A couple of more points:

Comment has been made in a number of posts about the disparity between “appreciation” of the holocaust and the death of huge numbers in Soviet Russia at the hands of the Germans. This in my view is to ignore the fact that Hitler, and therefore the German state, took the Bolsheviks to be a Jewish controlled movement - which is at least ironic given the treatment of Jews by the USSR. For a detailed discussion of this see volume 2 of Prof Sir Ian Kershaw’s biography of Hitler – but be warned it’s  850 pages are profoundly depressing albeit well written and expertly researched.

Another question also touched on (very briefly) which I find most interesting is if holocaust denial should be illegal. Personally I believe not as it does not appear compatible with natural justice. However if it did not parallel Nazi thinking, I might be in favour of regarding such deviant thinking as an indicator of mental deficiency. But perhaps I am biased, although not a Jew, my father was in the relieving force at Bergen-Belsen, which he did not feel able to talk about for 40 odd years but which clearly had made a huge impression on him.

Lets not forget what we are talking about:

From BBC --April 15, 1945: British Troops Liberate Bergen-Belsen

At The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen:

The BBC in London, for 4 Days, Did Not Believe on the Atrocities Reported by its own Reporter Richard Dimbleby

"... Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which... The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them ... Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live ... A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms, then ran off, crying terribly. He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days.

This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life."

BBC's Richard Dimbleby, April 15, 1945.

http://isurvived.org/Bergen-Belsen_liberation.html

Last edited by JohnL (2010-06-29 15:55:09)

What an interesting thread! It pains me in a juvenile way to say that Grossgrain Silk's lengthy post is not only worth reading but a decent read.

The only thing I've to add is my experience of the astounding level of anti-Semitism in the Arab world. I have nothing to compare it to except the racism of the US South in the 1960's, and even then that period of history pales in comparison to what I found while traveling in places like Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. In the South at the time there were the whole "Jim Crow" laws and the entrenched idea that the two races would live separately forever. As ridiculous as those ideas seem today, note, though, that both peoples would live.

What I found in my Arabian travels was the great desire, often spoken openly and with a chilling vigor, to not only eradicate the modern state of Israel but also any "stray Jews" that would be found outside that state after it had been wiped off the map. To be sure, much of the animus comes from differing traditions of religion, but many of these people talking about such wholesale killing were not at all religious in the common sense. They considered themselves quite worldly, were often educated at elite European schools, and had extensive dealings with many cultures. Despite all that which usually broadens a person's thinking, many were still particularly focused on eliminating Israel and all Jews. It was quite an eye-opening experience for me to have so many talk about such things so openly and determinedly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzDYQnU-9m4&feature=related

Help me out -  is Vodka more Jewish than Gin?

Now you - I like!

I suspect the iBoycott won't bother us all too much...

Shemuel, go to a flying fuck in a rolling bagel. Is that non joycean enough? Israel is a ( golden) sacred cow without tarnish but everybody else,especially those in your secondary culture are fair game for the insult and lessoning of humanity that always make oppression easier. Oh, for the record. Hagganah and Irgun took the I.R. A. tactical playbook page for page fighting the UK in Palestine. I don't need my cousins for kneecapping. I do my own work, and do it well given opportunity and cause.