Holocaust Memorial Day

++Earlier this week, Pope Francis came out a declared the Armenian massacres a hundred years ago "genocide". Turkey promptly recalled its ambassador. 

++In 1905, the Young Turks, not to be confused with our Young Turks, embarked on a project to ethnically cleanse the country of Turkey. As a result 1.5 million Armenians were exterminated. 

++Only last week,we commemorated the liberation of Buchenwald where 55,000 people were exterminated,15,000 were Jews. But Buchenwald had a diverse population of gays,Gypsies, conscientious objectors,political dissidents,and people labelled inferior. 

++In one of the photos,Elie Wiesel is sitting on the second platform of the planks that served as beds for the inmates. 

++Today is the worldwide day we commemorate the Holocaust. 

++In the Richard Evans' book I mentioned last week,scholars are still burrowing into the precedents for the Holocaust and the motivation.

++Younger scholars point to Germany's extermination of the Nama and Herero peoples in their colony of South-West Africa as precedents.

++Others point out that Hitler loved the German Western novelist Carl May for his depiction of the Americans exterminating the native Americans.

++Evans himself said these new twists on the historical routes of the Holocaust neglect the basic fact that Nazism was a "racist" ideology and that exterminating the Jewish population of Europe was their raison d'être.

++About Armenia being a precedent, Evans quotes Hitler about "no one talks anymore about the Armenians". But Hitler was referring to what he was doing to Poland and believed no one would remember.

++There are still many things yet to learn about the Holocaust. This week in Israel came the sensational revelation that Anne Frank was probably betrayed to the Nazis by the Frank's own gentile housekeeper.

++Never to let this moment pass, Bibi said that the world had not assimilated the lessons of the Holocaust because they made a nuclear deal with Iran.

++But Bibi has a new threat. Iran will not build a bomb. Instead they will use the lifting of sanctions to terrorize the region. 

++In this regard, a Selzer and Company poll shows that 47% of Americans trust Obama on the Iranian deal,and only 34% Bibi. 

++But, wait, 67% of Republicans trust Bibi over the President of the United States on the nuclear deal.

++AIPAC issued a statement that Israel supports the new Corker bill. 

++The Times of Israel revealed this week that President Obama has cut off access of Ambassador Dermer to the White House. 

++The same paper printed a poll that 70% of Israelis do worry about a new Holocaust. I don't blame them when they have to hear Bibi's rhetoric everyday.