Recently, noted historian Jason Kenney likened Hezbollah to the 1930s Nazi party. This is not an uncommon tactic, but it's become current with the situation in the Middle East where Hezbollah killed fifty Israeli innocents. (That Israel killed over a thousand Lebanese innocents, I'll get to in a bit.)

My question is, how can you possibly equate a rag-tag group like Hezbolah to the government of a huge, powerful, and heavily industrialized nation? How could Hezbollah ever represent the threat to Jewish people, and to all of humanity, that the Nazis did?

The Holocaust had its roots in deep-seated, systemic, and centuries-old Christian racism, undeniably. But the horror does not stem from the fact that it happened to the Jews (more accurately, they were the single biggest group that was targeted -- I don't know but I suspect that, percentage-wise, the gypsies were devastated far more as a people).

The horror of the Holocaust was that this base human fear, xenophobia, and hatred was carried out on a monolithically industrial scale. A great portion of a nation's industry was focused on slaughter. It is the cold, inhuman possibilities that human society is capable of that makes the Holocaust unique in history.

By labelling everyone who hates Jews or Israel -- and by the way, I'm neither, and in fact I agree that Israel has the right to existence and security -- a Nazi, not only do you cheapen the incomprehensible Jewish experience in the Holocaust, you also choose to ignore the huge responsibility the Holocaust demands from us as a society.

Meanwhile, you have Hezbollah, a well-organized and well-armed group to be sure, but a group without any military or industrial power -- especially compared to Israel. In numbers, they are far inferior not only to Israel, but even to the Israel military. The idea that they could act on statements like "we will destroy Israel" is as ludicrous as the statements themselves. What does it say about those who instruct us to actually fear the people who say such things? (I'll tell you: that they are motivated by exactly the same kind of prejudice and hatred that they decry.)

So either you have to explain how Hezbollah has the potential to achieve something on the scale of the Holocaust, or you have to accept that calling people Nazis because they are against Israel is simple intellectual dishonesty.