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Focus Should Be on Avoiding the Next Holocaust

[Baltimore Sun] Walter Reich - President Barack Obama will deliver the keynote address at Thursday's Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda. As an individual and as president he should speak not only about the past but also about the future. Suddenly, Holocaust remembrance is also about the future. It's about the threatened murder by Iran of nearly 6 million Israeli Jews. And, even worse, it's about the potential murder of many millions more. The meaning of "never again" has never been as clear or as urgent. In 1939, Adolf Hitler issued his "prophecy" that the Jews would be exterminated. And now, Mr. Ahmadinejad, even as he races to build nuclear weapons, denies that the Holocaust ever happened and threatens the elimination of Israel. Too much is at stake - not only for Israel and its Jews but also for America and the world. A nuclear exchange between Iran and Israel could kill many times 6 million, both Israelis and Iranians. And before any exchange - even if Iran only uses its nuclear weapons for blackmail - other nuclear powers, frightened by Iran, will emerge in the region. The world created by a nuclear Iran could never be controlled. Mr. Obama should explain why talking to Iran is necessary. But he should also explain, as the nuclear clock ticks on, what he'd say - and what he'd do if, after a reasonable effort, it becomes apparent that Iran is only using the talks as a tactical maneuver to buy the little time still needed to build nuclear weapons. The writer, a former director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, is the Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Professor of International Affairs, Ethics and Human Behavior at George Washington University and a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
2009-04-22 06:00:00
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