Khan merely conquered his way across eastern and central Asia, leveling cities, putting entire regions to the sword, and crushing opposition by killing 10-15 million people in Iran alone.
Tel Aviv, February 25 – Historians investigating the extent of slaughter and destruction under various militaristic regimes have found that although the founder of the medieval Mongol Empire caused the deaths of tens of millions of people, characterizing him as the most brutal personality of all time poses problems, among them the fact that unlike at least one Israeli politician poised to enter the Knesset, the emperor never kept a portrait of a certain controversial Rabbi in his home.
Scholars dispute the number of people who perished in Mongol massacres across Eurasia during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries under Genghis Khan and his successors, but they agree that he was no Michael ben-Ari, whose wickedness includes the heinous act of having, until recently, a picture of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane on his wall. Kahane, who advocated for financial inducements, and force if necessary, to remove Arabs from the State of Israel, was assassinated in New York in 1990. Khan, on other hand, merely conquered his way across eastern and central Asia, leveling cities, putting entire regions to the sword, and crushing opposition by killing 10-15 million people in Iran alone.
“We have to keep Genghis Khan’s ruthlessness and cruelty in perspective,” cautioned Tel Aviv University Professor of History Harta Barta, whose team is leading a study of conquerors and their atrocities. “It was more or less typical of the ancient world for wanton bloodshed to follow a successful battle, so that the vanquished population not get the wrong idea about continued resistance. Some scholars try to mitigate the Khan’s brutality by pointing to religious tolerance, cultural development, stabilizing the Silk Road, and other elements of his rule, but that shouldn’t be necessary once the observer realizes there’s nothing to mitigate. The guy wasn’t a Kahanist – what do you want from him, not to commit genocide? Be reasonable.”
“It’s not only Genghis Khan we’re talking about, but all his successors and the brutality they unleashed in even greater measure,” explained Goal Nefesz, author of Worse Than Hitler, a profile of Jewish figures of marginal influence through the ages. “Kiev, for example, all but ceased to exist once the Mongols besieged it and laid it to waste, followed by enslavement if its remaining population. But you’ll notice that among the Mongol horde’s many reprehensible acts – by modern standards only, I might add – not a single scholar will point to their admiring Kahane. I mean, there’s bad, and there’s really, really bad. Let’s not forget that as some of our colleagues have. Never again.”
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