(JNi.media) Is there such a thing of letting an unfortunate Holocaust comment go without raising a public outrage? Probably not, judging by the hot water in which Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott — by far the most pro-Israeli Aussie PM ever — has found himself on Thursday for saying the Islamic State soldiers are worse than Nazis, because they “boast about their evil,” Firstpost.com reported from Sydney.
“I mean, the Nazis did terrible evil but they had sufficient sense of shame to try to hide it. These people boast about their evil,” Abbott told a Sydney radio station. “This is the extraordinary thing — they (ISIS) act in the way that medieval barbarians acted — only they broadcast it to the world with an effrontery which is hard to credit and it just adds a further dimension to this evil.”
The irate reactions did not tarry: Robert Goot, head of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, labeled the PM’s comments “injudicious and unfortunate.” “Injudicious,” which means “indiscreet, unwise,” is used by Webster’s in the sample sentence: “He made several injudicious comments to the press.”
Goot said in a statement that ISIS’s crimes are, indeed, horrific, but, still, they “cannot be compared to the systematic roundup of millions of people and their dispatch to purposely built death camps for mass murder.”
It could be argued that the systematic Nazi atrocities only began with the application of the decisions of the January 20, 1942 Wannsee Conference, so that, until then, it would be hard to tell ISIS apart from the Nazis.
As to ISIS being unashamed while the Nazis at least tried to hide their genocide, Goot insisted: “Acts of terrorism are necessarily done in the full glare of publicity for their propaganda effect.”
Goot also said, according to Firstpost.com: “In contrast, those responsible for ordering and implementing systematic state-sponsored genocide are high government officials who often operate in secret not out of any sense of shame, but to avoid being held criminally responsible for their actions.”
However, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, aka Caliph Ibrahim, the self-appointed head of ISIS, may qualify as a high government official.
Australia joined the US-led campaign against ISIS in Iraq in 2014, contributing military jets and special forces troops. PM Abbott, who was attempting to boost public support for his country’s involvement in the war, found himself having to defend his remarks at a Melbourne press conference later on Thursday, saying he’s “not in the business of trying to rank evil.”
Then he made, once more, the point about the Nazis at least being shy about their mass murder. So far there hasn’t been a counter-response from Robert Goot.
For the record, a year ago, on August 10, while Israel was fast running out of friends and supporters in the world for its Gaza operation, when it attempted to stop, once and for all, the Hamas government’s relentless shooting of rockets into Israeli civilian centers, PM Abbott sent Australian education minister Christopher Pyne on a state visit, and, upon arrival in the Jewish State, Pyne said: “Israel is the beacon of freedom and liberty in the Middle East.”
Pyne said Australia and Israel were “two sister nations believing in the same thing … we regard Israel and Australia as sister countries with the same value systems and we want to show our support for that system here in the Middle East.”
Pyne stressed that Australia was “good friends” with Israel and “good friends visit their friends in tough times.” It could be argued that friends also forgive the occasional unfortunate statement and just let it go.