By Aznan Mat Piah
I can’t help but somehow got drawn into a debate with my university colleague when he came out with the idea that we should display our support to dictator Adolf Hitler to counter the Israeli regime’s assault on Gaza.
In his WhatsApp message he suggested that the picture of the dictator be placed on web site, blog and Facebook in conjunction with United Nations Day on 24 August to honour the ‘hero’ for the Holocaust initiative during the Second World War.
My point is Hitler has always been ingrained in our minds as an evil person who had committed war crime. It was a crime against humanity. Therefore, why are we now trying to glorify this man just because there is now a similar crime committed by the Zionist Israel against the Palestinians?
Interestingly his argument is that this should be a psychological warfare approach to drive the message at the Jews. He argued that we ought to be more ruthless and put diplomacy in the back seat in congruence with the present time. I argued that his idea would be counter-productive and would only drive Israel and the Jews to become bolder and this would only serve to justify their actions against the Palestinians.
I realised that he had this idea out of frustrations that the Israel-Palestinian conflict has been drawn for far too long that stretched for almost six decades without any solution. But my argument as long as Israel continues to receive support of the US the problems between the parties to the conflict would continue to remain unresolved. Resolutions after resolutions have been passed by the United Nations Security Council condemning Israel’s aggression but because of the veto powers of permanent members like the USA, the outcome had been largely futile.
My argument now, can’t we continue with efforts to apply pressures on the US and Israel so that there would be a ceasefire and make them come to the negotiating table again, without associating ourselves with the past dictator? By endorsing Hitler aren’t we trying to rewrite history and human philosophy to say that crime against humanity is justified?
Wouldn’t this move be wiser? Or are we prepared to make ourselves a laughing stock by the world community by such an action?
Photo taken from BBC