Memo to Foxman

by on January 23, 2009 10

"'These comparisons are a manipulative distortion of history,' [said Avner Shalev, head of the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem], adding that the Holocaust would be best left out of the contemporary political discourse."

About Adam Horowitz

Adam Horowitz is Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Gaza, Israel/Palestine

{ 10 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. Mohammad says:
    January 23, 2009 at 3:13 am

    I can completely understand the wishes of Avner Shalev. He has an institutional mandate to protect Holocaust from any contemporary 'tarnishment'. But when Palestinians get blown apart through the use of violent force, one may not be able to contain the damage and to control the direction through which the blood can get splashed. Unfortunately, this blood may end up damaging the Holocaust memory. For Holocaust to be left out of contemporary political discourse, Israel as the official guardian of Holocaust must show a little bit more self containment.

  2. Rowan Berkeley says:
    January 23, 2009 at 4:26 am

    Mohammed, it is fortunate for the world that you are in no position to propose such an inane offer officially. Your unctious-sounding language – "damaging the Holocaust memory", and " official guardian of Holocaust" – is just pretentious crap.

  3. LeaNder says:
    January 23, 2009 at 7:40 am

    Mohammed, the most important point is that Israel itself brings Holocaust associations into the larger discourse, by suggesting that just as the fight against the Nazis then is now a fight against a "neo-Nazi" network, and that Israel is in the forefront of this fight which the Western world has to join:

    "… that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, part of a global jihadi network; and that Israel has acted not only in its own defence but on behalf of an international struggle by Western democracies against this network."

  4. LeaNder says:
    January 23, 2009 at 8:00 am

    Sorry, a few quotation marks would have been quite helpful.

    But Henry Siegman surely is one of the shining lights in these times of propaganda darkness.

  5. citizen says:
    January 23, 2009 at 9:37 am

    How can the Holocaust be left out of contemporary political discourse when Israel's legitimacy rests on it? When key aggressive acts
    by USA & Israeli leaders constantly name the new Hitler, the new
    Axis of Evil, etc?

    When criticism of such aggressive state-sponsored actions is met
    with the charge of anti-semitism?

  6. ahmed says:
    January 23, 2009 at 1:16 pm

    Anyone who reads Henry Siegman's great piece in the LRB, please consider digging it. (LRB doesn't have a digg button, but here is a link:

    http://digg.com/world_news/Israel_s_Lies_Henry_Siegman_in_London_Review_of_Books

  7. MRW. says:
    January 23, 2009 at 1:26 pm

    When criticism of such aggressive state-sponsored actions is met with the charge of anti-semitism?

    Agree. Good question.

    I've now taken to echoing the demand I heard a guy at my local bar request of someone who hurled the antisemitism label at him when the guy complained about what Israel was doing to Gaza: Define antisemitism.

    I, however, can never get a straight answer out of those who hurl it. One day it's a charge against the Jewish religion, then it's complaining about Israel, or it's discussing what Israel is doing in Gaza, another time antisemitism means you cant say anything about Madoff, or you excoriate someone who happens to be Jewish, or you bitch about the number of Zionists who happen to own the news media.

    WTF is it? It cannot be like mercury, impossible to stab, an amorphous blob that will not hold a shape. It can't be gaffers tape you slap on someone's mouth because you dont like what they are saying.

  8. MRW. says:
    January 23, 2009 at 1:28 pm

    LeaNder and ahmed are right. Read Siegman's piece!

  9. Rowan Berkeley says:
    January 23, 2009 at 3:31 pm

    The term "anti-Semitism" (this is the official spelling of it) is deliberately forced upon the world by Jewish propaganda in order to force through with it the assumption that all criticism of anything Jewish is motivated by exactly the same half-baked and easily exploded racial and religious preconceptions that Wilhelm Marr, the inventor of the term, attached to it in his pamphlet Der Weg zum Siege des Germanentums über das Judentum (The Way to Victory of Germanicism over Judaism) in 1879.

  10. American says:
    January 23, 2009 at 6:51 pm

    I read Siegman's piece over at Col. Pat Lang's site.

    Siegman tears up the lie that Hamas was the one who broke the truce and ceasefire.

    As I said before if Gaza isn't the last straw, it's the next to last straw for Israel.

    I fully expect Israel to pull their usual stalls,lies and crap when Mitchell starts a peace process…THAT might be the last straw.

    I read that Mitchell's method of operation in these settlement processes is to take a pencil and legal pad, draw a line down the middle and put in each column what each side has to do.
    The first time one side doesn't follow thru on a requirement he announces to the whole world the side that is at fault. Cut and dried, no bullshit, no excuses.

    Israel will never survive the Mitchell process.

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