Brokaw says Israelis can learn from Buchenwald about ‘their treatment of Palestinians’

by on July 4, 2009 20

The conversation is obviously changing in the U.S. But I missed this one. It happened at Buchenwald a month ago, Brokaw asked Obama the question. My assiduous coreligionists at CAMERA got it. They're now trying to give Brokaw a spanking, administer a catechism of Holocaust exceptionalism.
Tom: Know that many Americans, including many Jews, share your sense that Israelis are visiting upon the Palestinians their uninterrogated rage toward the Germans. (Thanks to Jeff Blankfort)

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in American Jewish Community, Beyondoweiss, Israel Lobby, US Politics

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

  1. GibsonBlock says:
    July 4, 2009 at 3:40 pm

    The two sides see themselves being attacked by eachother. That's enough to account for the violence. There is no need to bring the Germans into it. As Freud said, "Sometimes a cigar is a cigar." Of course, you have to interpret everything in a tendentious manner.

  2. lovelyisraelis says:
    July 4, 2009 at 3:50 pm

    The real news is not Brokaw's question but Obama's cowardly reply: "Well, look there’s no equivalency here. The Holocaust is sui generis and I would not presume to ever try to suggest to Jews how to think about the Holocaust." Obama should have said "well Tom, clearly the mindset that consigned Jews to concentration camps and mass graves is alive and well in israel today. We see it everywhere. The Israelis are a jewish manifestation of Nazism."

  3. Richard Witty says:
    July 4, 2009 at 4:53 pm

    Lessons are not the same as "parallel".

  4. Richard Witty says:
    July 4, 2009 at 4:55 pm

    The lesson is not to corner if there are other options, and there are.

  5. DICKERSON3870 says:
    July 4, 2009 at 5:24 pm

    RE- Tom: Know that many Americans, including many Jews, share your sense that Israelis are visiting upon the Palestinians their uninterrogated rage toward the Germans. MY COMMENT: Well, hush my mouth! Pass the grits, please.

  6. cigars says:
    July 4, 2009 at 9:44 pm

    And how many jews have ended up saying "sometimes a jew is a jew?' and sometimes many goys agree.

  7. Citizen says:
    July 4, 2009 at 9:52 pm

    Obama is a coward. He's not up to real change, merely essentially cosmetic change. He has not faced bankers, and he will not face AIPAC; he will tinker around the edges a bit–he's a high yaller passing essentially, an old sort. A character of that type who is an affirmative action child–he's more guilty than Shrub of conscious hypocrisy. So he's worse an individual. And likely as bad in results as Shrub in the long run, each with their own victim groups, some of which overlap.

  8. Witty's Mentor says:
    July 4, 2009 at 9:54 pm

    The lesson for you is not to see truth as "cornering." And many lessons contain parallels.

  9. lovelyisraelis says:
    July 4, 2009 at 11:32 pm

    citizen a part of me still holds out some remote hope that you are wrong, though i become daily more disillusioned with Obama. It's terribly depressing.

  10. JoachimMartillo says:
    July 4, 2009 at 11:33 pm

    By 1945 the crimes that had arisen from Jewish culture and internal politics were at least as horrible as anything done to Jews in WW2: Jewish Peril: 1933 versus 2009.

  11. andrew r says:
    July 5, 2009 at 12:50 am

    Ah, this is why I don't visit threads with <30 comments.

  12. Margaret599 says:
    July 5, 2009 at 6:51 am

    I question attributing any single policy to Obama without a lot of evidence provided; there are so many elements with power within the US governmental administration. I continue to believe that Obama should be judged on the result of his actions once more evidence is available of what actions those are, distinguished from actions taken by other influences which are powerful. Six months of a presidency are but opening days and final conclusions at the end of six months are premature, in my estimation. On a lighter note, from http://images.gocomics.com/images/doonesbury/stri... For your enjoyment: http://images.gocomics.com/images/doonesbury/stri...

  13. Margaret599 says:
    July 5, 2009 at 7:04 am

    "…uninterrogated rage." Powerful use of words, Phil.

  14. Citizen says:
    July 5, 2009 at 11:19 am

    I hope I am wrong too; yes, it's very depressing. If not now, when…etc? Writ large.

  15. August West says:
    July 5, 2009 at 12:53 pm

    The proper moral lesson is that Jews, of all people, should be the last to subject another people to ethnic cleansing, mass incarceration, mass humiliation, and abject demonization. Any people that went through what the Nazis did to the Jews losses their right to complain when they act like Nazis. Saying that it happened to us means we can do it to others makes it morally equivalent. Thus, Israel itself creates moral equivalency by constantly raising the genocide issue as justifying its actions towards the Palestinians. The difference between what the Nazis did to the Jews, and what the Jews are doing to the Palestinians, is one of degree, not one of principle.

  16. August West says:
    July 5, 2009 at 6:30 pm

    The Nazi genocide of the Jews is not sui generis. The Armenian Holocaust is sui generis. Hitler warned the Jews in Men Kampf and his speeches. No one warned the Armenians. Hitler allowed Jews to emigrate after he took power. Talat Pasha and the Young Turks did not allow Armenians to emigrate after they took power. The Nazi genocide of the Jews took place in secret. The Armenian Holocaust took place in full view of the world, as the NY Times contemporaneous stories make clear. Jews could hide in the Wehrmacht during the war. Armenians could not hide in the Ottoman Army. Jews with powerful patrons, such as Furtwangler, head of the Berlin Philharmonic, could shelter Jews in his orchestra. No Turk could shelter Armenians. Hitler required the cutting-edge technology of the most scientifically advanced nation on Earth to kill Jews. The Turks used medieval methods and still out-genocided the Nazis. Jews were not the only victims of the Nazis. The Nazis genocided Gypsies, Poles, Russians, gays, Communists, atheists, and others. At most only half the victims of the Nazi genocide were Jews. The Armenians were the only target of the Armenian Genocide. 100% of the victims of the Turks were Armenians. Germany and the world admitted the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Turkey and the world–including the US–still deny the Armenian Holocaust. Jews blame the Nazi genocide on the entire world, trying to make the entire world feel guilty. Fraudulent books like "Hitler's Willing Executioners" try to deceive all of us into a guilt trip for Israel. The Armenians blame only the perpetrators. Jews use the Nazi genocide of them to justify crimes against humanity. Armenians do not use the Armenian Holocaust to justify crimes against humanity. Nothing compares to the Armenian Holocaust. Nothing. It is an evil beyond comprehension. It is a blackness from which we can never depart. It is sui generis.

  17. July West says:
    July 5, 2009 at 9:03 pm

    The only difference is that the Jews were always dependent on Western goy aid; Germany raised itself up again after WW1 by its own bootstraps. Germany paid for what it wanted, the Jews always had to rely on gentile welfare, so they had to act within PR mandates. I agree the Jews were no different than the Nazis regarding the Palestinians. The Jews did what they could within confines I described.

  18. Hymie S says:
    July 5, 2009 at 9:08 pm

    Hey, you are not supposed to one-up the Jewish claim on victimhood. I'm going to tell on you. Where should I go to do so? I guess I will go to the Federal Reserve Board and USA Congress. They will take care of your truth.

  19. Margaret says:
    July 6, 2009 at 5:21 am

    Thank you, your comparisons are interesting. Why is it, do you think, that the Armenians could not hide or be sheltered? Why was it so easy to target them?

  20. Kathleen says:
    July 8, 2009 at 3:19 am

    have been asking for years why is it on our MSM and in Hollywood flicks about the Holocaust that it is only the deaths of 6 million Jews is mentioned. What about the million of others who perished. Why only mention the Jews? Such disregard tof the millions of others who were murdered by the Hitler killing machine

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