Contentious Behavior
The JTA reports,
Several Gaza Strip settlers wrote their Israeli identification numbers on their arms in a bid to recall concentration camp inmates’ tattoos.
Thursday’s protests, adopted by several residents of the Gush Katif settlement bloc, appeared to have begun with a local woman who scrawled her identification number on her arm and showed it at a military checkpoint rather than furnish her ID card. The Yesha settler council urged the protesters to abandon the ploy, which outraged survivors of the Nazi genocide.
“The plan by some right-wing activists to put their identity numbers on their arms perverts the historical facts and damages the memory of the Shoah,” said Avner Shalev, chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. “It is important that the memory of the Shoah remain a unifying factor in Israeli society, not the opposite.”
Ugh.
I don’t think that it’ll be too hard to find holocaust survivors that would agree with this tactic, but that wouldn’t matter right? Only bring one representation of a group to speak for everyone.
Sigh.
Oh,
and the ‘disengagement’ is not going to happen. It’s already falling apart. Too bad the media won’t report anything on the subject. Blanket coverup wall to wall.
josh can u provide info?
BTW one of Dershowitz’s definition of not legitimate criticism of Israel that becomes Anti Semitism is when prime ministers, actions etc. are compared to the Holocaust. I wonder if this case answers his definition.
The Gaza settlers and their supporters are living in a dream world. Gaza is a s***hole and why anyone would want to live there just to make a point is beyond me. Go Sharon! Disengagement now and forever!
Asaf,
When people talk about not comparing Israel’s actions to the Nazis, they’re talking about things Israeli allegedly does to others. Jews have the right to compare things to the Holocaust. Being the victim of the world’s most effecient genocide grants us that privelage.
That being said, the people behind these protests don’t seem to understand that the tactic isn’t very effective – unless their goal is to get people talking about it. Then it’s a stroke of genius. People like Asaf can always be counted on the say stupid stuff in these cases, bring the issue to the forefront.
holocaust = planned mass extermination of politically inconvenient groups
disengagement = removing a indefensible position that at best was a huge drain on Israeli resources so the occupation can consolidate on things worth holding, like Jerusalem
rrrright….
Commencing countdown to the next outraged pundit who cannot believe someone dared to compare American torture to Nazi torture…
Jews have the right to compare things to the Holocaust. Being the victim of the world’s most efficient genocide grants us that priviledge.
No, anyone capable of speech and historical research has that “priviledge”, and insofar as it is a “priviledge” its worthiness is determined by the validity of the comparison, not the Judeosity of the comparer.
To the Ignorant K&Y,
If you read Asaf’s stupid post above, you would understand the context in which my statement was made. But don’t worry about that.
By the way, the word is Holocaust (with a capital H).
tuna, attack the comment not the commentor
Thanks for reminding us of that Dan b/c I was about to unleash…
so let’s say it this way, it is an ignorant and stupid comment (to say nothing of the commentator) that assume that holocaust always has a capital “H”. When it is used in reference to the Holocaust of WWII, then, yes, it does have a capital “H”. Alternatively, it is capitalized when it begins a sentence. The word exists as a regular noun too, and K&Y used it properly.
Anyway Tuna, you’re wrong wrong wrong wrong. K&Y is technically correct, but with respect to political correctness, NONE of us ought to exploit the Holocaust for our own political purposes. It’s nauseating, and it reveals the true colors of the anti-disengagement protestors.
The time has come to moderate our views, accept practical realities and work towards building a future in Israel together as a Jewish society committed to Tikkun Olam and the ethical principles of Judaism (which, I believe, would include seeking peace with our neighbors). Lofty goals? surely, but we’ve got to try.
It’s interesting. Some Israeli citizens are being moved by their demoncratically elected government from living in an area under a state of belligerent occupation, where their residence is illegal under international law and convention. The are compensated handsomely, and Israel is asking the US for an extra 2.2.billion to foot the bill, and to help “Judaize” the Galilee and the Negev. So the US is being asked to help fund Israel ending one form of ethnic cleansing — settling occupied territory — by another — giving it funds that will benefit only the settlement of its Jewish citizens at the expense of Arab and Bedouin citizens. And this is compared to the Holocaust? Methinks the world is getting sick of this mishigas; CNN reported 94% of Americans are against this idea. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/S…
Please try not to refer to the Shoah as the “holocaust” unless you think those victimized souls were “burnt offerings”. To me, that’s just an inappropriate word to use, no matter how many people have legitimized it.
can’t we all just get along?
well sausage, in line with your comment it seems that ahhhri has taken up the call to create an even better logo than mobius’s.
http://www.livejournal.com/com…
go for the “clicking here” part.
meh, conceptually i like it. in execution, it’s bad design.
whaddya trying to do here man? start a war?
Sorry Ronen, the Tuna is right. K&Y is says, “holocaust = planned mass extermination of politically inconvenient groups.”
Actually, he is defining genocide. There is only one Holocaust, and it will remain the only appropriate use of the word as long as what the Nazis did remains unique.
Using the word holocaust interchangably with genocide began at the UN conference in Durban in 2001. It is a deliberate effort to deny what happened to the Jews was unique to history.
Of course if some other group starts building gas chambers and throwing people into them, running horrific medical experiments on unwilling human subjects, etc…then maybe the uniqueness would change. Until then, there is one Holocaust.
AST,
I think that Dershowitz was talking about when goyim do it. I wonder if he is like the many others who simple think that Jews have a monopoly on holocaust, and god forbid anyone compare our plight to anyone else’s, or god forbid the holocaust memory could be used to prevent, to engage thought, and not just the benign ‘to remember’ – what’s that good for people?
You can make the differentiation between ‘people behind the tactic’, to the actual people who are about to be expelled who spontaneous thought up this idea while trying to get home.
integrated k&y,
you don’t understand history or the Arab psyche. I don’t believe in cutting off perfectly good limbs in order to save the more vital organs. Though I believe in the eternity of the Jewish people, retreating until a last stand on Jerusalem is a waste of good Jewish blood. Don’t you think?
dybbukingolem,
you’ve obviously never been there. IMO, it’s paradise.
If you read Asaf’s stupid post above, you would understand the context in which my statement was made.
No, we’ve re-read it again and see no basis for correction. Zionist chauvenism appalls reason with inane “uniqueness” myths, and if a lying plagiarist and defender of murderers like the Dersh tries to make it sound like he thought up some of these myths that certainly doesn’t justify them.
josh —
-history: the perception of conquest leads to desperate terrorism, as in suicide bombing, ghost shirts or wounded knee. see also the diaphonous xymphora.
-the “arab psyche”: umm, let’s see, you’re looking for “faster, habibi, kill, kill!” What’s not to understand? Just take the nearest anti-Jewish Streicher cartoon and replace the captions so it’s about those evil filthy terrorists and their culture of death.
-eternity of the Jewish people: don’t you wonder what a Jew from the age of piracy as national policy, slavery and live sacrifice would think of a Jew from the age of subdivisions, minivans and running water?
-retreating: umm, totally incoherent, but we’ll indulge the possibility that you think losinf Gaza is “retreating,” especially since liars depend on contradiction and here the contradicxtion is that the army isn’t going anywhere (some retreat) but the illegal settlers are.
-last stand on Jerusalem: no, no, we thionk you should leave that alone, in a nationalist or proprietary sense, too. All of you in that region have proven a long time ago you aren’t capable of handling Jerusalem any more than the Indians or Muslims really have any better idea than destruction for Kashmir, so give it over the the UN as an international city. It’s got enough history to justify becoming part of the world, not another monument to nationalist spite.
-waste of good Jewish blood: would be those haredi scvum movcing out there. We recall well the disgust we felt reading of these David Koresh types who brought their children into this terribly, needlessly dangerous situation, and their answer to the child endagerment was to endanger the kids more by always carrying plenty of guns and pretending to be in an action movie. The parental thing to do would be to not use the kids as hostages like that in the first place. The image was of a stop at a gas station in which a settler glowers and strokes his shootin’ irons while the kids run into the store to get candy. Totally screwed up. Hey, you know what, definitely living like that is self-righteous, enormously comfortable to the ego, maybe living like that is fun, but no way is it moral.
How many of these terror-causing destabilizers of the world are going to be given five minutes to gather their possessions and loved ones before the armored bulldozer comes?
And, the idea that the Holocaust is monstrously unique is based on willful ignorance of European history and might even be argued to be racist (definitely so when it’s perverted into denying the suffering of anybody who scored less than six million). It is unique in the same meaningless way that all historical events are unique; it is special for the wrong reasons, because many of the Jewish students are taught to feel an exclusive connection. Hitler did to white people what Europe had been doing to everybody else for centuries, and that, unfortunately, is the real basis of a lot of horror (and a horror that is not necessarily immune to anti-Semitism, since many of the European condemners of Hitler were no lovers of the Jews themselves). In a German-occupied part of south-west Africa the pre-Nazi soldiers marched people into the desert and totally exterminated them without a gas chamber or an airplane, with efficiency Eichmann only approached after the train tracks were bombed. And then you have the whole question of numbers, which is a stupid and immoral question that at best just distorts the lessons (Stalin killed a lot more. Pol Pot killed a lot less. Does it matter? Is Pol Pot only 0.9% as evil as Hitler?).