2 more Warsaw Ghetto analogies, from the left

by Philip Weiss on January 4, 2009 · 6 comments

Here is Joseph Massad at Electronicintifada, using the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as the role model:

On 12 May 1943, after he received word that the resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto was finally crushed and many of its fighters killed, [Szmul] Zygielbojm turned on the gas in his London flat and committed suicide in protest against the indifference and inaction of the Allies to the plight of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. He also felt that he had no right to live after his comrades were killed resisting the Nazis…. Meanwhile, the Palestinian people will resist the invading Israelis with all their might and against astronomical odds. The Palestinian people, like Zygielbojm before them, understand very well that Abbas, his clique, the Arab regimes, the US and Europe are all culpable in their slaughter as much as Israel is.

And here is Berkeley anti-Zionist Jew Marc Sapir, in an outraged email to friends:

the Palestinian people are doing as a whole today only what all Jews ought to have done as a whole people in the very difficult environment of the Nazi terror.  That is, to refuse to collaborate with one's oppressors and to totally resist by any means possible until the enemy collapses from the weight of its own aggression. Zionism, for 60 years, has been stealing from and punishing, in the most depraved manner, the  Palestinian people, based upon European Jewish survivor guilt.  The colonialist project the Ashkenazi Zionists bought into with the British–Eretz Yisroel–was no solution for anyone–dispossessed or possessor.

Related posts:

  1. Dershowitz likened Gaza to Warsaw ghetto
  2. ‘New Republic’ attacks ADL for ‘inquisition’ against California professor who likened Gaza to Warsaw ghetto
  3. Vermont Jew breaks personal taboo and decries Gaza as Warsaw Ghetto (Gaza effect in U.S. is still subterranean but Huge)
  4. Ghost of the Warsaw Ghetto says: ‘I was scrounging for scrap metal when they killed me’
  5. Why it’s appropriate to remember the Warsaw Ghetto when considering Gaza

{ 6 comments }

1 Jim Haygood January 4, 2009 at 6:56 pm

'The colonialist project the Ashkenazi Zionists bought into with the British–Eretz Yisroel–was no solution for anyone–dispossessed or possessor.' — Marc Sapir

That's the bottom line, isn't it. Zionism, like Communism, was based on false premises. It will never work. It can't work. But meanwhile, keeping it on life support grows ever more costly, even as security within the zionist enclave deteriorates.

Since guided missile technology exists, and is widespread, it's inevitable that it will make its way to the perimeter around Israel. And since missile interception systems do not work very well, no amount of military muscle will provide a defense against incoming missiles. Even the primitive Qassams can't be stopped.

The probable result of Israel's crushing of Gaza is that this inevitable development will happen sooner than it otherwise would have. U.S. money — that unwarranted three billion a year — gives Israel a delusive sense of invincibility. U.S. aid actually has been terribly corrosive to Israel's well-being.

Strident U.S. support for Israel's military blunder is the best way to invite another 9/11. LIHOP/MIHOP all over again?

2 cha January 4, 2009 at 7:56 pm

"Strident U.S. support for Israel's military blunder is the best way to invite another 9/11."

Israel's strategy (or desperate hope) is to stir up so much hatred and violence that it can never be extinguished, and will suck in the U.S. and Europe.

In a sense the "clash of civilizations" school was right, but they got the civilizations wrong.

3 syvanen January 4, 2009 at 7:58 pm

Desparate people resort to desperate means. The Warsaw ghetto uprising was suicidal and it looks like the Gazan prison uprising may also be suicidal as well.

If so, then perhaps this perpetual crisis will be removed and the rest of us can peacefully move on. Harsh words, but it would be a solution.

Of course, we must accept that this attack is not just by Israel but by the US-Israeli alliance. As long as we design, build and provide as gifts these weapons, then we are complicit. Not today, but we can hope that someday the American people will wake up and insist that we withdraw from this ugly war.

4 LanceThruster January 4, 2009 at 8:06 pm

Jim Haygood – Hear, hear!

5 Eva Smagacz January 4, 2009 at 8:41 pm


.

6 judy January 4, 2009 at 8:53 pm

I think Marc Sapir has touched on something important: does the inability of Zionists to understand Palestinian resistance as legitimate stem from a deep sense of shame that so many European Jews were passive in the face of Nazi extermination?

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