Columnists George Will and Charles Krauthammer said that Republican presidential Mike Huckabee’s comments about the Iran deal should have been worded differently, but agreed with Huckabee on some of the substance of his arguments on Monday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel.
Krauthammer said, “As a general principle, the Holocaust is such an act of incandescent, unfathomable evil that it should not be invoked lightly. And second, the formulation that Huckabee had, which was that Obama was marching the Israelis to the door of the oven had the implication, it wasn’t intended, but it could be interpreted as that Obama’s doing it deliberately. you can argue he doesn’t understand the gravity, etc. So, I think in that sense, that those are not the words he should have used. Nonetheless, the idea that somehow there’s something utterly impermissible about invoking the Holocaust in this case because it’s some kind of wild analogy, this is a reality. The Iranians are obsessed with the Holocaust. A few years ago, they had a cartoon contest to ridicule the Holocaust, because they contend it never occurred. And yet, the former president, the moderate…has described Israel as a one-bomb country, meaning small, compact, small population, can be wiped out with a small nuclear weapon. Iran has made very clear its intent to wipe Israel off the map. And now it’s in the process of acquiring the means of doing that. And I think it’s extremely important to recognize the uniqueness of this deal, because Israel, all the neighbors of Iran are scared and afraid of the deal, and worried about it. But, Israel’s the only country on earth openly threatened with annihilation. No other country on earth is. So, this is a real possibility, it’s not as if the Iranians are not going to drop the bomb tomorrow. But, Israelis would have to live under that threat forever if this deal is enacted, and Iran acquires the bomb.”
Will stated that Huckabee, “should not have said the part, as Charles says, about the president leading Jews to the door of the oven. That said, Huckabee is right that rhetoric should be taken seriously. Sometimes, especially when it is the particular candor of the dictator. In 1939, as Europe fell into war, Hitler said in the Reichstag that if the Jews perpetrate a world war it will mean the destruction of the European Jewry, and it did. So, taking this rhetoric seriously matters. And for those of us, and I count myself as one of these, who say, look, the deal is a terrible deal, but Iran’s going to get a nuclear weapon…we better start thinking how to deter them, one of the problems is gauging the fanaticism of the anti-Semitism of their regime. Because, as Hitler demonstrated, he would sacrifice everything, including pushing back the Russians on the eastern front, to continue with the Holocaust.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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