police inspector Inspector Strasser to find the murderer and recover the equipment. All throughout this movie you see lines like this when Chan beats the steamship to Germany and he along with Inspector Strasser meet the ship :
Inspector Strasser: Exactly! You see Mr. Chan, German methods are very thorough.
Charlie Chan: Have greatest admiration for well known efficiency
And as there are a series of thefts, assaults’ and more there is a line constantly repeated by the inspector:
Inspector Strasser: It’s impossible! Things like this can not happen in Berlin!
In the images actually taken from the film of the Olympics there are crowds of people giving the Nazi salute as the Olympic torch is brought in and the flame lit with no thought at all that it might be controversial to moviegoers worldwide and of course the German police arrive just in time to save the day.
As for Antisemitism it was prevalent in a portion of the population, many of them elite in what would become the allied countries as well as in Germany.
When war with Germany came first to the UK and then the US (which interned plenty of Germans and Italians as well as Japanese but that gets little press as it doesn’t serve the left’s narrative) suddenly admiration of the Axis was no longer chic (In fact in the US the left embraced the Nazis after the non aggression pact with Soviets and didn’t reject them until Hitler invaded Russia) and once the horrors of the death camps was not only exposed but were shown to troops en masse and to dignitaries so they could not be denied, open antisemitism was unthinkable.
Thus came the mutually beneficial myth that all were united against the Axis as it gave cover to many whose real opinions and sympathies might have been an embarrassment and it not only allowed a sense of unity to take place but allowed international stances against many of the horrors that had been common to humanity for thousands of years to be advanced and codified into international law at a time when those who might have objected were not only be isolated in their defense but might want the financial aid of the very rich proudly Christian US who along with Canada and Australia (both still highly Christian and proud of it) who were advancing these ideas.
And thus came the myth of the unity against the Nazis and against the horrors and evils they advanced.
And because of this myth many who held these views needed a release for them, and thus came the alliance of the anti-Semites with the Marxists and the Arabs who didn’t want any part of the Jews.
That’s the real secret here. The antisemitism was always there, but because of the comfortable illusion of unity people let it be.
I’m sure they thought it was a good idea at the time, but we’re paying for it now.
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