I subscribed to this forum several weeks ago on the assumption
that it was a forum for discussion and debate over genuine historiographical
issues. The message below leads me to believe that I was misled. The statement
by Jorge Oriola - "Israel, estado sionista, repite con los palestinos lo
que los nazis hicieron con el pueblo judo cincuenta anos atras" (in the
somewhat mangled English translation, "Israel, state Zionist, repeat with
the Palestinians what the Nazis back did with the Jewish town [people] fifty
years [ago]" - is outrageously and obviously false. It can be explained
only on the assumption that the writer is totally ignorant about what the
Nazis did to the Jewish people during the Second World War and what is going
on in the Middle East today, or on the assumption that he knows how absurd his
analogy absurd is but uses it any way for cynical propaganda purposes.
In either case, it has no place in a forum for proper historical discussion.
Marc Saperstein
Professor of History
George Washington University