ANALYSIS: On Holocaust Day, Israel warns world of second appeasement

By Jeff Black Jan 27, 2010, 16:20 GMT

Berlin - The message couldn't be any clearer: The world is now in danger of failing to stop a murderous regime in the same way it did in 1938, before Hitler unleashed war on Europe.

That at least, is the view that has been delivered by Israel's representatives abroad, on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, falling now 65 years after the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

In Berlin, Israeli President Shimon Peres addressed the German parliament, or Bundestag, and drew a clear line between the 'racist doctrine' of Nazi Germany and what Israel sees as its most clear and present threat: Iran.

'The threats to annihilate a people and a nation are voiced in the shadow of weapons of mass destruction, which are held by irresponsible hands, by irrational thinking and in an untruthful language,' the veteran statesman and Nobel Peace Prize laureate said.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly denied the Holocaust, and has threatened to wipe Israel from the map of the Middle East.

'We reject a fanatic regime ... which threatens destruction, accompanied by nuclear plants and missiles and which activates terror in its country and in other countries,' Peres said.

'We are left with the decisive lesson: Never again.'

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman also used the occasion to sound an Iran alarm- signal.

Netanyahu, speaking at a ceremony in Auschwitz, invoked the biblical enemy of the Jewish people, Amalek.

'We will always remember what was done to us by the Nazi Amalek, and we shall not forget to be ready for the new Amalek, who appears on the stage of history and threatens to destroy the Jews,' he said.

Lieberman, interviewed on Israel Radio Wednesday, made the historical comparison explicit.

'Anyone who remembers the rise of the Nazis even before 1938, after the Weimar Republic, anyone who understands history and remembers the reaction of the international community - how they tried to placate (the Nazis), to negotiate, to yield to them - must only think of the annexation of what was then Czechoslovakia,' he said.

'The president of Iran says 'there is no place for Jews in the Middle East,' He tells them to go back to Europe. It is fortunate that he has yet to acquire the kind of power he aspires to,' Lieberman said.

In Berlin, Israeli leaders in recent months have pressed Chancellor Angela Merkel hard for her support for new sanctions on Iran, despite significant German business interests in the Islamic state.

They have received what they have asked for, along with repeated assurances that modern Germany is aware of its historical obligation to the Jewish people.

'We have, as Germans, a special historical responsibility for the existence and security of Israel. Some things are negotiable, but Israel's right to existence is not,' Norbert Lammert, president of the Bundestag, said while introducing Peres on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Merkel made it clear, in a joint press conference with Peres, that she would seek new sanctions on Tehran when the UN Security Council convenes in February.

The argument for new sanctions on Tehran comes after Ahmadinejad rejected a UN-sponsored deal on its purported nuclear energy program in December.

In the past, the stumbling block for sanctions on Iran have been the non-cooperation of Security Council members Russia and China.

This time around, however, despite the apparent commitment by Germany, the European Union's most powerful member state, not even Brussels is united on the need to push Tehran harder.

On Monday, EU foreign ministers balked at making any clear statements on what would happen next.

The 27-member bloc's new foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, refused to say what the EU had in mind.

'The sanction instrument is a very blunt one, so it should be used with extreme care,' Sweden's Foreign Minister Carl Bildt also said.

From the point of view of the Israeli government, judging by the statements made Wednesday, this is precisely the kind of prevarication that allowed Hitler to overrun Europe, and could allow Iran a free hand in the Middle East.

Against the harrowing backdrop of Auschwitz, Netanyahu made himself clear.

'The most important lesson of the Holocaust is to stop evil early,' the Israeli premier said.