Washington Post Columnist Issues Timely Challenge

The Washington Post’s Colbert I. King reminds readers of the threat the Iranian government poses to Israel, including the possibility of nuclear destruction, and the shame in turning a blind eye to those who would repeat the horrors that haunt the 20th century. According to King, “the leaders of today’s Iran” echo the Third Reich, yet there is a “global ho-hum response to the most virulent form of state-sponsored anti-Semitism since Nazi Germany” (“Echoes of the Third Reich,” August 4).

The commentary describes Iran as “the greatest threat to Jews to emerge in the past 70 years” and cautions that its aggressiveness is not limited to Israel. Today’s international focus on the Islamic Republic’s potential acquisition of nuclear weaponry is, according to King, “too narrow a view” of Iran’s fanaticism and globally sponsored antisemitism. Iran’s fingerprints can be “found in attacks on Jews in Bulgaria, India, Thailand, and Georgia” and “contending that Iran’s threat is mainly to Israel is to ignore reality…”

On the importance of recall, King writes, “I do, as a non-Jew, recognize vicious anti-Semitism when I see it. The Iranian government is as anti-Semitic as the Third Reich.”

The columnist quotes Iranian leadership, which echoes Adolf Hitler’s call for destruction of the Jews. In a recent address in Tehran to ambassadors of Islamic countries, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated, “Any freedom lover and justice-seeker in the world must do its best for the annihilation of the Zionist regime in order to pave the path for the establishment of justice and freedom in the world.” Similarly, in what King calls setting “the standard of hatred” for Jews, Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi alleged—at a U.N.-sponsored conference on the illegal drug trade—that the Talmud teaches to “destroy everyone who opposes the Jews.”

Stressing that the Iranian threat is not only an issue of Jewish or Israeli concern, King issued a moral challenge: “We did not stop the greatest atrocity of the 20th century. What of the next?” Without exaggeration but with rare and necessary directness, King asked, “if we are to honor the pledge of ‘never again,’ will we be up to preventing the potential genocide of the 21st century?” — Erin Dwyer, CAMERA Washington research intern