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NETANYAHU'S NAZI LANGUAGE

http://www.nazi.org/

There are words with meanings corrosive as acid. Heavy with the stench of historic crimes. Words that damn those who use them.

One such word is "Judenrein", the Nazi-era word that means "cleansed of Jews".

It is a surprise, then, to learn that it is a word that has been appropriated by Binyamin Netanyahu to describe the Palestinian demand for the dismantling of the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

More shocking still, according to reports yesterday, it was used in talks between Netanyahu and Germany's Frank-Walter Steinmeier, foreign minister of a country still haunted by the guilt of its Nazi past who was compelled to nod in embarrassed silence.

It is an argument born of desperation that is as stunning for its sophistry as it is for its denial of what the settlement programme post-1967 represented. For while it is true that Jewish communities existed on the West Bank before the six-day war, the settlement programme that followed the occupation is regarded by most international bodies as a serious violation of international law.

That view is based on the interpretation of Article 49 of the Geneva Convention as well as a series of UN security council resolutions that have deemed aspects of the settlements to be illegal.

Indeed, according to a report acquired by the Peace Now group in 2006, which it claimed it had acquired from the Israeli government's civil administration, as much as 32% of the land on which settlements are built is, in reality, privately owned by Palestinians.

[ The real irony is that Netanyahu wishes to eradicate ARABS from Israel, and indeed from the Jewish settlements in Palestine. But what is the equivalent word to "Judenrein" to describe that? ]