On the Middle East

Yes...withing even Hezbollah there are good humans. Long ago I realized that any one of us, under certain circumstances, could be led to do horrible things. We should never forget that although the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah might be horrible, many who listen to them are regular people like you and me. Your average Israeli, Palestinian, Lebanese etc. are more alike than they are different.

I met someone during my brief stint in Peace Corps. Very nice man, very dedicated to helping people. I maintained a friendship with him for several years after we both left Peace Corps. This guy was a genuinely good person. But he had been a young man in 1940's Germany and had been a mechanic in the Luftwaffe. He described how easy it was to get caught up in the rhetoric of the time, how when Goering came to give a speech you left convinced of whatever he said even if you knew deep down he was wrong. My friend was a good human being who at one point in his life had been a Nazi.

It never helps to demonize even one's enemies. I am a solid supporter of Israel. But I know that even in Hamas and Hezbollah there are good people. And that is where hope lies. Those good people on both sides are where peace will come from.

"Those good people on both sides are where peace will come from."

Yes, and not only because they are good inside, but when they are helped to think responsibly about their own rhetoric and beliefs. What I find so rhetorically relaxing about Sea's essay is that it's actually "insightful" rather than "inciteful" . . .

I've dealt with a universe of stupidity on the left, but you are the very first to overtly excuse nazism to me. I need not write one more word.

It would be easy to argue that mrme's post is itself propaganda, not unlike the historical and current examples we're discussing. Propagandist rhetoric from all over the world demonstrates how its power can be used on good people to manipulate and escalate human conflict rather than resolving it.

None of which tells us the person behind the propaganda is without good inside.

Absolutely NOTHING I said in any way excused Nazism either overtly or implicitly. I in no way did that and if that is what you read then you need to go back and learn English. In fact I advocate considerably fighting the rising intolerance and tyranny right here in the US and I am working to save a synagogue in Latvia as a personal "Fuck You" to Hitler and his thugs.

Go back and reread what I wrote. You will find NO excuse for Nazism within it. So stop putting words in my mouth and discuss what is actually said, not your blind stereotypes.

Why did you not contact the Simon Weisenthal center when you met him? You think erecting a synagogue is more crucial to fighting fascism than handing in a Nazi? What was his name? what country was this? Someone needs to be notified, no matter what excuses you write for your "friend" who was such a good person.

The vast majority of Germans were members of the Nazi party. The Weisenthal center is interested in war criminals. Not mechanics in the Luftwaffe who, like anyone in the country who had survival instincts, joined the Nazi party.

Your knowledge of the period and the Weisenthal center seems very thin. The current Pope was a member of the Nazi party. I don't hear the Weisenthal center looking for him. They are interested in people who participated in the Holocaust not in the entirty of the German nation who lived through WW II.

How old are you? Do you have any real idea of the history of the rise of the Nazi party and the history of WW II and the hunt for the war criminals afterwards? It sounds like you really don't understand history.

The issue is that he may not have been a mere Luftwaffe mechanic. You might have let your moist and fuzzy friendship with a Nazi cloud your critical sense. Nazi bigwigs don't go around bragging about how important to the Reich they were. They routinely minimize their role in the slaughter of 6million Jews. This evidently didn't occur to you while breaking bread with your chum.
If he is not a war criminal then you won't mind revealing his name and whereabouts, correct?

Ummm...an actual war criminal would never have even mentioned his war past to a Jew. You aren't thinking. The man was a naturalized American Citizen by then and had served in the US military and then the Peace Corps, both of which require background checks. You can bet if I had sensed any degree of Nazi sympathies I would have said something. But do you really think the subject would ever have come up had he been a war criminal? Are you even thinking about what you are saying? No. You are merely trying to set up a completely false and irrelavent arguement knowing full well you aren't making sense. I am more than willing to bet that while you are pretending to care about this you are probably thrilled with the behavior of Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly, genuine advocates of murder and terrorism, and probably cheer on the mob that drove out Jewish families in the Delaware Pogrom. Odd that I didn't see you calling for condemnation of Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and the perpetrators of the Delaware Pogrom.

As for revealing a person's identity and whereabouts publically without their knowledge, that is PRECISELY what led to the Delaware Pogrom and exactly why it is a reprehensible practice. I am free to reveal what I like about myself online, but calling for the revelation of another person's information without their knowledge is reprehensible and you should be ashamed for suggesting it. Or did you support it when the names and addresses of Jewish families were revealed for the benefit of a mob in Delaware to humiliate and threaten them until they had to flee town?

... a fallback strategy, just in case you're utterly and entirely wrong? Which, considering the scant evidence that would establish the humanity of Hezbollah, seems the overwhelming possibility?