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Editorial

DAMiot41,9.
IN CUR BOOK!

Germany's
Sensitivity

W

e're overwhelmed
with irony at the
news this month
that at least two Israelis were
detained at German airports
recently for that most serious of
crimes in Germany — daring to
call someone a Nazi.
In one case, as reported by
the Israeli newspaper Yedioth
Ahronoth, an Israeli woman
got into a confrontation with a
customs official at the Frankfurt
airport because she had a lot of
cigarettes in her luggage. As the
argument escalated, the woman
let slip the offending term in ref-
erence to customs officers, who
immediately called the police.
The Israeli got to spend the night
in jail.
In the second case, an Israeli
woman didn't think she was
getting enough money for a tax
refund at the Dusseldorf air-
port. She reportedly turned to
her boyfriend and said, "Look
at-this Nazi." (She denies using
the banned word.) Police took
her away, questioned her for two

hours — about what, we can't
imagine — and forced her to pay
a fine.
"Such expressions must not
be uttered, not even quietly or to
an Israeli friend standing next to
you," an Israeli Embassy official
in Berlin told Yedioth Ahronoth.
"The Germans don't play games
and are very sensitive when it
comes to that matter!"
So sensitive, it seems, that
they're willing to punish harm-
less speech uttered not out of
hate, but in the heat of an argu-
ment. So sensitive that they'll go
to any length to ensure no Jews
are foolish enough to think any
German officials have Nazi senti-
ments. So sensitive that they're
willing to resort to, dare we say,
Gestapo tactics of isolation and
interrogation over nothing more
dangerous than a word.
We're reminded of the con-
viction this year of Holocaust
denier David Irving in Austria.
The imprisonment of Irving
did not please his most famous
antagonist, Atlanta's Emory

1Pr

PALESTINIAN
INTERIOR

MINISTRY -1

University professor Deborah
Lipstadt, who couldn't justify
punishing someone for what he
says and writes, no matter how
stupid, hurtful or hateful.
Just as we neither defend nor
condone Irving's record of deny-
ing history, we don't want to
defend the flippant flinging of
the term "Nazi" at anyone per-
ceived to be a petty tyrant. The
Nazis were evil incarnate, and no
matter how much a bureaucrat
or politician angers you, unless
he is engaged in a program of
nationalized genocide, he doesn't
deserve the Nazi tag.
If nothing else, the casual

use of Holocaust-related terms
insults the memory of the 6 mil-
lion by reducing their murderers
to nothing more than an easy
insult fit for any argument —
whether big, such as immigrant
rights, or small, such as a few
bucks for a sales tax refund.
But that's an individual issue.
It's frustrating, not dangerous.
There's a bigger problem as we
prepare to commemorate Yom
HaShoah in the coming week:
It's more than a little discon-
certing to be reminded that the
descendants of the culprits in the
ultimate crime against humanity
— those in power in Germany,

the nation with the world's fast-
est-growing Jewish population
— still don't understand free-
dom. It takes a society in which
a comment can be criminal
to produce the horrors of the
Holocaust.
Until Germany believes it
can shrug off the occasional
neo-Nazi, Holocaust denier and
misplaced Nazi insult, how can
we believe that Germany is a safe
place for us? ❑

McGwire jacked
out 70 in 1998, and
Bonds added three
more for the new
record.
When Ruth set his
record it did sever
comparisons to past
statistics, but that
was regarded as a
good thing. It was
credited with helping
restore the game from disrepute
after the Black Sox game-fixing
scandal of 1919.
The same acclaim was given
to Bonds and McGwire after the
lockout that wiped out most of
the 1994 season. Their home
runs saved the game, writers
claimed.
With one big difference. Ruth
hit his within the rules. Radically
changed rules, but rules nonethe-

less. Bonds, allegedly, did it out-
side both the rules and the law.
"Chicks dig the long ball:'
said one ad during the latest
home run splurge. Long home
runs make up the bulk of base-
ball coverage on ESPN's Sports
Center. Isn't it also the American
way to give the public what it
wants?
Baseball still thrives in many
markets, and since two of those
markets are New York and Los
Angeles the national media
assure us that there is nothing
wrong with the game. But all rot
is invisible at first.
We once were asked where Joe
DiMaggio had gone. Far away,
friends and neighbors. And get-
ting farther all the time. 0

E-mail letters of no more than 150

words to: letters@thejewishnews.com .

Reality Check

Barry And The Babe

B

aseball is a game
that has always been
sneaky at the core.
Stealing signs. 'Vaseline on the
ball. Corking bats. The knock-
down pitch. The tipped bat. The
evaded baseline.
All of that is accepted as part
of gamesmanship, an attempt
to slide around the rules. It's as
American as Yankee Doodle.
But what happens when you
break faith with the game itself?
That's what is so disturbing
about the steroid accusations
against Barry Bonds and a host
of others. They threaten to sever
the game's most precious posses-
sion: its link to the past and the
great sweep of history.
Baseball contributed to a
national healing in the years fol-
lowing the Civil War. It tracked
the national movement to the

Sun Belt and the suburbs. It
reflected the home front experi-
ence in World War II. Sixty years
ago, it became part of a social
revolution as Jackie Robinson
signed a contract to play in the
Dodgers' farm system.
No sport spews out more
numbers, and those numbers are
essential as a basis for compari-
son to this past. To cheapen or
distort the numbers is a disaster.
Baseball is never just about
what's happening right now. That
is why there is such anger direct-
ed at Bonds. But there is a prec-
edent. In baseball there is always
a precedent. When it happened
before, however, they juiced the
ball and not the players.
The dead ball era of baseball
ended in 1920. Before then, the
home run was a rarity. Teams
won with speed, brains and

pitchers who were
allowed to apply
everything from saliva
to sandpaper to the
ball.
But the game's pop-
ularity was waning. It
had become weighted
too heavily to defense.
Runs were almost as
rare then as soccer
goals are now. In the
1918 World Series, for example,
a total of 19 runs were scored by
both teams in the six games. The
sport needed new heroes doing •
astonishing new things.
In the first year of the livelier
ball, Babe Ruth hit 54 home runs.
When he'd slammed a record
29 the season before, it was,
indeed, astonishing. What he
attained with the new ball was
beyond belief. Just as when Mark

.

George Cantor's e-mail address is

gcantor614@aol.com.

3

April 20 . 2006

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