People ask how Hitler's "willing executioners" could have collaborated in the Holocaust. Ari Folman tells us. Each person excuses him/herself by saying "The truth is so subjective... I didn't feel responsible. I was a soldier; we were clueless. We didn't know what was happening until it ended...I couldn't care less about...[the] government. I have nothing to do with them..."

German generals felt it dishonorable to kill unarmed civilian Jews. More precisely, they felt it unfair to order their "morally superior" killers to do so. It was like asking them to kill harmless dogs with their bare hands. It caused the German to get drunk before and after, and waste bullets, and cause mental pain. The solution was not to stop the killings, but to "let" others do it. Like Israel did in Lebanon.

Israel always justifies what it does in terms of the past. They say Jews suffered uniquely (which probably amuses the ghosts of millions killed by Stalin and Mao) and must "never again" let a Holocaust happen. That they now do what Germans did escapes them.

Because they are not (yet!) gassing Arabs, Israelis consider themselves superior and different. But Germany did not set out to mass-murder Jews. If first wanted to be rid of them geographically (hence plans to move them to Madagascar and elsewhere). In the meantime they created ghettos. As they invaded new lands they kept concentrating Jews to make homes to repatriate Germans from conquered lands. Ghettos were used not to warehouse/waste Jews but to aid the war effort. It was only after Hitler invaded Russia that the influx of captured Jews became unmanageable. Then the Wannsee Conference proposed mass gassings. If they had, like Israel, 70 years to answer 'The Jewish Question"-- plus backing from Japan and Italy (like Israel has backing from America)-- Germans might have slow-cooked them like Israel does now to Palestinians.

In the Warsaw Ghetto, Germany (like Israel) had overwhelming firepower, more-disciplined forces, more supplies and healthier soldiers. Soldiers heard Jews were a "demographic" threat", a "terrorist" people hell-bent on destroying superior, Aryan, Christian Germany. They "knew" Jews had killed Jesus and were thrown out of nearly every country, unable to get along with normal volk. That's what Goebbels and others said...just like nuclear Israel says about Arabs now.

Jews in Warsaw, like Hamas and others, had "weapons." The fact that both Germany and Israel had hugely MORE powerful weapons didn't matter. Reich soldiers joked that Jews jumping out of burning buildings were "parachutists." They, like Israeli soldiers, felt fighting a weaker, morally inferior Other was fair. The report published when Warsaw burned to the ground, killing all Jews inside, was proudly submitted in a fine leather binding.

Sorta like the decorum shown when the IDF reports on slaughtering Arab civilians.

Israel prides itself on being "special" and "different" and "better" than other countries. Yet when its racism, violence, socialism, venality, etc. are pointed out it changes the tune, claiming that critics are unfair, don't give 'balanced' views (do IDF reports EVER mention Palestinian viewpoints?), and hold Israel to higher standards...the very ones Israel insists it lives by.

Israeli historians admit Jewish militias used terror tactics to rid Arabs of lands the soon-to-be-Israelis wanted. Shamed that they did not resist Germany, they also made Arabs pay for resistance.

Leon Uris (author of "Exodus") and others started the myth that Jews were abused innocents who'd never do unto others what Germany had done to Jews. They said Jews only did wha they did because they were being persecuted (yet again!) in the Mideast by natives who, for some reason, didn't like being bullied off lands they'd lived on for centuries. The truth, abused people usuallly DO become abusers unless they mourn their past.

Israel refuses to do so. Instead, it chooses to be hyper-powerful, thinking that will protect Jews from another Holocaust.

It also HATES the fact that modern Arabs, unlike WWII Jews, refuse to submit.

Iran's president says Israel's regime must change. I agree. If Israel "disappeared" (like the USSR did: Iran said nothing of killing Jews), it would be better for the world. Jews could live wherever they wanted, provided they got along and didn't try to lord it over others.

The ironic tragedy is that Israel's apologists sound remarkably like those who defend WWII Germany. Most of the latter felt justified in doing what they did, claiming the right of their state to defend itself from external and internal threats. That they could have been mistaken about those threats seem not to matter.

The danger always is to think "evil" is obvious...and can't be repeated.

When will Germany make a cartoon movie about the Holocaust? What will we think when its soldiers exonerate themselves from guilt, like Israeli soldiers do?

Olio Sidi!"

The talented Ari Folman is the grandson of a highly respected director of the Gymnasium and Liceum for Girls in pre-war Lodz, Mrs. Stella Rein, who during the war in Lodz -ghetto was the director of the school.She maintained a wonderful faculty of teachers, nurtured us, the students, replacing our parents, providing a curriculum and a bowl soup ,that was life itself. She is the unsung heroine of the ghetto, a director of a magic school, that lasted only one year.The love for her and the intellectual stimulation started in the school never died, not in the ghetto, not in the camps. It lives in us today. Mrs.Rein was killed in Auschwitz, but the memory of her is alive,in us, her students forever.I understand Ari's moral dilemma better knowing his grandmother who would have been very proud of him.

Proud of his immense talent, but even more of the high guality of his moral fiber. After all it is Mrs. Stella Rein's legacy.

That so, so deserves a movie!

Wow, hope this one does well...

it was a religious/political group with some popular support long at odds with the lebanese government engaged in a sittuation with the israeli government/army who then take things out on the very government in lebanon at odds with and at the mercy of the same group. sort of like me being at the mercy of a bully who then pokes some jerk2 in the eye. jerk2 then responds by dispensing violence largely upon my person. the thinking behind this was a misguided attempt at turning lebanese society against hizbollah though it is difficult to see how by killing tons of lebanese and destroying so much propoerty israel, a long standing enemy would not also be guaranteed even more hatred under this scenario even if it worked (it failed)