I got the meaning of "Schindler's List" completely wrong!

[ProfessorPlum]

In the course of my life, I have read dozens of books and watched dozens of movies concerning the Holocaust. This kind of literature and storytelling is important, because it lets us put ourselves in our imaginations in situations where we haven't been before. It lets us put ourselves in others' places, at least to a first approximation, and think about how we would feel in that place. And so, after reading and watching books and movies like Schindler's List, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, The Pianist, The Diary of Anne Frank, Jakob the Liar, Maus, Night, even The Boys from Brazil, and taking a college course on the Holocaust . . . I thought I had gotten the message pretty clearly, and it was this:

It is wrong to treat people, especially a group of people, in this way.

And that applied to Jewish people, homosexuals, the Romani people, religious minorities, people with physical and mental handicaps - to all people.

I thought.

To now see the state of Israel, born out of the suffering of the Holocaust, demonize, round up, ghettoize, and systematically kill a weaker group of people is so galactically ironic that it blows up everything I thought I knew. It turns out that the message of those movies and books wasn't "it is wrong to treat people this way". It was instead a case of special pleading -

It was wrong for other people to treat US this way.

I'm blown away by how wrong I was.


/sarcasm, I hope, sadly.

[malaise]

1. A brilliant post Professor Plum

Get thee to the greatest page

[kelliekat44]

77. Indeed! nt

[ProfessorPlum]

96. I'd say "nuke them all" is most likely a wrong opinion. nt

[hollysmom]

129. That is funny because I live in an area with lots of Jews and most of my friends are Jewish

and I have had the other experience., I can do or say anything about anything , except I can never ever criticize Israel. I once said I preferred the previous premier instead of the newly elected one and you would have thought I said to bomb Israel. The person I said it to refused to talk to me, which was awkward because I had recently been promoted to her boss and I had to give her a review. Support for Israel is unquestioned around here. I think I said that Palestinians were people too and I was told they were not , they were raised from infancy to be terrorists. I only discuss it on-line now,. where no one can hurt hem, ha ha .

[sulphurdunn]

134. First you listen

to people say that Judaism is separate from the Israeli state. Then you hear that Israel is Jewish state. Then you hear that Israelis only want to live in peace with their neighbors. Then you hear that the Jews are God's chosen people to whom he gave the deed to all the land between the Nile and the Tigris with the intent that the gentile population are destined to serve them as slaves. Which is it?

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

209. To be honest I don't go in for conspiracies like that.

Although some may say all the parts that you have mentioned, you can also find the same kind of layered rationalization within any religion about anything that they want to lay claim to. The secularists may say the most benign but supportive thing for their group and on the other end of the spectrum you can have the fundies saying everybody that is not like them should be dead, driven off or slaves to be used for their greater good of their religion.

Careful with over generalization.

[sulphurdunn]

212. What conspiracies?

What over generalization? Simple restatements of positions held and advanced by many religious and secular Zionists on the right and virulently opposed by Zionists on the left, who have little influence in Israeli politics right now.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

215. Post 134 seemed like it was inferring that the same group

of people were making all those claims.

Be careful what you write and how you write it.

There are some here with a grudge that would love to put another notch in their belt by taking what some write out of context and have them banned.

[sulphurdunn]

216. I don't think so.

If the post inferred that disparate claims were made by the same people, one would need to conclude they were either confused or duplicitous. Perhaps some are one or both. Being censored for criticism of Israel's Palestinian policy is, of course, nothing new, and is a clear free speech hazard in the US.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

217. I've had my say, and will not say any more on it.

[sulphurdunn]

218. OK. Thanks for the advice.

See ya later alligator.

[hack89]

2. The lesson is that the sanctioned extermination of millions of people is wrong

by no measurable means is what is happening in Gaza comparable to the Holocaust.

[Swede Atlanta]

6. So by your measure it is all about the numbers of people?

So if 500 people are intentionally killed for their ethnic origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, physical condition, etc. that doesn't count as the take away?

So what is the magic number? Is it 5,000 or does it have to be at least 100,000 or 1,000,000? I'm just trying to understand what the magic number is for the systematic killing of a population based on ethnicity and/or religious affiliation to be considered genocide or rise to the level of "a" holocaust" (I am not intending to diminish the horror and magnitude of "the" holocaust.

[packman]

14. Does this apply to your reasoning?

Then Abraham approached him (a destroying angel) and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not sparee the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

The Lord said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”

Then Abraham spoke up again: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five people?”

----- and so on until they reach the figure of 10 righteous people. But Abraham knew there was not 10 in all of Sodom.

Perhaps this is the inspiration of Israel's actions in Gaza.

[DesertDiamond]

19. packman, I'm not sure I get your meaning. Are you saying there are not even 10 Palestinians

in Gaza who deserve to live? You probably mean this in another way, but I'm just looking for clarification.

[Voice for Peace]

23. I think the poster meant 'justification' instead of 'inspiration.'

[packman]

28. That passage always bothered me

it seems as if God was determined to wipe out Sodom regardless of how many just persons were in the city. To me, it seems as if His mind was already made up and He was playing a game with Abraham to soothe his human side and sensibilities in much the same way one would placate a child.

Of course there are innocents and people of good will in Gaza. But it seems as if the Israelites had their mind made up as to what they were going to do regardless of costs to the population. To me, it smacks of Old Testament fire and destruction.

[Arugula Latte]

74. Let's face it, Yahweh is an evil, murderous sociopath.

[snagglepuss]

111. Bingo. I've been readaing a lot recently about the Chrisitan Gnostics

who believed that Yahweh was not the supreme god but a demigod and not such a nice demigod given his jealously and violent temperment. They referred to the Supreme god as simply The Depth. William Blake who was fascinated by Gnosticism and embraced it referred to Yahweh as nobodaddy as he did not believe that the OT god was the father Jesus spoke about.

[devils chaplain]

121. In cahoots with "Satan" in infinite cruelty. n/t

[kelliekat44]

184. No, only the people who penned the story. nt

[sulphurdunn]

114. It makes perfect sense

if you believe the sins of the parents are handed down to their children for 4 generations. The Hebrew god was cool with that. The Hebrews thought it righteous. We call it blood guilt and all civilized people have laws against it.

[hack89]

50. Was 911 genocide? nt

[BlindTiresias]

86. Equivocation

9/11 was not part of a systemic effort to marginalize and ghettoize the American people.

[hack89]

88. Genocide does not require ghettos

Just a lot of dead bodies. There were no ghettos in Rwanda. How many dead people make a genocide? Simple question.

[BlindTiresias]

101. genocide is a systemic effort

Are you denying that the ghettoization of jews by the nazis was not part of the larger campaign?

[hack89]

110. So ten deaths can be genocide

If they take place in Gaza?

[BlindTiresias]

115. Genocide is a systemic effort

Not exactly a controversial opinion but keep on digging that hole.

[hack89]

116. But there has to be massive loss of life

As people are systematically murdered. How many deaths need there be for it to be genocide. Stop evading the question.

[BlindTiresias]

120. There needs to be an effort

To systematically destroy a population, number of deaths is a useless metric for determining genocide for this reason. If one gave a set number, let us say one million people, that means that all ethnic groups under the one million mark categorically cannot be genocided.

[Callmecrazy]

161. What do you think the number is?

You keep asking for a number. Give us yours.

[sulphurdunn]

128. The Israelis

don't want to kill all the Palestinians. They just want their land and would prefer driving them out to killing them, but they obviously have no qualms about killing them.

[rhett o rick]

189. "They just want their land " Without taking sides I want to point out that no one has an eternal

right to any specific spot of "land".

[sulphurdunn]

197. It isn't the Palestinians

claiming some eternal right to the land, that's the other side. Without taking sides, picture a foreign people who show up, claim that thousands of years ago God gave them the land where your house sits, kick you out by force, move in and force you into a refugee camp. No one has eternal rights. They do have human rights.

[rhett o rick]

201. People will fight for land! Always have and always will. But no one has an eternal right to

a specific land. They are fighting because they both want the same land. Is either side justified? I don't think so. I think we'd agree that peoples have a right to defend themselves. But to what lengths? A lot of Americans, including H. Clinton, thought we were merely defending ourselves when we invaded Iraq.

[sulphurdunn]

204. When you posit the argument

that might makes right, it should not come wrapped in the guise of moral equivalency. It's like saying I have a right to take what I want from you, you have a right to try and stop me, at which point I have a right to defend myself from you. We are not ethical equals in such a contest.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

205. If it is targeted a a certain group of people. It always starts with the idea

that once the first few are murdered, and one perceives they can get away with it, then the other murders follow sooner or later.

[hack89]

206. So 911 was genocide

Targeted a certain group of people, got away with it, and continue to go it again to this very day.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

207. Nope. It was a terrorist attack.

Targeting a certain group of people with the intent to eradicate them (Jews, Palestinians, First Nations, whomever) and continuing over a long stretch of time to do it is genocide.

[hack89]

208. So the Palestinian population has exploded since 48

So that eradication theme is weak as hell. If Israel wanted to eradicate the Palestinians Gaza would look like Syria and a 1000 deaths would be a good day.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

210. Nope. That's a false and especially weak conclusion.

[hack89]

211. So the Palestinian population has not exploded? nt

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

213. I'm not sure why you are making them out to sound like rabbits

so I will just ignore you for a little while.

[hack89]

214. Population explosions and genocide are mutually exclusive

Except for those trying to trivialized the word to support an agenda.

[1StrongBlackMan]

146. No ghettoes in Rwanda??? ...

Where did you come to understand that? There was rampant ghettoization ... in both senses of the word.

[hack89]

158. Feel free to educate me

I will admit I am not an expert on the subject

[1StrongBlackMan]

196. Here is a brief history of Rwanda ...

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~marke22g/classweb/dw1/

http://www.monitor.upeace.org/archive.cfm?id_article=707

So yes, Rwanda was "ghettoized" from the start of European colonization ... and that was long before the 1994 massacre.

[hack89]

203. Thanks. I retract my previous comments. nt

[BobbyBoring]

164. Why do you bring this up in thread after thread?

Go to Wikepedia and look up genocide.Then answer your own ?.

[Scootaloo]

159. They have to be white, primarily

If they're not sufficiently white, then they either completely fall out of the discourse (as with the Romany of Europe) or we're told "those people have been fighting forever," as we hear all the time with Africa, the middle east, and Asia. Or, most ignominiously, we dress up in halfassed versions of their costumes, erase their stories, and replace them with our own while claiming to "honor" them, as Americans do - not just US Americans, but colonial descendants in almost every western Hemisphere state.

It's sort of like how the term "white slavery" catches headlines and horror, and is somehow different from you know, "regular" slavery, like what probably made your shoes or television set.

[heaven05]

43. well, you missed the point

again. geez

[hack89]

48. No I understand the point

Last edited Sat Jul 26, 2014, 09:42 AM - Edit history (1)

The Jews are no better than the Nazis.


Edit: since this post was alerted on, let me clarify. I do not believe that the Jews are no better than the Nazis - that is my paraphrase of the OP.

[The Second Stone]

65. That is anti-Semitic. Jews are not doing anything to the people of

Gaza, it is Israelis. Stop blaming the Jews.

[sulphurdunn]

113. Maybe part of the solution

to this is for Israel to quit insisting it is a Jewish state.

[randome]

190. They're a Jewish state when it suits them.

When it doesn't then religion has absolutely nothing to do with killing people for their religious right to take the land.

Why don't more people understand this?
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Aspire to inspire.[/center][/font][hr]

[Vattel]

193. and not all Iraelis. Many Israelis oppose it.

[randome]

194. But if they're not part of the solution, aren't they part of the problem?

If one opposes killing for land, how does one voice that opposition? By saying "Oh, those guys? They're not with me."

Is that enough?
[hr][font color="blue"][center]"The whole world is a circus if you know how to look at it."
Tony Randall, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964)[/center][/font][hr]

[Vattel]

195. You tell me.

[randome]

199. It's not enough to stand idly by while a military junta kills in the name of your religion.

Obviously it's only the trappings of religion that matter to most. Their silly little hats and turbans and ridiculously convoluted procedures to get closer to God.

We regularly excoriate the Pope for not doing more to make up for the Catholic church's abuses. Why don't we demand as much from Jews and Muslims? They don't have a titular leader as Catholics do so it's up to the 'faithful' to stand against the crimes committed in their name.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Where do uncaptured mouse clicks go?[/center][/font]

[Vattel]

200. I guess I agree that where effective opposition is possible, it should happen.

But effective opposition is not always easy to organize and sometimes it is downright dangerous (e.g., suppose I am an ordinary Muslim in a Taliban-controlled part of Afghanistan).

[randome]

202. Agree about Afghanistan. But Israel isn't threatening to kill their own people.

Only those 'other' people. So long as it doesn't prevent them from saying their magic words in front of a magic wall or whatever the hell they're supposed to do, the majority of Israel seem content to turn a blind eye to what's happening. At least that's how it seems to me at this time.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Where do uncaptured mouse clicks go?[/center][/font]

[Vattel]

221. I agree.

[sulphurdunn]

130. I'm not sure ultra-orthodox

Zionists are much different from Nazis. If they ever take over in Israel, I guess we'll find out.

[hack89]

79. So why did Israel forcibly remove all Israeli settlers from Gaza nine years ago

and turn it over to the Palestinians?

[lark]

109. They put them in settlements in Arab Jerusalem -

still stealing others' land and lives.

[hack89]

112. But they withdrew completely from Gaza

Right?

[kelliekat44]

185. Makes it easier to totally destroy the place. nt

[hack89]

188. Those diabolical jews

They think of every thing.

[sulphurdunn]

117. Cost benefit analysis.

It got to be too costly. They did cut their losses though by turning Gaza into a giant ghetto and controlling it economically.

[hack89]

119. It was a trust building exercise

They gambled land for peace and lost big time.

[sulphurdunn]

123. They gave up 140 sq. miles

and imprisoned 1.7 million people inside of it. They would have been naive to believe such actions nurture peace, and they are not naive.

[Cheviteau]

102. Maybe not.

But when it's done on a rotating basis, it comes pretty damn close. And the history since 1948 shows pretty much a rotation.

[intaglio]

139. Whilst Gaza is not a death camp it is a concentration camp

and the Nakba was remarkably similar to a pogrom

[rhett o rick]

191. I disagree with your interpretation of "the lesson". IMO the lesson has nothing to do

with the number of deaths. The lesson is that there are some human beings that are compassionate in the face of danger.

The killing of innocent people is wrong on all sides and in all scales.

[SummerSnow]

3. Bravo Professor.

K&R

[COLGATE4]

4. Cheap theatrics posing as argument. nt

[ProfessorPlum]

20. Contentless naysaying posing as a response. nt

[COLGATE4]

90. B for effort. D for content. nt

[ProfessorPlum]

92. 1 for the money. 2 for the show. nt

[1StrongBlackMan]

149. LOL! eom.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

168. Not to detract from the seriousness of the topic, but

L the Fk O L! Couldn't help it!

[MohRokTah]

106. AUTOMATED MESSAGE: Results of your Jury Service

On Fri Jul 25, 2014, 02:02 PM an alert was sent on the following post:

Cheap theatrics posing as argument. nt
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5289522

REASON FOR ALERT

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.

ALERTER'S COMMENTS

this is an uncivil attack and an insult on the OP.

You served on a randomly-selected Jury of DU members which reviewed this post. The review was completed at Fri Jul 25, 2014, 02:09 PM, and the Jury voted 0-7 to LEAVE IT.

Juror #1 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: While I don't agree, the poster is entitled to his/her opinion and it did not include personal attacks. I think the comment should stand.
Juror #2 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #3 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Oh. My. God. Hypersensitivity, AGAIN!
Juror #4 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: This is an opinion about the OP, not a personal attack. ProfessorPlum is free to combat this opinion.
Juror #5 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: And the author of the OP responded. No harm/no foul. Unnecessary alert.
Juror #6 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #7 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: I think the alerter should thicken their skin. This was about the most ridiculous alert I've ever seen when serving as a juror.

Thank you very much for participating in our Jury system, and we hope you will be able to participate again in the future.

[ProfessorPlum]

124. It wasn't me!

lol. I'm happy to point out that this "criticism", such as it is, is empty.

I don't think I've ever alerted a post - and I don't intend to start doing it over such fluff as this

[MohRokTah]

125. It was a silly alert. eom

[intaglio]

141. Care to identify the "theatrics" or are you just bloviating n/t

[JI7]

5. wtf

[NaturalHigh]

7. Is it wrong to defend your citizens against an enemy shooting rockets at them?

[B Calm]

9. Is it wrong to blow up hospitals and schools in your defense?

[NaturalHigh]

10. Since you answered a question with a question...

Is it wrong to put rockets and other weapons in hospitals and schools? Is it wrong to use human shields?

[LittleBlue]

13. The answers to both your questions is yes and no

Yes, it's acceptable to defend yourself against rocket attacks. No, it's no acceptable to blow up hospitals and schools.

Just like it's okay to apprehend a murderer, but it's not okay to apprehend him in a mall by shooting shoulder-fired rockets.

[DanTex]

15. Yes, that's wrong also. Hamas is bad. The Israeli government is bad.

Both sides are bad.

[PatrynXX]

39. that most normal people

would agree on.

[morningfog]

70. Wait. There were weapons in the UN school housing refugees of war?

I don't think so.

[NaturalHigh]

76. I was referring to this.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/chief-alarmed-rockets-put-gaza-site-24685070


The U.N. secretary-general on Wednesday said he was "alarmed" to hear that rockets were placed in a U.N.-run school in Gaza and now "have gone missing," and he demanded a full review of such incidents.

A statement by the spokesman for Ban Ki-moon expressed the U.N. chief's "outrage and regret" at the placement of weapons at a site run by the global organization. The U.N. says that has happened at least twice so far in the current fighting.

"Those responsible are turning schools into potential military targets, and endangering the lives of innocent children," U.N. staff and anyone seeking shelter, the statement said.

[sulphurdunn]

137. If you provoke

people to attack you, and then massively retaliate against them, you have no moral standing to claim your slaughter of them is justified as an act of self-defense, especially when only a couple of you have been killed in the violence you precipitated and you have inflicted massive, mostly civilian, casualties as a result.

[noiretextatique]

11. yes eom

[NaturalHigh]

24. It's wrong to defend your citizens?

Gee...that's a new concept. I kind of hope our government doesn't adopt your unique point of view.

[randome]

29. 'Defend your citizens'? This is how you defend them: give up some of the fucking land!

The Israeli government is not interested in 'doing anything necessary' or they would give up some land.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Everything is a satellite to some other thing.[/center][/font][hr]

[NaturalHigh]

31. Give up land to a group dedicated to eradicating you?

Yeah, that appeasement thing worked out so well back in the 1930s.

[randome]

34. Give up the land they stole. "Anything necessary", the generals say. They don't mean that at all.

What they mean is "Anything that involves killing."
[hr][font color="blue"][center]If you don't give yourself the same benefit of a doubt you'd give anyone else, you're cheating someone.[/center][/font][hr]

[NaturalHigh]

38. Agreed - the generals didn't mean "give in to our enemies and run like hell."

I have to agree with you there. Thanks for setting me straight.

[randome]

40. Right. It's all about appearances, isn't it? One mustn't look cowardly.

No one said Israel should 'run'. But they have insisted on settling in territory that does not belong to them. Taking it over bit by bit. And killing anyone who gets in their way. That is inhumane and immoral.

But I guess if it's land you want, it's easy to throw morality aside.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]“If you're not committed to anything, you're just taking up space.”

[NaturalHigh]

41. Hamas' goal is to exterminate Israel.

They have no morality to begin with. It's pretty easy for me to pick out a bad guy here.

[randome]

59. Isn't Israel's goal the same thing applied to the Palestinians?

I don't see how anyone can say it's easy to pick good and bad guys out of a war. War is hell for everyone. You don't understand that, you think it's a solution to any of life's problems? Pathetic. Donovan's "Universal Soldier" comes to mind.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."
Leonard Cohen, Anthem (1992)[/center][/font][hr]

[NaturalHigh]

63. I hate war...

but if people were shooting rockets at the U.S., I would want them stopped.

Obviously we just aren't going to agree on this. Have a good day.

[druidity33]

122. these rockets you speak of...

have been going off for years and to negligible effect. Can you tell how many people have been killed by Hamas rockets in the past ten years? Where are the rockets aimed at? What type of response does the well funded Israeli military promote for a rocket that lands in the sand a half mile from a settlement that 5 years ago was a Palestinian olive grove?

There are too many unanswered (or skewed answered) questions in this situation. This entire conflict is the epitome of a gray area. Honestly, to me, for anyone to be unequivocally adamant as to the "right" side of this struggle only exemplifies their lack of knowledge of the history there.

Hamas rockets are like leeches in a pond, whereas the Israeli military is dynamite in that same water...

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

131. I would want them arrested, and tried in a court of law.

And I most certainly wouldn't want our military blowing up buildings or neighbourhoods and killing people not actually involved in the crime. That would make us no better than the people shooting the rockets.

[sulphurdunn]

147. The goal of al-Queda

is to destroy the US, but we aren't blowing the shit our of Saudi Arabia. Hamas poses no long term threat to the survival of Israel, and you need to stop using it as an excuse to commit mass murder.

[BobbyBoring]

170. And this is my whole problem with the situation.

The Jewish folks had this country given to them. For years,they cried "We don't have a homeland". They got one laid on them but that wasn't enough. They had to have " Elbow room" I guess.

Yes, Hamas calls for the eliminate of the Jews. All throughout history various peoples have wanted to eradicate the Jews

Is there a reason?

Just askin

[oberliner]

183. This is a fascinating post

Do you have any possible answers to the question you posed?

[onenote]

99. give up the land they stole. Does that apply to the US?

Many DUers (maybe even you) reside on territory forcibly taken from Native Americans by some of the most horrific means imaginable. Yet I don't see anyone volunteering to relocate themselves to their ancestral homes.

The situation today is atrocious, but if the only way it can be dealt with is to reverse the creation of the State of Israel (which is what Hamas officially demands), its never going to happen.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

133. Well, yes.

And, in fact, there are still various lawsuits going on by tribes to recover that land. One of the biggees is to recover the Black Hills. The Sioux have been trying to get back the Black Hills since 1877. And I will applaud them if and when they succeed.

I would expect the Federal government to help relocate non-native American citizens in any case involving native tribes winning back ancestral lands.

[sulphurdunn]

152. Hamas does not threaten

the survival of Israel regardless of what it claims. As for going back to Europe, I've considered it, but I don't think, after careful reflection, that my indigenous neighbors would really want that. Israel will be OK once it realizes that it actually needs the Palestinians as much as they need the Israelis.

[treestar]

103. When you took that land from them in the first place?

[NaturalHigh]

105. I think the United Nations had something to do with the creation of Israel.

[awoke_in_2003]

126. And since its inception...

they have continued to steal more and more land non-stop.

[NaturalHigh]

182. Every time Israel has taken over more land...

it has been in response to an attack on its borders and citizens.

[GoneFishin]

186. Right. So Israel benefits each time one of these "attacks" occurs.

You might say that they are crucial to the ability of Israel to eventually take all of the Palestinians land from them.

[onenote]

219. Curious use of quotations around the word attacks.

You seem not to have a grasp of history.

And I'm curious. What part of the United States should be given back to the Native Americans from whom it was stolen?

[GoneFishin]

223. Quotes, because they happen whether they really occur, as they genuinely do at times,

or whether they are embellished to justify punishing millions of innocent people, as happened with the deceptive attribution of the criminals involved in the 3 murders in this case.

There is always a reason to punish those living in the occupied territories. The lawn must periodically be mowed.

On the issue of the American indians, you got me. I don't have an easy answer. But I can say this for sure. Even if a gang of indians terrorized a nearby town, robbing raping, and killing some of the locals, the correct solution would not be to bomb the entire reservation with white phosphorus bombs, roll through it with tanks, drop bombs from the air, blow up all the houses, shell children as they played outside, destroy their water and sewer systems, and restrict food deliveries to starve even the women and children who had nothing whatsoever to do with the incidences. Those tactics are not the way to uphold law and order, those tactics are for wiping out an entire race of people.

[onenote]

227. Those are the equivalent of the tactics that were used to drive the Indians off their territory

So try to come up with the hard answer: how does one rationalize living on stolen land?

[GoneFishin]

229. I don't think that technology existed. And yes, how indeed?

[sulphurdunn]

155. Yes, it did.

It also established very precise borders to which Israel agreed and which it needs to honor.

[nomorenomore08]

132. Hamas may theoretically wish to eradicate Israel, but if you look at the actual

body count over the last few decades, the Israelis have killed a lot more Palestinians than vice versa. Just saying.

And conflating all Palestinians with Hamas - as many supporters of the Israeli government tend to do - is obviously problematic as well.

[sulphurdunn]

140. What the Nazis did to Jews

does not justify what Israel is doing to Palestinians. You really need to quit using what happened nearly a century ago as an excuse for what is happening now.

[onenote]

220. Yet folks are perfectly content to use what happened 60 years ago

to justify what Hamas is doing to Israel. Hmmm….

[malaise]

224. It is you Israel that is eradicating Palestinians

Wake up

[progressoid]

30. It's not wrong to defend your citizens.

The question is HOW you defend your citizens.

[riqster]

53. This. NT.

[NaturalHigh]

85. That wasn't what the poster said, though.

I asked "Is it wrong to defend your citizens against an enemy shooting rockets at them?"

His answer was "yes eom."

To me that's the attitude of a lot of the anti-Israel crowd.

[rhett o rick]

192. Were we defending our citizens when we used phosphorous bombs to burn Iraqi

children to death?

[PatrynXX]

35. well Hamas is firing back at Israel

don't see anything wrong with that. Palestine has to defend itself..

[ProfessorPlum]

54. Not sure who you are sticking up for here, but I say

10 if X is firing at Y, then Y has to defend itself! They have no choice!
20 goto 10

/fortran

[whopis01]

107. Wouldn't that be "20 GO TO 10" in fortran?

GOTO is BASIC. Fortran uses GO TO.

If I remember correctly that is...

[ProfessorPlum]

162. You are correct! LOL

out-geeked again

[treestar]

98. Up to a point

What is reasonable for defense from that here? Does it really require killing all those people?

[NaturalHigh]

100. Well, you know, Hamas is known for being so reasonable.

[treestar]

104. It's still overkill

to bomb the civilians there.

At some point they are not just defending themselves from the rockets.

[nomorenomore08]

135. +1000

Exactly!

[intaglio]

143. Is it wrong to place people in a concentration camp on the basis of their ethnicity and religion

Please note I said concentration camp not death camp; my nation the Brits began concentration camps against the Boers

[MinneapolisMatt]

8. You win the internet.

Perfectly said, sadly.

[stupidicus]

12. well, the stuff behind "a right to exist" and "never again" only belong to Zionists

not Palestinians, who have to earn the right to those claims by the Zionist hands.

[handmade34]

16. "who have to earn the right"

so sad so ironic,

[stupidicus]

18. ain't it though?

it in many ways parallels the Native American experience

[Divernan]

17. Jewish holocaust survivor: “Never again” does not justify Gaza slaughter.

The author of this, a Jewish, Hungarian born, Canadian physician, grew up in Budapest, an infant survivor of the Nazi genocide. He writes to challenge Israelis' attempts to justify bombing of hospitals, annihilation of families at dinner, the killing of pre-adolescents playing soccer on a beach.

In Israel-Palestine, the powerful party has succeeded in painting itself as the victim, while the ones being killed and maimed become the perpetrators. “They don’t care about life,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says, abetted by the Obamas and Harpers of this world, “we do.” Netanyahu, you who with surgical precision slaughter innocents, the young and the old, you who have cruelly blockaded Gaza for years, starving it of necessities, you who deprive Palestinians of more and more of their land, their water, their crops, their trees—you care about life?There is no understanding Gaza out of context—Hamas rockets or unjustifiable terrorist attacks on civilians—and that context is the longest ongoing ethnic cleansing operation in the recent and present centuries, the ongoing attempt to destroy Palestinian nationhood.

The Palestinians use tunnels? So did my heroes, the poorly armed fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto. Unlike Israel, Palestinians lack Apache helicopters, guided drones, jet fighters with bombs, laser-guided artillery. Out of impotent defiance, they fire inept rockets, causing terror for innocent Israelis but rarely physical harm. With such a gross imbalance of power, there is no equivalence of culpability.

Israel wants peace? Perhaps, but as the veteran Israeli journalist Gideon Levy has pointed out, it does not want a just peace. Occupation and creeping annexation, an inhumane blockade, the destruction of olive groves, the arbitrary imprisonment of thousands, torture, daily humiliation of civilians, house demolitions: these are not policies compatible with any desire for a just peace. In Tel Aviv Gideon Levy now moves around with a bodyguard, the price of speaking the truth.

I have visited Gaza and the West Bank. I saw multi-generational Palestinian families weeping in hospitals around the bedsides of their wounded, at the graves of their dead. These are not people who do not care about life. They are like us—Canadians, Jews, like anyone: they celebrate life, family, work, education, food, peace, joy. And they are capable of hatred, they can harbour vengeance in the hearts, just like we can.

http://www.straight.com/news/692046/gabor-mate-never-again-does-not-justify-gaza-slaughter

[KoKo]

37. Recommend....well worth the read..

[Octoberfurst]

58. Excellent!

Very well said!

[blackspade]

61. ^^This^^

for sanity.

[TubbersUK]

71. Thanks very much for posting

I think the other important point that these authors are making is that for the Palestinians, "peace" , by necessity, consists of more than a cessation of overt violence (essential as a ceasefire is for all parties), they need at least the hope of one day being able to flourish as a society with the sort of autonomy, rights and freedoms that we take for granted, they need to feel that they are at least travelling in that direction. One thing that's clear is that a return to the status quo of recent years is highly unlikely to deliver lasting peace, security, rights and freedoms for all parties.

As one who has always wished Israel well, I despair at the lack of will within the Netanyahu government to forge a strategy to meet substantive Palestinian aspirations. It's becoming increasingly clear to me that this government is happy to continue indefinately with periodically "mowing the grass" in Gaza while it continues to sanction creeping annexation on the West Bank. Moreover, I'm told that the Israeli electorate is generally pretty happy with this and there is no particular appetite for any real change.

I guess that Israel's allies recognise the dangers of letting things fester indefinitely but they seem impotent and/ or domestically shackled. Maybe if a functional, unitary Palestinian government somehow emerges from the fog, some hands will be forced.

[Divernan]

73. You're welcome, AND Welcome to DU

Your post was thoughtful and insightful - I look forward to your participation in DU.

[druidity33]

118. excellent post and welcome!

I like seeing reasonable voices here on DU.

K&R.

[secondwind]

21. WOW, you just educated me too, ProfessorPlum!

[maddiemom]

22. If you haven't already seen it, add Spielberg's "Munich" to your list.

Thought provoking from another angle.

[ProfessorPlum]

49. that movie was frightening and would certainly make any would be "agents"

think twice about their line of work. Great themes of revenge and moral ambiguity.

[LanternWaste]

25. I got the meaning of both 'Jaws' and '1941' wrong also.

I got the meaning of both 'Jaws' and '1941' wrong also.

[ProfessorPlum]

51. LOL

[JayhawkSD]

26. Actually, the message of Schindler's List

Is that in the midst of the worst horror imaginable there will always emerge examples of courage and kindness. No matter how many evil people surround you, if you keep your mind and eyes open you will always find one person like Oskar Schindler who will risk his life and spend his fortune to do the right thing.

[obxhead]

27. Of any society alive today Israelis

Should know better than anyone that their treatment of Gaza for decades has been tragic and despicable.

[frazzled]

32. I think you're still drawing the wrong message

First, you should be much more careful about using fiction and movies as the basis for your analytical thinking. Movies manipulate emotions, but they're not accurate reflections of historical events or motivations. And emotional responses may vary widely: I, for one, despised Schindler's List, both as cinema (it was overwrought and pretentious, but not accomplished) and as storytelling (the victims in this film had no presence or human dimension: they seemed to be merely anonymous pawns for extolling the bravery of a member of the majority); and I'm Jewish, but I still hated that film and thought it was way overrated.

But mainly, the lesson you seem to be drawing is askew: the World War II victimization of the groups you mention—Jews, homosexuals, Roma, the handicapped, etc—was not because the Jews, gays, Roma, or handicapped were citizens of an entity engaged in a geopolitical dispute with Germany (those battles were being fought on a different front). And they weren't lobbing rockets into German territory or disputing Germany's existence as a state. This was a program aimed at exterminating "undesirable" people, mostly non-"Aryans" but also some politically suspect people as well, such as Communists. And the people in these groups were not collateral victims of the war Germany was waging in surrounding states. They were victims of an explicit program that removed them from their homes and transported them to camps where they were systematically starved and/or exterminated. They were not victims of bombing or gunfire against a government with which Germany had a dispute.

The better analogy would be to consider whether the current Israeli actions in Gaza against Hamas--which I completely and utterly oppose on the grounds that they are overly harsh, but more important, that they don't, and won't, accomplish anything--should be to ask whether they are not more like the Allied bombing of Dresden, which killed 25,000 mostly innocent civilians in the city's center. Or (even more philosophically troubling) the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Were these actions, with their huge civilian casualties, necessary to end that horrible war? That is still being disputed.

I want this incursion to stop. It's wrong and it's useless. But I still think your analogizing is wrong as well. (Almost any analogy to the Nazi madness will always be wrong.)

Lastly, I might add that your assertion that Israel was born out of the suffering of the Holocaust is a common but not entirely correct generalization. The creation of that state goes back to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, to the British attempts back in 1922, with the Balfour declaration, to establish a homeland for Jews in Palestine, to longstanding disputes in that region between Arabs and Jews who lived in the region (yes, Jews had lived in the region for a long time), and to surrounding issues regarding large Jewish populations in Iran, Iraq, Greece, Egypt and elsewhere in the middle east. After the war, the British ceded their mandate in this troubled region to the UN, which in 1947 recommended the establishment of two states--and the world concurred (yes, the recent Holocaust and its horrors did much to spur that concurrence). Unfortunately, the Palestinians and neighboring Arab states rejected this two-state solution at the time, and the parties have been fighting ever since. We're back to trying to get that same, acceptable two-state solution.

This is a war, not an extermination project. And it's a war that's been going on (and off and on) for three-quarters of a century now. I don't know how it ends, but it can't end by dismissing the legitimacy of the state of Israel. I'm happy to criticize the current Israeli government vociferously; but I'm not happy to create melodramatic analogies to Nazi motivations and actions. They're just not true. Proportionality is required in all thinking, and movies aren't the way to get there.

[ProfessorPlum]

46. I see - the victimization of people is wrong if the state is getting rid of "undesirables"

but maybe less wrong if it is part of a "war".

I suppose that is a distinction that could be made, though I think that Dresden and Nagasaki and Hiroshima were indisputably war crimes, and the US was lucky enough to be the winner and not have to face the consequences of them.

On the other hand, the fate of the people in Gaza seems (to me) to be entirely within the power of the Israeli government, and so that makes them prisoners, or subjects of the Israeli government. And I object, as you do, to the way that government is treating people who are subject to its whims.

Finally, if you aren't getting that one of the major themes of nearly all Holocaust literature and storytelling is "Whoa, that shit was fucked up", then I'll have to respectfully disagree with you, no matter the other themes present in any particular work of art.

[frazzled]

69. No ... just that there are different types and degrees of victimization and ...

you can't just go pulling the facile "Nazi" card and get away with it. I'm not the only one calling that out in this thread.

[ProfessorPlum]

75. ok . . . well, I don't think I'm really pulling the Nazi card

I'm pulling the "look how bad it is when people get treated this way" card. The card that says it is wrong for people to be herded into smaller and smaller areas, killed for the "crimes" of their religion or ancestry, generally shat upon because they are powerless.

Stories of the Holocaust generally make this point loud and clear, which is why I find it ironic that the Israeli government (which should be even more aware of this history than anyone else) conveniently ignores it when it is time to kill some people for political gain. But I've already explained that, and you understand that.

It makes the whole notion of playing victim and oppressor cards, no matter the names on them, stupidly meaningless.

[Divernan]

60. Israeli policy has been to systematically starve Palestinians

You attempt to distinguish Holocaust victims from Palestinians by arguing that Nazis plan was "an explicit program that removed them from their homes and transported them to camps where they were systematically starved and/or exterminated."

That is precisely the plan the Israeli government has implemented for decades. As to removing them from the homes, one only has to look at the series of maps showing the shrinking land allocated to the Palestinians and the ever expanding Israeli settlements.


As to "systematically starving" the Palestinians, I present you with this evidence:

Just this February, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Territories – Richard Falk, Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law at Princeton University – submitted his final report to the UN Human Rights Council. Presenting his findings at a news conference in March, he said that Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza bore “unacceptable characteristics of colonialism, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.”

http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/israels-attack-gaza-culmination-66-years-settler-colonialism/


Israel’s attack on Gaza is the culmination of 66 years of settler-colonialism
Israel claims its latest onslaught against the population of Gaza is a response to Hamas rocket-fire, targeted at "terrorists" and motivated to "restore quiet." However, an analysis of the IDF's public relations points and war doctrines as well as the historical context of the events, shows the root cause of the crisis to be Israel's decades-long programme of violent settler colonialism.

(Just one of the documented examples from this article - thanks Wikileaks!), subtitled,
Calibrating the Gaza starvation diet

A US diplomatic cable revealed by WikiLeaks in 2011 quoted Israeli officials saying they wanted to “keep Gaza’s economy on the brink of collapse.” The idea was to ensure the economy was “functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis.”

One of the mechanisms to do this was what veteran Nazareth-based journalist Jonathan Cook called Israel’s “starvation diet” for Gaza. Israeli Defence ministry documents obtained by the Israeli human rights group Gisha showed that Israeli officials had calculated the minimum number of calories – so-called ‘red lines’ – needed by Gaza’s population to avoid malnutrition. But as Cook reports, while this figure required allowing in 170 trucks a day, in practice Israeli military officials permitted an average of just 67 trucks per day into Gaza (compared to a daily 400 before the blockade).

“The facts on the ground in Gaza demonstrate that food imports consistently fell below the red lines,” said Robert Turner, operations director of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). No wonder a 2012 UNRWA report forecasts that if Israel’s policies toward Gaza continue, the strip will be uninhabitable by 2020.

[bloom]

171. It looks like an extermination project to me. A slow one.

If Israel had gone in too much all at once, they would have gotten too much push back, and the US would not have been able to back them.

But the way it is being done, whether it is intentional or not - seems to be slow and methodical. Israeli settlements of Palestinian areas increase. The deaths that the Palestinians suffer from Israelis are always way more than what Israel suffers from Palestinians.

The world and the UN sides with Palestine - but does little or nothing. The US keeps helping Israel and gives them billions.

The Israelis get stronger, the Palestinians get weaker. It just goes on and on - and it seems to me it will only end when there is no more Palestinian territory and no more Palestinians.

[w4rma]

33. Right-wingers are the same everywhere. As long as the right-wing Likud Party is in the majority

then Israel will be at war.

[WinkyDink]

36. Rounding up and systematically killing? A good argument needs no lies.

[ProfessorPlum]

42. well, they've already been rounded up, inside Gaza

and perhaps randomly killing for political purposes, with no regards to guilt or innocence, is bit more on point.

[libodem]

44. I cut my teeth on

Man's search for Meaning by Victor Frankel, in my twenties. We all read Ann Frank.

My dad took my son to see Schilnder's List. I just couldn't. I can't take it. My heart is there but I couldn't face seeing it.

Sometimes I make myself see the PBS stories of people who go back to the camps. I feel like I was there. We can never forget.

Yet this is an atrocity happening in Gaza. You can't remain the victim when you take on the role of persecutor.

[aikoaiko]

45. All analogies break down because they are analogies.

But I can't get over the distinction of Palestinians lobbing rockets into Israel.

[ProfessorPlum]

47. well, they are occupied.

Nearly all populations who are occupied have fought against their occupiers.

I wish that they would attempt non-violent, more effective protest.

[Octafish]

52. No, you got it right. Somebody else is getting it wrong.

Thank you, Professor Plum. People who love Israel will stand up and tell her when Israel is wrong.

[ProfessorPlum]

82. thank you.

[Exultant Democracy]

56. Well duh, killing white people is wrong. Killing brown people and taking their land

on the other hand has always been a celebrated in Western Society.

[Divernan]

64. Actually, many Palestinians look pretty white

Check out the video at this link, in which Dutch children protest the murder of Palestinian children - it's a series of home video clips of just 8 of the hundreds of Palestinian children killed by Israeli weapons in the last week or so - and said weapons of course sere largely paid for by the US. http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017204876

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

57. What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? Gandhi

[ProfessorPlum]

62. that Gandhi was a bright fellow

[CTyankee]

68. I am sure that you know that there are many Jews within Israel and in the US who have

deep reservations and are very publicly vocal about their opposition to Netanyahu about what the current Israeli government is doing. So here is a stunning example of where you are misguided in your analogy: those Jews are not being thrown into jail, executed or persecuted for their beliefs. Israel is a democracy. The Third Reich was a dictatorship. That is pretty basic.

I am not Jewish but members of my family are, as is my husband (who, btw, was a convert). My humble opinion is that where there are dual legitimate claims to a territory (which is indisputable) a compromise must be worked out. It would probably be helped by a community of nations. Each group must come to the table and accommodations must be made (and the total destruction of Israel is NOT an "accommodation" no matter how you size it up).

[ProfessorPlum]

72. I am aware of that - or at least I am aware of the possibility that there must be

millions of people who are in Israel who are horrified by what their government is doing. They don't get too much air time, unfortunately, and they seem powerless to stop their right wing government, just as the millions who protested the Iraq war in this country were marginalized, ignored, and forgotten by our media and the powers-that-be.

I'm not trying to compare the governments doing the victimization, but rather the effects of the victimization on the victims.

Nor am I making any comment on land distribution or what the actual solution will eventually be or anything else. Just the irony of the Israeli government - the Israeli government!! - treating a group of people this way. I've got irony poisoning from it.

[CTyankee]

81. The sad fact also remains that at least IMO Hamas doesn't care too much for the Palestinians

either. I do not claim to be any kind of expert here but I do believe that Hamas seems reckless with their positioning of rockets near hospitals and schools and Israel displays disproportionality in response to being shelled. This is a tragic situation.

[GliderGuider]

66. Yes. +1000

And to Professor Plum - excellent commentary.

[closeupready]

67. I agree with you.

K&R

[emsimon33]

80. You have expressed the feelings of many people

[lululu]

83. yes

But you just realized this?

[ProfessorPlum]

84. no

But I just now bothered to write it down.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

87. I say you don't make up for your suffering by trying to pass it on.....

It's like kids raised by abusive parents becoming abusive parents themselves.

[ProfessorPlum]

91. wow. that's a poignant analogy.

[Uncle Joe]

89. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, ProfessorPlum.

[Denis 11]

94. ProfessorPlum I would nominate this for best of DU if I could.

Great post!

[ProfessorPlum]

97. thank you

That's a high compliment, indeed.

[lark]

108. Nope, you got it 100% right.

[BainsBane]

127. I find this thread disturbing

The number of recs makes it more so. Using the Holocaust as a point of reference for discussing Israeli actions in Palestine is just wrong. The Holocaust was an event unparalleled in human history. That it sought the extinction of the Jewish people makes this analogy all the more troubling. Israel is engaged in an occupation and war on Palestine. It does not have gas chambers set up; they are not using Arab skin to make trophies, or any of the other horrific actions that was the Holocaust. However unjust you find Israel's actions in Palestine, it does not approach that level, and I consider this sort of equivalency disturbing.

I am of the view that the Holocaust and Hitler should not be used as reference points for any current event. But to then use it to refer to Israel, a nation that is overwhelmingly Jewish, is particularly disturbing. We do not see Schindler's List referenced in regard to the US invasion of Iraq, to Assad's battle against insurgents (the majority of whom are not, like him, Alawite). We don't see it used to reference the detention and rounding up of immigrant children along the border or Muslims picked up after 9/11. Nor do we see it as a comparison with the Mexican War, in which it is possible to argue that the US took a position similar to Israel toward Palestine.

Why do we see it in this instance? Because Israel is a nation of Jews, and Jews were the target of the Holocaust. Think about that.

[nomorenomore08]

136. Yeah, the OP kind of bothered me too. Thanks for articulating why. n/t

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

138. I think you see it in this thread

because the point of this thread is that people who were historically oppressed have turned right around and oppressed another set of people.

And if you read the comments above on how the border control has been letting in far less food than necessary to allow the population to avoid starvation, Gaza really does begin to look like a giant concentration camp. Sure, there are no gas chambers, but if the population doesn't have enough food, you'll get to mass starvation sooner or later. Did you happen to see the pictures of the corpses of the four boys killed on the beach? They all looked pretty skeletal, without a lot of extra flesh on their bones. They would have been considered anorexic or borderline anorexic here in the states.

So why didn't we see WW2 referenced in regards to Syria, Iraq, Muslims after 9/11, or the kids on the border? Far as I know, there are no concentration camps involved in any of those areas with those inside being starved. (Although I wouldn't put that past Assad, I just haven't heard of it happening.) You could hear such comparisons with North Korea - Kim jung whatsit is even farther down the path to total evil bastardhood. Not only starving millions of his own people, but having people torn apart by starving dogs and so on.

[BainsBane]

145. Seriously?

No concentration camps? Have you ever seen any of the detention facilities for immigrants in the US? They most certainly are like concentration camps. If it isn't on your cable television it doesn't exist? There are concentration camps in all kinds of places, but that doesn't make those situations similar to the Holocaust.

I am not justifying Israeli's war on Palestine. It is possible to be outraged about that without showing such complete and utter disrespect for Jews, which include a number of DUers. That you compare four dead bodies to the Holocaust is completely and absolutely offensive. 12 million people were exterminated, baked in ovens and gased during the Holocaust. I have always considered myself pretty pro-Palestinian, but I will not trivialize the Holocaust as you have just done. These analogies are morally reprehensible.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

148. You kind of chopped off half my sentence there.

I'm pretty sure I said concentration camps in which people were being starved.

Last I heard, we're not deliberately limiting the supplies going in to feed the people crossing the border to provide them with too few calories on which to live.

[BainsBane]

174. The Nazi concentration camps

were gateways to ovens and gas chambers. Refugees starve all over Africa. Is that like the Holocaust?

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

151. Oh, and btw,

I have plenty of respect for Jewish people, thanks. I've gotten along well with the ones I know, and my views on I/P are shaped by a desire for Israel to actually be able to coexist in peace with the Palestinians.

For you to intentionally say that what I was saying was an attempt to say those particular four deaths were equal to the millions killed in the Holocaust is pretty shocking to me. Either you suck at reading comprehension, or you're just reading what you want to read to be outraged. Not what people are actually writing.

[BainsBane]

175. Okay, let's review

And if you read the comments above on how the border control has been letting in far less food than necessary to allow the population to avoid starvation, Gaza really does begin to look like a giant concentration camp. Sure, there are no gas chambers, but if the population doesn't have enough food, you'll get to mass starvation sooner or later. Did you happen to see the pictures of the corpses of the four boys killed on the beach? They all looked pretty skeletal, without a lot of extra flesh on their bones. They would have been considered anorexic or borderline anorexic here in the states.

I don't know how else I'm suppose to interpret that, given the post to which you were replying.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

181. Let's try and clarify, then.

Gaza is a tightly controlled area whose inhabitants are stuck in Gaza. The Israeli government decides who can enter or leave this area.

As part of this control, they have actually spent time calculating exactly how many calories the inhabitants need to avoid malnourishment, and then, on a continuous and ongoing basis, they have prevented that much food from entering Gaza.

Other than what North Korea does to its own citizens, are there other current examples of a government that deliberately works to provide less food than a captive population needs to survive? I can substitute another analogy, if you can provide me with one. I don't make it a habit of studying bad actors in history, so the only ones that come to the top of my head are the ones you find so offensive for me to mention.

As far as I'm concerned, the true offense lies in one group of people keeping another group of people captive and slowly starving, but I'm willing to work to avoid offending your sensibilities if you can name some other brutal regime for me to compare the Likud to.

[frazzled]

172. 170,000 people have died in Syria in the past 18 months, and

several million have been displaced into refugee camps—many of them children. 9.3 million people in Syria are in need of humanitarian assistance, and more than 2.8 million people have fled to the neighboring countries.

Humanitarian aid continues to flow into Gaza during this unfortunate military assault, and the Kerem Shalom crossing remains open for the delivery of goods, fuel, and medicine. This is not to say there is not suffering—there is, and it's as deplorable as in any other region of conflict— but there is not a plan to "starve" Gazan citizens.

But really, you are going to cite kids who looked skinny to you? Did they look like this? Did they have serial numbers tattooed on their arms? The death of these Palestinian kids was tragic. But it was not the same as extermination camps.

[delrem]

150. Then you must think the entire history of Israel has vanished into some non-existent ether.

You must think there's no linkage between the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, namely Israel, and the holocaust.
I find that amazing.

[BainsBane]

176. I don't even know

what could have prompted that comment, but I have a feeling asking for an explanation won't improve on it.

I never said history didn't exist. I said using the Holocaust as a rhetorical parallel with which to compare the current Israeli policy in Palestine is morally offensive. The Holocaust is a unique historical event. Damn. I don't need to explain myself again. Read what I actually wrote.

[delrem]

178. Then you ought to study history. nt

[BainsBane]

180. I love when I get that comment

I have a PhD in history. Thanks for sharing your advice.

[whosinpower1]

160. Ah, but we have had many articles

That made outrageous comparisons of Obama to Hitler. You can just google it any time you wish. The list is long, and comprehensive, as well as unbelievably offensive.

When I watched Shindlers list, I was understandably sickened that a group of people could actually disconnect their own humanity(?) in such an abhorrent way to justify genocide. Perhaps that was not the message I was supposed to receive. I was, and still am forever deeply disgusted with racial hatred, and how easy it becomes to make that disconnection from victims, to less than humans.

I would not go so far as to say that the official Israeli position on palistinians is borne out of racial hatred....but, and this saddens me to admit, there are those in positions of power within Israel, particularily on the far right that do express terms whose roots originate out of racial hatred and intolerance. There is no question that this phenomenon exists within the palistinian sphere as well. Hatred breeds hatred, and becomes a generational burden.

[BainsBane]

167. I am well of aware of such charges about Obama

That idiots do something doesn't make it reasonable to invoke similar analogies here.

[JI7]

163. i agree, remember the outrage when comparisons are made with Putin and the past

and in those cases it wasn't even as bad as claiming he wanted to exterminate a bunch of people.

what i notice is many of those who were angry over any criticism of Putin, Assad and others have no problem when it comes to Israel.

i think people are purposely saying these things in an offensive manner.

[BainsBane]

166. People seem to want to reduce complex situations

to simplistic dichotomies between good and evil. That is precisely the kind of thought process that plays into these conflicts. Each side sees the other as acting entirely malevolently, seeking the full-scale destruction of the other. That kind of demonization only makes in harder to broker peace.

[octoberlib]

169. +1

[jillan]

177. Thank you. You summed up my feelings perfectly. It bothers me to come here and see this as

the number one on the greatest page.

Sounds like something I would expect to hear from the right wing wackos.

[Behind the Aegis]

179. It is, but we have come to expect it.

Simply look in threads started about anti-Semitism, the ones that haven't dropped off with no or few comments, and you will see much of the same.

[Ken Burch]

142. Not sure that's what Spielberg himself meant, though.

After that, he did the film MUNICH, which was pretty deeply critical of the Israeli government on security issues.

[Maximum Bob]

144. It's the hipocrisy

Palestinian terrorists are only using the same methods Jews used to push the British out of Palestine. Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Jews in Warsaw hide THEIR WEAPONS among civilians? Also, where else are the Palestinians supposed to hide weapons as they live in one of the most densely populated areas on the planet. Hypocrisy, thy name is Israel. It's sad to see talkingpointsmemo become over run with Hasbara's paid commenters.

[delrem]

153. Thank you for this OP.

Your OP and all your responses have been cool, objective and conciliatory and well pointed - you've not allowed yourself to be incited.
Kudos to you.

[ProfessorPlum]

165. thank you

that's very kind

[ozone_man]

154. The abused become the abusers.

If you beat your children, they are prone to do the same when they grow up. The same applies when you are monstrous toward your children. The U.S. is an enabler. We have our own middle east objectives, and it works very well to have Israel there to destabilize things, and Saudi Arabia, Quatar, Turkey.. U.S. puppets. Now we have spawned ISIS. Now that is a monster, of our own creation.

[brewens]

156. We saw many of our guys willing to risk their lives fighting fascism overseas wholeheartedly

support fascism in our own country. I chalk that up to young men going after the bad guys, never really understanding the politics of it all.

[enid602]

157. thx bibi

Thanks to bibi and company, the pallies are the new jrws.

[Cleita]

173. I always thought it was weird that people who were brutalized during

the Nazi/WWII era had so little sympathy for those who are being brutalized in the present. I'm not just talking about Jewish people, but many who survived the last world war and who settled here but don't have any sympathy for those who are not as fortunate as they became.

[GoneFishin]

187. Thanks for the great OP. K&R

[rhett o rick]

198. If you are saying the message is that it's wrong for people to be treated as the Nazi's did,

then I agree. To me Schindler's List meant much more. There is a goodness in people even in the face of great danger.

The discussion in this thread is really about Just War. Some seem to being trying to rationalize that killing innocents isn't so bad if it is on a smaller scale than the Nazi's. That's absurd to me. If we are going to discuss the rationalization of killing innocents for a military or political gain, we need to discuss Just War.

Were we justified in fire bombing civilians in WW II? Or dropping atomic bombs on civilians? Spraying Agent Orange and bombing Vietnamese? Or killing hundreds of thousands in Iraq last decade? So is killing innocents ever justified? Our nation has always done it.

[2banon]

222. this is an excellent OP, I'm disgusted how it became hijacked..

by someone with a penchant for repeating the same straw man meme in thread after thread after thread. So refreshing to read intelligent and enlightened post such as yours...

[Roy Serohz]

225. K

(Already R'd)

[randys1]

226. Using the holocaust as a comparison may indeed be inappropriate, but the OP does have a

good point and is food for thought.


however -

Religion is at the heart of most nonsense, as well as the need for power, dick wagging as Carlin used to say.

Too bad there isnt a global entity that can step in and force a state solution or something reasonable, removing any religious concerns by reminding everybody there IS NO GOD for christ sake (pun intended)

There is no anything, nothing...live, die. end of story.



sheesh

[BillZBubb]

228. Good post Professor.

Unfortunately the Israelis and their apologists see the Holocaust as a one way street. For fear (always exaggerated by the Israeli right) of another Holocaust, they are permitted to do ANYTHING they want in "defense"--including many of the very tactics used by the perpetrators of the Holocaust.