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cycle of abuse

I don’t like the Nazi analogy, I try to avoid it. All the same, last night I was on the couch at midnight, grazing books, and happened to read the following passages within ten minutes of one another. So I’m going to put this one down to Jungian synchronicity.

Passage 1:

Hitler’s virulently anti-Semitic Nazi Party received a majority of German votes in 1932 and seized absolute power against little opposition the following year. Scenes of Jews on their knees scrubbing sidewalks in German towns became commonplace, and Jewish emigration to Palestine surged.

–From Geoffrey Wawro’s book Quicksand, 2010.

Passage 2:

As [my son] Shai told me later, he had actually spent the night making men in their fifties and sixties wash anti-occupation graffiti off walls with toothbrushes while their children, the force behind the Intifada and the authors of the hastily sprayed slogans, watched their fathers and grandfathers be humiliated.

–From Hirsh Goodman’s 2005 memoir, Let Me Create a Paradise, God Said to Himself, describing his son Shai’s service in the occupation in 1991. Shai Goodman subsequently left Israel, saying he will never forgive the country for what it made him do, per this memoir. He works as a guide in the bush in his father’s native country, South Africa.

Update, from Mark Wauck:

I like Wawro generally, but he’s sometimes fact challenged:

Wawro: Nazi Party received a majority of German votes in 1932

Wiki: In the first round on 13 March, Hitler had polled over 11 million votes but was still behind Hindenburg. The second and final round took place on 10 April: Hitler (36.8% 13,418,547) lost out to Paul von Hindenburg (53.0% 19,359,983) whilst KPD candidate Thälmann gained a meagre percentage of the vote (10.2% 3,706,759).

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