Holocaust Echoes?

I posted here and here about my feelings on the use of holocaust imagery by the anti-disengagement camp. To recap, I am not in favor. Jeff Jacoby has a piece in which he starts off agreeing that the holocaust imagery is inappropriate, exaggerated, and uncalled for. Then he says:

And yet . . .

And yet there is no getting around the fact that Israel is about to become the first modern, Western nation in more than 60 years to forcibly uproot a whole population -- men, women, children, babies -- solely because they are Jews. There is no getting around the fact that the forthcoming expulsions are rooted in the belief that any future Palestinian state must be Judenrein -- emptied of its Jews. And while it goes without saying that Sharon and every member of his government abominate the Nazis and all they stood for, there is no getting around the fact that disengagement is meant to appease an enemy that has always regarded the genocidal hatred of Jews in a very different light.

Except...this is not about expelling a population because of their ethnicity. This is about a nation choosing to withdraw its citizens from disputed land. Had there been non-Jewish citizens of Israel residing in Gush Katif, Israel would be evacuating them as well. I hear the point that to those who may still be raw from their holocaust wounds, this may be reminiscent of the evacuations from the ghettos to a different, much more sinister location. But that is sad simply because those wounds still exist, not because the disengagement is truly a parallel event. Those people may get ill standing on a train platform, or hearing the bark of dogs, or hearing the German language spoken. That is tragic for them, but doesn't make every train platform, dog, or native German sinister. So too, the disengagement is an evacuation, but what is waiting at the other end of the journey is far different than what was waiting at the other end of the journey for those in the cattle cars.

Jeff Jacoby's point that the Arab nations that surround us would like to see Israel "Judenrein" is a dramatic one, but again, ignores the fact that they are not the ones forcibly evacuating the Israelis. We are voluntarilty withdrawing with the hope of peace on the horizon. And while that may be a pipe dream, it is far different than the dreams of Adolf Hitler and his cohorts.

hat tip: Krum