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Информация о материале: Автор: Abraham Cooper HAROLD BRACKMAN; Опубликовано: 30 ноября -0001

Much to the chagrin of survivors of the Holocaust, the current U.S. presidential campaign has spawned comparisons between President Bush with Adolf Hitler. The ''Bush as Hitler'' comparison is also wildly popular at anti-war rallies across Europe and at NGO gatherings like the just completed World Economic Forum in India.

Equally outrageous is the ''Hitler as Sharon'' shorthand used in European protests to demonize the Jewish state's current prime minister. Indeed, just last year, Dutch Jews reacted angrily when one of Dutch society's elite, Gretta Duisenberg, wife of European Central Bank President Wim Duisenberg, publicly equated the Fuhrer with Israel's democratically elected prime minister and genocidal Nazis with Israelis. Upon returning from the West Bank to Amsterdam she declared: ''The cruelty of the Israelis knows no bounds. . . .The Nazis never went so far during the Dutch occupation.'' Asked whether he supported her claim that Israel's presence in the West Bank and Gaza was even worse than the Nazi occupation of Holland, during which 100,000 Jews were deported to their deaths, Duisenberg said he supported his wife ''100 percent.''

Against this backdrop, one would think that Amsterdam's Anne Frank House, the shrine to the Holocaust's most famous victim, would work to draw a historic and moral red line between the Shoah and the current Middle East conflict. Sadly, it turns out that the museum, established in the place where Anne and her family were hidden and ultimately betrayed to the Nazis, may have become the unwitting dupe of the insidious ''Jews = Nazis'' (or it is just Israelis?) chorus. Not far from where Anne wrote her remarkable diary, museum visitors now are confronted with a photo exhibit juxtaposing pictures of the Fuhrer and the Israeli prime minister as well as a video clip of protesters waving posters of Hitler and Sharon.

The exhibit is part of the ''Out of Line'' Exhibition, which the museum's Web site describes as ''an interactive exhibition that deals with contemporary issues'' -- particularly, the clash of ''two fundamental rights: freedom of expression and the right to be protected against discrimination.''

How exactly are museum visitors supposed to balance these two competing ''rights'' in specific regard to the exhibit marrying the pictures Hitler and Sharon? Is the clash between free speech right of extremists to express their anti-Israel, anti-Jewish bile and the right of Holland's Jewish minority to be protected against ''hate speech'' the pedagogical issue at hand? Maybe so, but the Anne Frank House provides no such guidance. In fact, its Web site, while showcasing contemporary controversies over neo-Nazis and rapper Eminem, discreetly fails even to mention that the ''Hitler-Sharon'' comparison is part of the ''Out of Line'' Exhibition.

As any visitor to the Wiesenthal's Museum of Tolerance knows, we are not afraid to take on bigots, past and present, head-on, and to challenge visitors to examine their own beliefs -- indeed, confront their own prejudices. However, to educate you must provide guidelines and context, which is precisely what the Anne Frank House fails to do in the case of its ''Hitler-Sharon'' exhibit.

Just as Anne Frank's family learned that there was no permanent sanctuary from the closing grip of Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, the Anne Frank House has to recognize that it also cannot escape from confronting the rising tide of anti-Semitism, often posing as ''anti-Zionism,'' in contemporary Europe including Holland. It isn't enough just to invoke, mechanically, pieties about balancing free speech and minority rights.

What the Anne Frank House needs to do is to challenge the beliefs -- and the prejudices -- of today's Dutch at a time when pro-Palestinian demonstrators regularly jolt Amsterdam with violent demonstrations, not just reviling Sharon and Israel, but chanting: ''Hamas, Hamas, all Jews to the gas.''

If the Anne Frank House wants to teach ''contemporary issues,'' by all means, they should do so, but only in a way that will challenge the visitors' prejudices, not reinforce them.

And always they need to ask themselves: ''What would Anne Frank say?''

Rabbi Abraham Cooper is associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Harold Brackman is a consultant to the center.

“Chicago Sun-Times”, February 22, 2004

Russian version

An introduction to MAOF
Haim Goldman

Dear Friends,

Would you believe that the undersigned has anything in common with

-- Professor Victor Davis Hanson (Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University),
-- Dr Charles Krauthammer, (Washington Post, Time, The Weekly Standard),
-- Caroline Glick (Deputy Managing Editor of the Jerusalem Post),
-- Jonathan Tobin (Executive Editor of the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent).

Amazingly, the editors of the MAOF website decided that the missives of the undersigned are worthy of translation and posting along the articles written by these distinguished authors.

The first letter was published without the consent of the undersigned.
However, after thorough examination of the laudable attitude of MAOF and of the excellent contents of the website, the undersigned had most graciously granted his permission for publication of his missives in both English and Russian.

“Analytical Group MAOF” [1] is an organisation founded about ten years ago by Russian-speaking Jewish intellectuals. The attitude of MAOF is definitely pro-Zionist -- unambiguously and unapologetically.

One of MAOF’s primary purposes is providing information and analysis about Middle-Eastern and world affairs as well as about Israel’s history, values and dilemmas. In addition to extensive publication activity in various media, MAOF also organises excursions and seminars. While the vast majority of the contents of the MAOF website is in Russian, texts originally written in English are provided in the original [2] as well as in Russian.

There are arguably about 250 millions of Russian-speakers worldwide and many of them do not read English. The indisputable motivation for the author’s permission was to grant those millions of disadvantaged people the grand benefit of reading the author’s ruminations. If the author is ever maliciously accused that his tacit motivation for authorising the publication was his craving to be listed along with the above-mentioned distinguished writers, his plea will definitely be “nolo contendere”.

The editors of MAOF expressed their gratitude by granting the undersigned a privilege that no other author got – the opportunity to review and correct the Russian translation before publication. The original letters of the undersigned are at [3] and their Russian version is at [4]. At of today, only two letters are posted but several other letters are pending translation.

You are kindly ENCOURAGED TO RECOMMEND the MAOF website to your friends and colleagues worldwide, particularly those who speak Russian. Those who do not enjoy the benefit of proficiency in the exquisite Russian language can find many thought-provoking and inspiring articles about Middle-Eastern and world affairs in the English section [2].

Sincerely,

Haim Goldman
28.10.2006

REFERENCES:

[1] http://maof.rjews.net
[2] section.php3? sid=37&num=25
[3] authorg.php3? id=2107&type=a
[4] authorg.php3? id=2166&type=a

Maof

Widespread anti-Semitism going unchallenged in Europe