Laughing at AhmadinejadMJ Rosenberg It was delightful to see all those European delegates walk out of the United Nations anti-racism conference when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took to the microphone. The mass exodus seemed to thoroughly rattle him. Few of history's race-baiters have had the experience of being publicly ridiculed like that. Ahmadinejad was exposed before the entire world as the bumptious fool that he is.
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The only good thing about his appearance was seeing the Europeans (and others, including the Jordanians) walk out. One is always hearing complaints that the Holocaust has been forgotten, that anti-Semitism is back, especially in Europe, and that Jews are as powerless in the face of evil today as in the 1940s.
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If Jews in 2009 are, in fact, as powerless as they were in 1942, then Israel has failed in its mission. Why did Jews establish Israel if not to end Jewish powerlessness?
Fortunately, for all its faults and problems, Israel has ended it. It has nuclear weapons and an army that few could have imagined in the 1940s. Those who compare the present to the mid-twentieth century insult the memory of the Six Million-who had no Jewish state to defend them and were utterly powerless-and the achievements of the State of Israel.
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...{Holocaust survivors} didn't die for any reason-they died only because monstrous killers assumed power in Germany and invaded Eastern Europe-and there is no clear message that they left behind other than "Never Again."
Fortunately, some survivors are still around to tell us just that.
Last week, Palestinian physician Izzeldin Abuelaish spoke in Pittsburgh at an event sponsored by the pro-Israel, pro-peace organization, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom. This is the doctor who, in January, made headlines worldwide in the worst possible way.
His three daughters-aged 13 through 20, and a 17-year old niece-were killed in Gaza when the IDF shelled the bedroom where the girls were doing their homework. The IDF said it saw shadowy figures in the room and thought they were terrorists. It apologized.
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...Pittsburgh Jewish Community Center where 300 (mostly Jews) heard {Dr. Abuelaish} speak.
His message was simple. As a Palestinian who has studied, worked, and lived in Israel, he knows that Israelis are not monsters. He knows wonderful Israelis and he knows that those Israelis share his grief over the loss of his children-and his commitment to dialogue and reconciliation. He rejects violence in all its forms. He is without hate.
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During the Q&A session after his speech, one Israeli woman wept about her pain and shame over what happened to the four girls.
But then, of course, there were a few in the audience who were utterly unable to connect...
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Americans-living safe suburban lives in Pittsburgh-addressed this father, in mourning for his dead children, as if they were victims, not him.
It was too much for two members of the Pittsburgh audience who took to the microphone to apologize on behalf of the insensitive Americans. In their late eighties, they identified themselves as Holocaust survivors. (Their accents also attested to the fact that they had not spent World War II in Pittsburgh.)
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One said that she thought that after the Shoah there would "never again" be this kind of suffering inflicted on human beings, but that she was wrong. Each expressed deep empathy and said that they would, even at their stage in life, do what they could to achieve security for both peoples.
FULL ARTICLE:
http://www.israelpolicyforum.org/blog/laughing-ahmadinejad 
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