Netanyahu cries: "Hitler! Hitler! Hitler!"

Posted by Evan Derkacz at 8:49 AM on November 17, 2006.

Israel's former (and possibly future) right wing Prime Minister, Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu is not the kind of person you want to make decisions about what to eat for dinner or which shirt to wear, let alone foreign policy.

This week, according to Ha'aretz, Netanyahu said [VIDEO]:

"It's 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs," Netanyahu told delegates to the annual United Jewish Communities General Assembly, repeating the line several times, like a chorus, during his address. "Believe him and stop him," the opposition leader said of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "This is what we must do. Everything else pales before this."

While the Iranian president "denies the Holocaust," Netanyahu said, "he is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state."

Wow, that IS scary. Except for a few problems. Like Netanyahu's predilection for...

Hitler/Nazi comparisons with respect to nations that don't have anything to do with Nazis or Hitler or prewar Europe or National Socialism... Let's start there.

In a 2002 Wall St. Journal Iraq War promotional extravaganza, the former Prime Minister wrote:

This is a dictator... who is feverishly trying to acquire nuclear weapons.

Today nothing less than dismantling his regime will do. For Saddam's nuclear program has changed. He no longer needs one large reactor to produce the deadly material necessary for atomic bombs. He can produce it in centrifuges the size of washing machines that can be hidden throughout the country -- and Iraq is a very big country. Even free and unfettered inspections will not uncover these portable manufacturing sites of mass death.

We now know that had the democracies taken pre-emptive action to bring down Hitler's regime in the 1930s, the worst horrors in history could have been avoided. And we now know, from defectors and other intelligence, that had Israel not launched its pre-emptive strike on Saddam's atomic-bomb factory recent history would have taken a far more dangerous course.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Netanyahu was wrong then and there's no reason to listen to him now. Your integrity and credibility are blown, sir.

As for the second part of his most recent statements about the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state."

That's more interesting, actually, as it betrays one of the great myths peddled by conservative Jews and their allies who seek war with Iran: that Ahmadinejad has anything approaching the power to do harm to Israel or the U.S.

First off, and I apologize in advance for the caps, but this is a mistake echoed by everyone from Fox News to the NY Times: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad IS NOT THE LEADER OF IRAN AND HE DOES NOT HAVE THE ABILITY TO ATTACK ANYONE. He is: "the highest state authority after the Supreme Leader," who "is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, controls the military intelligence and security operations; and has sole power to declare war."

Here's the Times, letting Olmert have his way with pro-war talking points:

"The fact that the leader of a nation such as Iran can threaten the very existence of another nation, as he does towards Israel," Mr. Olmert said of the Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "is not something that we can tolerate or would ever tolerate."

Iranian media on Monday quoted Mr. Ahmadinejad saying of Israel, "We will soon witness its disappearance and destruction."

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, no friend to Western freedom to be sure, isn't a bombastic bonehead like Ahmadinejad. He doesn't have to cater to the lowest common denominator to maintain popularity (such as it is...). Khamenei speaks little of Israel and has even issued a fatwa: "forbidding the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons."

In fact, not only doesn't Iran have a nuclear weapon but, according to Israeli experts, it's many years away from the ability to acquire one...

Tagged as: iran, israel, ahmadinejad, hitler, netanyahu, nuclear weapons

Evan Derkacz is an AlterNet editor. He writes and edits PEEK, the blog of blogs.