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Recently, Nicholas Kristof wrote a moving Op Ed piece (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/opinion/anne-frank-today-is-a-syrian-girl.html?_r=0) comparing a wounded Syrian girl to Anne Frank. This sermon is a response to his essay.
Firstly, in Nicholas Kristof's defense, it is hard to argue against having compassion for little children, whether Syrian, Yemeni, Yezidi, Kurdish, Sudanese, Muslim or Christian, who suffer in war zones created by political and religious division. And, one also needs understand, the well-meaning effort of the child of a refugee from WWII, Kristoff, whose own Polish father was, himself, subjected to Labor Camp conditions during the occupation of the Third Reich in Eastern Europe. Still, one would think that Kristof might also be able to ferret out the distinctions. One evil cannot always be compared and equated with another, dramatic effect notwithstanding.
Muslim Syrian children, in this case, are collateral damage of a war. They are not targeted for extermination. Jews, during Shoa, had only two possible destinations from which to obtain visas–Shanghai and the Dominican Republic–both of which had limited absorptive capacity and little ability to dispense these visas to Jews on the run. Syrian refugees should have 21 Arab Muslim nations in an Arab League willing to help absorb and financially support them in safe war zones, which could be establish by military means, if there was a willingness to do so. So far, only 3 have come forward even to help absorb refugees. (To their credit, Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon). Where are the rich Gulf states in this equation? During the Holocaust, Jews did not have 21 nations to which to appeal. They had only one Jewish State in the making (the Yishuv in British Mandate Palestine) and the Brits were doing their darndest to restrict Jews from emigrating there! This is why the State of Israel's existence and its mission is so vital today.
One wonders why Kristof isn't calling these Arab States to task before appealing to the nations of the west. Many of these nations are not signatory to the Geneva convention, which obligates their responsibility toward their Arab brethren. Why is that tolerated rather than condemned by bodies like the UN Human Rights Commission or by such compassionate journalists like Kristof? Why is that not more objectionable than Western nations' reluctance, themselves reeling from Radical Islamic terror? More to the point, Kristoff seems unaware, as do many activist organizations of the anti-Semitic and anti-Western curriculum, that these children have been force fed. Don't Jewish communities in particular, and western societies in general, also need to be aware of the culture of hate against Israel, taught to Syrian children from kindergarten on? Isn't it potentially a serious problem that might arise if western nations absorb thousands of these young people?
Jewish children like Anne Frank were not victims in a war zone per se. They were hunted down, not only by the invading Nazis, but in most cases given up by their neighbors to be sent to ghettos and concentration camps. There they were gathered onto trains headed to Hell, where they were torn out of their parents’ arms and thrown into trees, fire pits or gas chambers. After the Holocaust, Jews’ homes were inhabited by their neighbors and not given back to the few remaining young people who wished to reestablish themselves in their former cities, towns and villages. The locals liked the notion of “Judenrein,” even if the Nazi occupation had ended.
I agree with Kristof that the Syrian children deserve our compassion and that the Western world should be doing more in response. In some sense, it is true that callousness to children's suffering is a common denominator, and it is shameful. Some may simply wave this off as historical hair splitting. But facile comparisons of one misfortune to another can be, and is, objectionable. There is something unique about the Nazi evil. It was sweeping, bureaucratic and industrial, and it was premised on a model of the wholesale extermination of a people, a religion and a culture. It defined the Jews, including their babies and children, as subhuman. Facile equations such as Kristof's omit these facts and realities, and in the end, do a disservice, even if the intentions are noble.