Edward Rothstein in today's Times, on the new Queensborough Community College Harriet and Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Research Center and Archives, whose aims he finds too "sweeping":
“It is not a memorial,” [college president Eduardo Marti] continued. “It is a laboratory.” It provides the tools to help the 15,000 students at the college learn the “lessons of the Holocaust.” Those lessons teach tolerance, the importance of combating prejudice, the need to speak out when any group is mistreated. In videos here, students who served as interns and interviewed survivors describe how those talks have made them more enlightened, more aware of prejudice and hatred. One of the other exhibitions at the center shows just how difficult these lessons are, describing other genocides of the past century: in Armenia, Ukraine, China, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur.
The broad lesson of tolerance also provides one impetus behind the growth of Holocaust centers; it is partly why this one was placed at the forefront of the Queensborough campus, where students represent more than 140 nationalities. [Center director Arthur] Flug explained in an interview how the center also helped develop a “hate crimes” curriculum now being introduced into New York City schools...
Surely to sensitize people to the suffering of Palestinians? The Guardian praises the great Amira Hass, daughter of Holocaust survivors:
Her mother survived a concentration camp and her father the ghettos of Romania and Ukraine. "What luck my parents are dead," Hass wrote at the height of the Gaza operation in January. Her parents could not stand the noise of Israeli jet fighters flying over the Palestinian refugee camps in 1982, and nor could they have tolerated going about their daily chores in Tel Aviv with the knowledge of what was going on in their name in Gaza: "They knew what it meant to close people behind barbed-wire fences in a small area." Only a Jew can invert the "never again" logic of the Holocaust that is used to justify Israel's least justifiable actions. It is that very experience, Hass argues, that should teach Israel to behave differently.
As Dr. Finkelstein wrote in his controversial book ‘The Holocaust Industry’ – the Jewish sufferings at the hands of the Nazis (the very regime which was supported by tens of thousands of German Jews and Zionist terrorist groups like Irgun) have been turned into a “cash cow” for the Zionist regime. The Jews, whose ancestors suffered discrimination for so many centuries in Christian Europe and some of took refuge in Muslim countries – now are carrying out the Muslim Holocaust in occupied Palestine while helping Hindus and Christian anti-Muslim groups to do the same in many countries of the world.
A License to target Islam
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com
Inverted logic indeed; who is better at that than Richard Witty, our marker here
to constantly tell us that this website is chock full of people who only want to punish
Israeli Jews for having lived in the last century? Well, here’s an alternative view
to Witty’s, coming from two people who never appear here on Mondoweiss:
link to counterpunch.org
Great interview. Bill and Kathleen Christison speak forcefully. No moral ambiguity here.
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One thing that was apparent from the Moyers Goldstone interview was of the disproportionate use of rhetoric to describe the “genocide” of Gaza, with the genocide of Rwanda (1 million killed) or Bosnia (400,000 killed?), or Darfur (600,000 killed), or naziism (6 million Jews, 13 million Jews, commies, homosexuals, Catholics other minorities killed).
Gaza (1400 killed) of which by ALL accounts, a majority were combatants. I had thought that the attacks on Gaza were genuinely general, more than widespread.
According to the Bronner, Goldstone, and Weiss accounts that is not the case. The Goldstone report is genuinely of incidents (significant certainly) but NOWHERE near the scale of intentional genocide, and MANY confusing judgements because of the context of rationally defensive war.
Goldstone DIFFERED from the left approach, and nearly paralleled my description, that some military response to Hamas was necessary, AND that some “collateral damage” would be necessary, expected, in that case, as the launchers were sited in residential areas.
On that basis, that division from the Phil Weiss thesis (by silhouette, rather than overt), that Phil and the left would seek to distance themselves from Goldstone.
Witty, making up lies is not helping your case.
Most people described what happened in Gaza as a massacre in which the MAJORITY of Palestinian dead were CIVILIANS.
Also, referring to other crimes, does not mean that Israel is allowed to get away with war crimes. Israel deliberately bombed civilian areas. Israel destroyed thousands of civilian homes, elementary schools, high schools, hospitals, ambulances, water and sewage sanitation facilities, the sole flour mill in the entire strip, the sole ice cream factory in the entire strip, mosques, churches, the female dormitory of the sole university in the strip, the university itself, the parliament buildings, and even fleeing civilians. They even bombed the UN food depot, UN schools, and UN monitors.
Israel even used Palestinian children as human shields in the conflict:
link to guardian.co.uk
The water treatment system is so beyond repair in Gaza, due to the Inhumane Israeli blockade, and of course Israels deliberate destruction of the infrastrucure in Gaza, that there is now a HUGE threat of cholera outbreak:
link to haaretz.com
Sometimes, I wonder how you can say the stuff you say with a straight face. Please look at what you are supporting. One group is under a brutal military occupation, was ethnically cleansed from their homes, was turned into refugee’s, and is still forced to live under constant bombardment.
People are being killed Witty, for once.. can you please for once try to see the Palestinians as human beings like yourself, and not BAD PR for Israel.
This was a pretty self-revealing post Witty. I don’t think you’d deliberately tell such a transparently stupid lie (claiming that ALL agree that the majority of the deaths were combatants). What’s probably happened is that you read this in pro-Israeli sources, relying on the IDF and you wanted to believe this and so you’ve managed to filter out the fact that human rights groups (like B’Tselem, for instance) say the opposite. How you could have missed this after so many months is staggering, but that’s how ideologues are. You pass yourself off as very knowledgeable, but I think this shows which facts gets through your filters and which ones don’t.
I have a creationist friend much like you. I finally gave up trying to explain to him the evidence for evolution–after a time it became clear that he was only hearing those statements he could use to back up his own beliefs.
It isn’t what B’Tselem claims–
link
This is why it’s no use responding to him – information never reaches his brain and he repeats the same, oft-refuted points.
So what do you regard as reliable statistics on the Gazan dead, perhaps with a second layer of detail, to enable some discussion of how the count is classified as combatant vs civilian.
You ignore the multiple zeros between 1400 and 140,000 or 1,400,000.
Even if the numbers were 800 civilians and 600 combatants rather than the Israeli accounting of 1100 combatants and 300 civilians, there is GREAT ambiguity as to what would be reasonable in war.
There certainly is indication of wrongs. And, I agree strongly with the conclusion of excess. I disagree with the accusation of genocide, and question the accusation of general war Crime (capital C, nearly certainly there were small c lapses if not crimes).
I think people on both sides of the issue should stay away from Nazi comparisons, for the most part. Occasionally they are applicable. But I have gotten into arguments with people on the left who say that what Israel does is “genocide”–they say that it fits the legal definition, which does not necessarily mean mass slaughter. That could be, but the word “genocide” in common speech has the emotional impact it does because people think it means something like the Holocaust or Rwanda. Israel is not committing murder on that scale, so I think people should avoid comparisons of that sort, in part because it lets them off the hook. People point out that the Gaza War was nowhere near as apocalyptic as what the Nazis did. True, but that shouldn’t be the standard.
OTOH, Israel has been guilty of ethnic cleansing, massacres, war crimes, and it practices something similar to apartheid, so I use all those words.
“This is why it’s no use responding to him – information never reaches his brain and he repeats the same, oft-refuted points.”
Yeah, I’ve noticed that over and over again. It’s one of the two reasons I lose my temper with him. (The other being his double standards). Witty, you do seem shameless. Here you, the great expert on everything, stand revealed as someone who didn’t even know the first thing about the Gaza War and why people say it was one massive war crime. That ought to make you a bit more humble in the future, but based on past experience, it probably won’t.
Donald, Nazi references are certainly slung indiscriminately from all sides, usually as a meaningless perjorative. What worries me more, however, is if it becomes a taboo enforced to keep from wounding the delicate sensibilities of some.
Israel has been guilty of ethnic cleansing, massacres, war crimes, and it practices something similar to apartheid, so I use all those words.
It’s been described as far, far worse than South African apartheid by Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and many South Africans who visited Gaza and the occupied territories.
There is no hypocrisy in my views.
My views are referenced to peace based on mutual acceptance, that moderates can reconcile (but fanatics and propagandists are incapable), that the far left engages in self-talk and at all costs refuses to research from sources outside of their sanctioned list.
I’ve stated clearly that I care greatly about Israeli’s well-being, and only a lot about Palestinians.
But, I’ve also stated that that perspective provides an opportunity for fair and effective reconciliaton, in contrast to the one-state advocacy that eliminates Israel from the map (and Jewish national self-identification and self-governance).
I’ve also stated that BDS as currently stated is vague, punitive in orientation, and by those definitions MORE fascist than progressive. That would characterize ANY general BDS campaign in this conflict.
I’ve also stated that the most realistic model for the conflict is conflict (NOT oppression as primary dynamic), a dysfunctional family, that can only be remedied by non-condemnatory nucleus.
I regard the condemnatory as FAR MORE hypocritical and abusive than any dichotomy that you’ve identified in my posts.
And, I regard the Abunimeh formula as currently a fraud. (“Equal rights” except to self-govern in either community, enforced through non-acceptance of the other in the name of “democracy”)
By all accounts, you’re a fucking liar. I don’t like to use such language, but your chutzpah is simply infuriating. You lie and lie and lie.
First off, various different sources have proven that the majority of those murdered were civilians, that includes Goldstone, the UN’s aid employees in Gaza, and the Red Cross and Red Crescent.
Second, schmucks like you don’t get to define genocide.
The UN defines genocides as: [quote]…acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
* (a) Killing members of the group;
* (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
* (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
* (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
* (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.[end quote]
That’s exactly what has been happening since before 1948 until the present. Worse yet, in the last nine years, about 6500 Palestinians have been murdered and you can check the breakdown on B’tselem’s website if you can muster the integrity to do so.
have you actually read the Goldstone report? Your comments expose you for the liar that you are. Yes, you are a liar.
By the way, do you post under the pseudonym “Letto” on Common Dreams? He too is a habitual liar.
“liar”.
Address my actual comments if you differ in interpretation.
Its easy and lazy to just yell expletives.
…you mean like he did in the rest of his post, Witty? The part you’re conveniently ignoring and not addressing?
Also Phil,
In this blog, in which your mother has been used as a parrying reference, to contrast your views (or worse), your reference to “mommie” for those of us that remember that strategy, is a bit misleading.
Self-righteous indignation by someone who whores around Israeli talking points and propaganda only serves to make you look like the clown that you are. Get yourself a brain.
Again,
You are ranting in ignorance.
If you’ve read Mondoweiss for an extended period, you’d note that Phil often speaks of his mother, and in not particularly consistently gracious terms, even as he is very close to his family in most ways.
I know them personally.
You wouldn’t know an “Israeli talking point” if you saw one, as if it were reasonable to dismiss a comment because you heard some Israeli also state it.
“Hamas shelled Israeli civilian towns in Southern Israel for ten days before Operation Cast Lead began.”
Is that an “Israeli talking point”, or a fact?
And how many people died from the shelling, Witty? What preceded that shelling on, say, November 4th?
A half truth is not the same as a truth.
Finklestein has laid out the facts Richard Witty ignores, as does Indyk, who, like Witty actually reverses the action and reaction. Of course Witty doesn’t think much of Finklestein. He likes Goldhagen–an anti=goy if there ever was one.
I’d like to erect a Holocaust museum in my backyard. Who do I see about financing?
I’ll send you a buck.
I’m going to erect a memorial to the Native American victims of Manifest Destiny in downtown Tel Aviv. Care to send some moola my way?
Actually, that wouldn’t be totally ridiculous, since Benny Morris (and a certain liberal Zionist here) downplay the brutality involved in America’s history, Morris seeing American history as a valid template for any superior culture that wants to take land from inferior types.
Interesting comment, Donald. How is it that we have a Shoah museum, but no
native American museum, or say Armenian museum, on that precious national ground in DC? Maybe we should also have a small monument to the potato famine
in Ireland, or to the slave ship industry?
There’s a certain irony, I have to admit. We actually have a Black Holocaust museum where I live (I have to confess I haven’t yet had a chance to visit but I believe it refers to the way African slaves were treated, with how many died — or were killed — not only while they were being dragged across the ocean but also in slavery as well). I value my relative anonymity, and out of deference to that I’d prefer not to mention the city by name. But needless to say, the museum is not well known and I don’t exactly live in what would be considered one of the US’ larger, more well known cities.
The obvious answers to the Holocaust Museum being on national ground is money and power, but to be fair there is more to it, Citizen. Kind of like the comments above, it’s easier to memorialize a tragedy like that when it’s somebody else’s ancestors who committed it. While a museum devoted to the history of people of African, or of Native American descent in the US might be more appropriate… it isn’t nearly as politically expedient.
Rehmat, you have it all backwards.
Israel is defending itself against Muslims who want to exterminate Israel.
Rehmat isn’t it time you protest the Arabs genocidal aims.
We all know your silent on the Iranians who are peacefully resisting the brutal Mullah regime.
link to likud.nl
Hamas: Jews has to be exterminated
Let’s play your banal game, how about the Christian Palestinians that Israel slaughtered in self-defense? Where they secret Muslims?
You never answered my question the other day. Where did you immigrate from?
Citing the Likud’s website as a source for your lies illustrates your sheer stupidity and lack of intellect. The irony, I’m sure, escapes you.
And the USA is defending itself in Iraq. Hey, Chaney still thinks so. Check out his stock portfolio. He’s even got his stupid daughter whoring for contemporary colonialism.
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Hardly one percent of the Jewish population seem to have learned the “lessons of the Holocaust” – same goes for the European Christians and the Nazi-collaborating Jews who created the Holocaust of Gypsies, Christians and Jews in the 1940s.
What the majority of Jews did learn from the Nazi era – is mentioned in Amnesty International Report just released.
Israeli theft of Arab water sources
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com