In preparation for Holocaust Remembrance Day, several movie theaters have been screening a film that praises and glorifies German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt, who, in writing about the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust, caused more damage to Israel than any other Jewish thinker. Arendt died 38 years ago, but her criticism against Israel written as part of her coverage of the Adolf Eichmann trial in 1961 still nourishes the enemies of the Jewish state to this day. Intellectuals, radical leftists, Muslims, and even some random Israeli academic figures, cite Arendt in efforts to weaken the link between Israel as the nation's safe haven and the significance of the Holocaust. It is not a battle over the past. It is not a disagreement among historians. The battle is being waged over the present, and the future, and it is easy to wave Arendt's theories around to undermine the Israeli argument that only reliance on the independent power of Israel can ensure the continued existence of the Jewish people. Not only did she oppose conducting Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem, but she also, mainly, developed a distorted misconception suggesting that the world's most horrifying murder machine wasn't anything more than a "banal" act committed by feeble-minded Nazis who did not fully understand what they were doing. There are explanations for, and "understandings" of certain situations that lead to justifying the criminal act. This brilliant Jew, who lived in the 20th century, opened the door to the Iranians and to European anti-Semites and extreme Islamists, even though she may not have intended to. Arendt's contemporaries rejected her views. Renowned Jewish scholar Professor Gershom Scholem and Haaretz editor Gershom Schocken ridiculed her. But she survived, mainly because the anti-Jewish camp hailed her theories, which suited their purposes. Why did she do it? Was it because when she was 17 she had an affair with her professor, Martin Heidegger, who joined the Nazi Party and banished Jews from the university, and she had the gall to resume seeing him after the war, quoting unabashedly his argument that in the 1930s he hadn't yet read Hitler's book Mein Kampf- Just like any other sophisticated but misguided conception, there was a hint of truth to her argument that some among the Jewish leadership had also cooperated with the Nazis. Chaim Mordechai Rumkowski did it as head of the Nazi-appointed Council of Elders in the Lodz Ghetto. Dr. Rudolf Israel Kastner's leadership in Budapest in 1944 was especially unforgivable, and he even supported four SS criminals even after World War II, when there was no longer any Nazi threat. But how does this weakness resemble in any way the responsibility of Eichmann and his cohorts for the biggest human atrocity ever committed- Arendt's theory about the banality of evil creates an even playing field for the good and the evil, for the wise and the fools, and it serves very well the view that seeks to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the existence of a Jewish state in the Jews' biblical homeland. Arendt did not intend to legitimize the killing of Jews, but that is partially what has been implied ever since she published her nonsense about the banality of evil, and up until the day, yesterday, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, had to promise that he will not let Iran become a nuclear power.
