This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
Try this one out, after the Hitler Youth false start, if it was, because the Nazified young, or the attempt to Nazify them, were all around these mountain woods. Had to be. Too much Nordic scenery. Vistas where the Nazi world view appeared real as the mountains.
Still, on the other side of the coin, listen to the German youth of today wandering in Jordan and Lebanon, being regaled with “Hitler was right stories” and how proud they must be to come from a land where Jews were on the run. Admired for something they are so ashamed of. How’s that for a reverse historical confrontation of the first order?
Imagine that one, these idealist young, wanting a different world and, at least, a different history – slate wiped clean – and find that they are celebrated for the hate crimes of the century and beyond.
Another boomerang, though, if American Jewish youth of a certain age remember, weren’t we celebrated after the 1967 war as if we had vanquished the Arab/Third World menace? This was long before September 11th, when another round began. This time the links with Israel were turned around, at least for a few days. I remember those first days when even the national media were asking how dangerous the American connection with Israel had become. In the background, the Twin Towers smoldered.
Youth of all kinds are confronted with history they didn’t make. Their thought, why not make news of our own rather than assume the burden of the past. Because, at some point, even victories turn sour. Few Jewish youth today burst with the kind of 1967 pride we once had, just the opposite. An Israeli-toting rah-rah machine is almost as hard to find as a rah-rah pro-Vietnam war tee shirt.
The same question applies to 1967 as to Vietnam in our present historical understanding. A Palestinian Memorial Wall in Jerusalem like the one that honors the fallen in Viet Nam in Washington, D. C.?
Deir Yassin Remembered, a group I once was part of it before it went south on Holocaust Denial Road, wanted Israel to erect a memorial to the victims of the massacre there in 1948, a massacre that Martin Buber referred to as a “black stain’ on Jewish history in a New York City lecture in the 1950s (if my now Austrian encased memory serves me well). So when I co-edited a book on the subject, I found a Palestinian who envisioned a model for a Palestinian memorial to the fallen of Deir Yassin for the book.
Quite interesting for Jews to visit, even in a virtual way, a memorial to our victims. Reversal of our innocence theme, big time. It’s shocking really. Try it. Attend a Nakba commemoration and see how that fits with your self-image. See how your colonial Jewish self that you thought was essentially de-colonized handles the message that you haven’t gone far enough. You might walk out of the event with more anger and a sense of bewilderment than you thought possible.
I know, since I’ve been there on my global lecture tour trotting, Zimbabwe in the 1980s for example, at a conference featuring Third World theologians. The evening’s entertainment was a powerful Zimbabwean dance group whose shouted refrain was the Jewish Israeli genocide of Palestinians. This was part of their “freedom for South Africa” tour. A few years later, outside of Chicago, I attended a church service that commemorated the Nakba. I followed the printed hand-out and heard the amens all around. I walked out of both events shaken to the core.
Well, if everyone has to sit through our theatrical and liturgical renditions of the Holocaust, why shouldn’t we sit through the Palestinian evocation of their catastrophe as part of our (re)(re)education as Jews. (More about Jewish (re)education below.)
I happened onto a book some years ago where Israeli soldiers remembered their experience in the 1967 war. To put it mildly, it isn’t the kind of romanticized memoir of the war that American Jews loved to read or still retain in our minds. Do we really think that the 1967 war didn’t include every type of disillusioned war stories that accompany every war?
Yes, then the October 1973 war, followed by the Lebanon war and beyond. Israeli war stories aren’t always what we want to hear. We don’t hear them, do we?
In the development of Holocaust consciousness – variously called Holocaust Theology – Israel’s victory in the 1967 war plays a huge role. It was in the wake of the war that the Holocaust became central to Jewish identity. Simply put, Jews named Jewish suffering when Jewish power was assured.
The connection between Jews in America and the Israeli soldiers in war is a fascinating one, the connection of connections, American Jews cheering Israel’s warriors on. The Israelis doing the dirty work of war, which can’t be admitted as dirty, lest the romanticized myth of Jewish innocence, so crucial in the identity and public arena, falls away. As in, the American Jewish/Jewish Israeli honeymoon is over. Admittedly the divorce proceedings have already begun behind closed doors but then American and Israeli Jews were only seen snuggling in public view. Seen any of that lover’s sweet talk lately?
Reading the Israeli narratives give an alternative view of the miracle of 1967. The fear, close calls, buddies lost, wanton killing of Arabs, PTS for Israeli soldiers – again, everything we now know about war was there – for the victorious Israelis. Of course, it was hidden from view even in Israel. To admit weakness in any sector has been the (un)Sabra thing. Now, the Sabra thing isn’t talked about much either. The identity fad one day is in the historical garbage bin the next. The 1967 war as “clean” violence. The American Jewish love affair with Israel. The Israeli love affair with Israel. Jewish innocence in the suffering of the Holocaust and in the empowerment of Israel. As if alone among the peoples of the world, Jews can assume power and retain innocence. No one believes that anymore. Not even Jews.
After the innocence is gone, what to do? The connection between the Holocaust and Israel – Holocaust consciousness itself – fading. Israel continuing to invade and expand. Not a picture that plays well anywhere. Where do Jews go when victory is sullied and new histories pick up where eye witness testimony leads them? It’s just a matter of time. It is time. Time has already moved on.
Jewish youth, now, when they travel the inversion is upon them. The blank stare of my German students when Hitler’s glass is raised as a welcome salute. Jewish blank stares when Palestinians around the world, their allies, and those who follow the news, demand answers to Israeli policies which they don’t really know, can’t control and don’t want to be confronted with. That Jews aren’t innocent and don’t regal us with the Holocaust, it’s too late and there’s too much water under the bridge to use the Holocaust or the fear of Israelis for their security etc., etc.
You see the Jewish youth point? Jewish youth are nowheresville and the Jewish community preparing them to answer the charges against them won’t do much in the long run. It’s just encasing them in a further ignorance and deflection that their parents are already encased in.
Jewish (re)education. It’s been going on for a long time. Starting with the lead up to the Holocaust, continuing in the lead up to the birth of Israel, then from there follow the (re)education trajectory. What does it take for Jews to survive history, to make history, to survive the making of history, all the while retaining the innocence platform? It’s not easy. It won’t be getting easier.
The “cosmopolitan” Jews that Yitzhak Rabin mentions in his autobiography – who couldn’t quite do the ethnic cleansing they were ordered to do. They had to be (re)educated. But think on a broader scale, what Jews have “learned” in the last decades, what we are still learning, the knowledge that is sponsored and the knowledge that is buried. The inadequate language we have now. How difficult it is for us to be honest – with others and with ourselves.
My German students having their history thrown in their face. Being saluted. Strange days for them and for us. Historical inversion, reversion.
The bridge with too much water flowing underneath it. The sullied river that is now Jewish history.
After what innocence is gone? The German youth under the Hitler regime did not confront their negative history in the making in the way diaspora Jewish/Jewish Israeli youth may do today. Only one political party: Nazi. There was only one radio available to most German residents of Nazi Germany–one they got from the government complete with all content supplied. Same with the Nazi paper press and public speeches. Same with news movie shorts and films. No internet. Does not reason dictate a young Jew today has no such forced innocence?
And does this line of reasoning not also apply to young enabling Americans regarding US foreign policy in the ME, and most especially the I-P situation?
Prof. Ellis,
You wrote:
It sounds like you are describing an identity issue. A person who identifies as a member of one group goes to a commemoration for victims of that group.
This reminds me of my time visiting Europe when Bush was president and “we” were occupying Iraq. People would sometimes say things like “Americans” were imperialist, or asking why “Americans” support Bush. And I had to keep making distinctions in my mind and to them between all Americans and the US government. I would point out, for example, that many Americans opposed the Iraq invasion, and that Bush lost the election in the total number of votes he received, besides the Florida election, which he apparently lost too. So it helps me to think in terms of individuals or groups of people with common political views, rather than thinking in terms of a people’s responsibility. It is easier to think in terms of “the American government” its imperialists, or army invading Iraq or Vietnam, rather than assigning “us” collective causal responsibility.
Now perhaps Americans do have a duty to act against current imperial policies in the Middle East- including perhaps policies on Iraq, Syria, Libya, or the Holy Land- because they can work against those policies. And this may be one factor why you, I, and others are here on Mondoweiss.
When it comes to talk about Christians oppressing people, there are similar ways for me to deal with this psychologically and in conversation. An easy way is to point out that there are very different sects of Christians. The Crusades, for example, to a significant extent fought other Christians, like in the sack of Constantinople. It’s possible to say one group was not “real” Christians because they were not following the New Testament, and the NT defines Christians based on whether they follow God’s will, and says self-identification is not what really matters.
If someone sees themselves simply as a person who happens to have a certain ethnic background or citizenship, he/she really can’t assign himself/herself blame or praise based on that background, in my opinion. But if the person sees oneself as part of a united community with the same beliefs, then it is harder. I would have to show, for example, that my own political beliefs about American democracy or Christianity don’t mean oppressing others, and I can disassociate myself from others who claim to act on those beliefs.
Does that help?
@ W. Jones
So it helps me to think in terms of individuals or groups of people with common political views, rather than thinking in terms of a people’s responsibility. It is easier to think in terms of “the American government” its imperialists, or army invading Iraq or Vietnam, rather than assigning “us” collective causal responsibility.
If someone sees themselves simply as a person who happens to have a certain ethnic background or citizenship, he/she really can’t assign himself/herself blame or praise based on that background, in my opinion.
I share your point of view. However, I hope that you apply the same standard to the people of Nazi Germany and don’t declare them collectively guilty either.
German Lefty,
Sure, what I gave was a general rule. It is only prejudice and stereotypes that get in the way. For example, when I was a little kid I felt a girl of Dutch background was mean to me, so I really didn’t like Dutch people in general- basically I made a stereotype. Another time a Russian girl was very mean to me, and so I started having bad feelings about Russians. But then I told the story to other Russian people and they felt she was wrong and it seemed like they felt alittle bad for me. So then I was cool with Russians again. But still I have to remember they are not all “awesome.”
In the case of Germans, you are also correct. I believe the Nazis never actually got a majority of the Germans’ votes. A distant relation or close friend (not sure which) lived in Nazi Germany and his father owned a bar around Lubeck where people would trash talk Hitler.
An old International Longshoreman in the US (they were a group with especially strong contacts with foreign workers) once told me that one of the biggest myths about Nazi Germany was that the German working class was Nazi. He said the real problem was that Germany banned ordinary citizens from owning guns so they could not revolt. In neighboring countries people had guns and fought guerilla warfare. But instead in Germany one of the strongest actions people were left taking were labor strikes, which did in fact happen.
One of the ironies in America is that many “leftists”, as you will find on this site for example, support taking all the guns from Americans and giving them to a government they admit could become more authoritarian. I used to be one of those people, since I myself prefer people making nonviolent change.
Hitler Kaput.
Regards.
This reminds me of my time visiting Europe when Bush was president and “we” were occupying Iraq. People would sometimes say things like “Americans” were imperialist, or asking why “Americans” support Bush. And I had to keep making distinctions in my mind and to them between all Americans and the US government.
I just found this on Wikipedia:
“The Expulsion of Germans after World War II by, among others, Czechs and Poles, has been sometimes justified as collective punishment. The goal was to punish the Germans; the Allies declared them collectively guilty of German war crimes. In the US and UK the ideas of German collective guilt and collective punishment originated not with the US and British people, but on higher policy levels. Not until late in the war did the US public assign collective responsibility to the German people. The most notable policy document containing elements of collective guilt and collective punishment is JCS 1067 from early 1945. Collective punishment has also been implicated in the American food policy in occupied Germany, with President Truman responding to complaints from Senators that “that although all Germans might not be guilty for the war, it would be too difficult to try to single out for better treatment those who had nothing to do with the Nazi regime and its crimes”. Months earlier amongst many others “U.S. Catholic Bishops had already spoken out against the restrictions on food exports into occupied Germany” warning that “future generations may well charge the victors with guilt of inhumanities which are reminiscent of Nazism and Fascism.”
Yesterday, I watched a clip on YouTube in which German Jews complain that non-Jewish Germans always ask them stuff like, “Why do YOU treat the Palestinians so badly?” Well, Germans were declared collectively responsible for Nazi crimes. So, nobody should be surprised when non-Jewish Germans declare Jews collectively responsible for Zionist crimes. What goes around, comes around.
Why is it considered anti-Semitic to hold all Jews accountable for Zionist crimes, but okay to collectively punish Germans for Nazi crimes? That’s a total double standard.
German Lefty,
Regarding German expulsion after WWII, you can think of it as reparations if you find “collective punishment” to be too negative a term.
White society in America took the land from the Indians and their upper class prospered off the whipped scarred backs of black slaves. They should give benefits to both. Indians get tax breaks, and blacks should get something too if they haven’t already.
Are you aware about the Teutonic knights? They and other German people like Austrians conquered the slavs and oppressed them for centuries. The term “slave” comes from the word “slav.” Western Ukraine was basically a third-world colony of the Austrian Empire for centuries. Yes it makes sense they should get land back and reparations too.
Now one can point out that Germany and Japan have become postwar economic success stories because they didn’t have to waste ca$h on having an army, and so maybe things weren’t really so punishing after all. But anyway, I happen to like slavs. Their girls are pretty and their people are often welcoming and kind to foreigners.
Do you know that even though Russia won WWII what the enormous ratio of Russian to German war dead was? We are talking about GULAG prisoners and peasants throwing vodka bottles at a dude in an “Elephant” tank.
How about the Ukrainians occupy Germany for centuries, make you their serfs, and then call it even?
“…Western Ukraine was basically a third-world colony of the Austrian Empire for centuries…”
Fractured fairy tales. Maybe a ‘third world colony of Poland.’ That might work.
“…Western Ukraine was basically a third-world colony of the Austrian Empire for centuries…”
Fractured fairy tales. Maybe a ‘third world colony of Poland.’ That might work.
See: “Austro-Hungarian Empire” and “Galicia.”
There’s a big number of slavic immigrants across America whose grandparents’ boat papers at Ellis island say “Austria Hungary.” I wish this one nice friend of mine would stop saying his grandparents were Austrian, since they spoke Ukrainian and not German.
“There’s a big number of slavic immigrants across America whose grandparents’ boat papers at Ellis island say “Austria Hungary.” I wish this one nice friend of mine would stop saying his grandparents were Austrian, since they spoke Ukrainian and not German.”
Sure — but I think Austria only acquired those lands at the end of the eighteenth century — so they were ruled by Austria/Austro-Hungary for just over a century. They’d spent most of the four hundred or so years before that under Polish rule.
However, Austria claimed to have an even older claim to the land than the 18th century. They called the main city there “Lemberg” and the region the Duchy of Lemberg Something or other- I forget, because they claimed they had it before then. Anyway, maybe Austrians can be serfs for Ukrainians for “just over a century”. Maybe they can get their own country back sometime around 2120. I am joking in this paragraph. But anyway, one can think in terms of restitution rather than punishment. And yes, if you ask, Palestinian refugees should get restitution. This was even agreed to hypothetically by the Israeli ambassador to the UN around 1947.
W.Jones says:
” German Lefty,
Regarding German expulsion after WWII,
you can think of it as reparations if you find “collective punishment” to be too negative a term. ”
the ethnic cleansing, mass murder and mass rapes that followed ww2 were morally wrong. Ethnic cleansing always sucks.
The Yanks didn’t agree with Stalin. Neither did the Brits. What Stalin did was monstrous. The people of Koenigsberg and the sudetenland did not deserve what happened to them. the war was over.
In the long run the losers were the Czechs, the Poles and the Russians.
They could have done with the Germans they didn’t want when their economies started to stagnate. And now they will never catch up. The whole sad story is very similar to the Spanish explusion of its Jews in 1492. Stupid.
German Lefty
You wrote:
Let me give you some spiritual counseling. If you meet an Israeli individual in person, don’t start off guilt tripping them by asking “Why do YOU treat the Palestinians so badly?” Because Germany in WWII still tops the Israeli State’s body count by maybe 200 times over. Although admittedly thanks to intervention Nazi Germany’s occupation was not as long, nor did it create nearly as many long term refugees.
What you need to do is this. You say to yourself: We have already been down this discriminatory road and we are not going to do it again. We are going to hold ourselves and our own government officials accountable for its promotion of discrimination in the Holy Land. We are going to stop giving away nuclear powered subs, we are going to stop voting against UN resolutions helping Palestinians. We are going to stop trading with settlements, we are going to make it clear to their government we will stop trading with them if they keep discriminating.
You stop your own involvement first I think, all things considered. That of course doesn’t mean you should tone down activism in anyway. Hey, there are probably tons of Pal. refugees in Germany. How about meeting them and showing you feel bad for them?
“We are going to stop giving away nuclear powered subs”
It’s been pointed out before — but they are not ‘nuclear powered subs.’
The point’s secondary — but the fact remains. They are not ‘nuclear powered subs.’
@ W.Jones:
If you meet an Israeli individual in person, don’t start off guilt tripping them by asking “Why do YOU treat the Palestinians so badly?” Because Germany in WWII still tops the Israeli State’s body count by maybe 200 times over.
That doesn’t make any sense. What do I have to do with what happened in Nazi Germany? Besides, just because Zionist crimes are less terrible than Nazi crimes doesn’t mean that they are okay.
We are going to hold ourselves and our own government officials accountable for its promotion of discrimination in the Holy Land. We are going to stop giving away nuclear powered subs, we are going to stop voting against UN resolutions helping Palestinians. We are going to stop trading with settlements, we are going to make it clear to their government we will stop trading with them if they keep discriminating.
I vote for the Left Party and support BDS. So, I am already doing what you suggest. Besides, I am not the dictator of Germany. Therefore, I would never refer to the German government as “we”. Anyway, Israel is the country that commits the crimes, not Germany.
You stop your own involvement first I think, all things considered.
I’ve done that.
There are specific features of Israeli Jewish society that make it not completely unreasonable to ascribe collective responsibility to its members. First, it is a democracy (for Jews): an overwhelming majority freely choose to vote for Jewish-supremacist Zionist parties (alternatives do exist but get most of their support from Palestinian citizens). Second, an overwhelming majority of non-exempt Jewish citizens perform military service and thereby they take part in mistreating Palestinians. If you go up to an Israeli Jew chosen at random, there is a chance that he or she belongs to the tiny minority who do not participate in these ways and the accusation would be highly unfair to that individual, though the risk is very small because it is such a tiny minority. It is potentially unjust to take this risk, but ascribing collective responsibility in this situation is not irrational in the same way as ordinary ethnic prejudice. To a lesser extent these remarks also apply to the majority of diaspora Jews who give political and financial support to Israel.
WJ:Let me give you some spiritual counseling. If you meet an Israeli individual in person, don’t start off guilt tripping them by asking “Why do YOU treat the Palestinians so badly?”
Let me give you some spiritual counseling. If you’ve spent any time in Germany you soon realise that young Germans have had quite enough of guilt tripping themselves and that giving them this sort of advice (however well meaning) is patronising at best and a gross impertinence at worst.
Thanks for the correction. The subs were armed with Nukes after reception, which is even worse, isn’t it? Oh but Germany didn’t guess that would happen?
German Lefty,
Imagine if you and five friends get together each week for coffee and make a club. You elect a chairperson of your club and have dues. Your club then gives cash and protective gloves to help a kid who your club beat up last year without your permission. The kid uses what you give him to beat up other kids, and your club keeps giving him money and boxing training each week.
You got to make sure it’s crystal clear to your friends they should not be helping this, and they should start giving this person better direction. And you yourself should be nice and counsel him, knowing he got beat up.
Plus, you can help the kids who are getting beat up now too. Aren’t there alot of Palestinian refugees in Germany, not just Turks? So I think the main thing to do is have compassionate, and if you are going to pressure someone, you should first clean up your own house before moving on to someone else’s.
Now maybe you are already doing all those things, in which case I commend and encourage you.
Keep it up :)
W.Jones says: “Thanks for the correction. The subs were armed with Nukes after reception, which is even worse, isn’t it? Oh but Germany didn’t guess that would happen?”
Far from it. I may be mistaken, but I think the Germans actually modified the subs so that they could take nuclear missiles. However, that’s not what makes a nuclear sub. A nuclear sub is one that relies on nuclear propulsion. As I said, it’s a secondary point, but…
Imagine if you and five friends get together each week for coffee and make a club.
No idea what you are trying to tell me with this strange story. I have never done anything to Jews and I don’t support Zionists either.
if you are going to pressure someone, you should first clean up your own house before moving on to someone else’s.
I disagree. I think one should get right down to the root of the trouble. And that’s the Zionist Israelis, who oppress Palestinians and steal their land. They are the ones who commit the crimes. Germany doesn’t violate international law. Israel does. Besides, subs have nothing to do with the oppression of Palestinians.
Stephen,
I didn’t think of that.
Libra,
I think it wouldn’t be right for me, a white American, when meeting a black person, to start by asking “Why do YOU beat kids?”. And yet it is a problem that bothers me because I care about kids, and I think I have pointed it out to a few people myself in the past.
The kinds of questions I am talking about are wrong on many levels:
1) It is an overgeneralization to say blacks beat their kids or Jews support Israeli policies. (although Stephen has made a good point above)
2) The higher rate of beating in black families is indirectly, but strongly, caused by the severe abuse they were singled out and subjected to generations ago in slavery. Likewise, the mass colonization/emigration to the Holy Land were directly caused by the Nazi Holocaust.
3) How can we blame black people for beating kids when we ourselves do not ban it? The State of Georgia officially allows leaving bruises on children. Thousands of students are beaten every year in US public and private schools with wooden boards and it typically leaves bruises. Oh really, you don’t know about that? No, that doesn’t happen in America?
Plus, it is not so rare that white parents use belts on their children themselves, which leaves bruises.
So the combination of these three reasons tells me it is better if Germans first to make sure they stop their own deep involvement in the persecution Palestinians before guilt-tripping individual random Jews. Please see my response to German Lefty below as well.
But of course when Americans or Germans do see someone beating children or advocating discriminatory policies, they must step in and intervene.
May you!
German Lefty,
To explain further:
When Germany gives them weapons and ca$h for their military knowing it will be abused, they may implicitly be violators of int’l law, as perhaps the US is. The subs are part of the State’s dominance over the entire (non-nuclear) region, which facilitates its abusive policies.
Frieden.
@ W.Jones:
I have had a similar discussion with someone else recently, only in terms of the USA. I’ll reiterate what I wrote:
Germany gives financial and military support to Israel. However, nobody forces Israel to use this support in a destructive way. That’s Israel’s own decision. Therefore, you can’t blame Germany for Zionist crimes. One could say that Germany is an accomplice, but the main culprit is Israel.
Shouldn’t you prosecute the main culprit first and deal with the accomplices later?
You can’t blame other countries for Israel’s crimes. Israel is solely responsible for its own crimes, regardless of the behaviour of other countries.
Also, you have to consider that there’s a special … ahem … historical connection between Germany and Israel. That makes it somewhat complicated. Other countries, e.g. the USA, don’t have this problem/inhibition and should therefore make the first move and reprimand Israel. You really can’t expect Germany to do that. Germany doesn’t want to be the bogeyman again.
German politicians consider it necessary to overcompensate for past anti-Semitism by being philo-Semitic. That’s clearly a wrong approach. The German people understand that what the politicians are doing isn’t right. However, the politicians just don’t want to listen.
Frieden.
Oh, you want peace? Really? Probably just as much as Bibi Netanyahu ;-)
German Lefty,
I agree with your first paragraph, except only partly that “You can’t blame other countries for Israel’s crimes.” On one hand, very many Americans are simply unaware about the situation. They do not even know Palestinian Christians exist. Alot of the problem is propaganda. But on the other hand, this reflects that part of the system in the US and Germany is in fact controlling the situation in the M.E.: There are major donors to settlements in the US, and when they had their Gilad “prisoner exchange,” the WSJ attacked the exchange. I mean, what about all the Pal.s in arbitrary admin. detention? I think Norman Finkelstein joked that it was a 51st state.
Further, you are right in your second paragraph about explaining why the problem especially exists in Germany. In my opinion, this “historical connection” means that when speaking with random people, I would advise individual Germans to avoid guilt tripping them strongly right away unless they start saying discriminatory stuff. This is my own view, and obviously others differ with me. But at the same time, I think the politicians should take a strongly approach in cutting their own ties, on the basis that they have been down this road before. Rather than the Holocaust being a justification for involvement, it should be a motivation to say strongly “We need to remove ourselves from discriminatory policies.”
Regarding Bibi’s idea of peace, his supporters insist that he does want peace. And it seems to me that could be correct, and he wants a kind of Apartheid peace where the other side agrees to humiliating conditions, and basically agrees to live in bantustans.
But another thing I heard is that actually they do not want peace at all, but prefer to have a conflict in order to keep pressuring Pal.s to leave, ruin them, have a policy of Separation, deal with the “demographic problem”– all on the justification that they need these policies for the sake of “security”. Once the other side fully submits to Apartheid, then there is no more security justification for it.
What do you think? Maybe they are happy either way (unjust “peace” or no peace)
@ W.Jones:
In my opinion, this “historical connection” means that when speaking with random people, I would advise individual Germans to avoid guilt tripping them strongly right away unless they start saying discriminatory stuff.
But why? That doesn’t make any sense. The present generation of Germans haven’t done anything to Jews. So, why shouldn’t they voice criticism?
At the political level, things are different. German politicians falsely assume that they should suspend judgement on Israel for historical reasons.
By the way, Alfred Grosser recently stated that German Jews shouldn’t be surprised when non-Jewish Germans associate them with Israel and complain to them about Israel, because the Central Council of Jews in Germany constantly defends Israel’s interests and encourages the view that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people. So, basically, it’s the German Jews’ own fault that they are linked with Israel’s crimes.
link to en.wikipedia.org
link to en.wikipedia.org
I think the politicians should take a strongly approach in cutting their own ties, on the basis that they have been down this road before. Rather than the Holocaust being a justification for involvement, it should be a motivation to say strongly “We need to remove ourselves from discriminatory policies.”
Right. That’s what the German people think: Ethnic nationalism is wrong, no matter which country practises it. It was wrong in Germany. It is wrong in Israel. But try to teach that to the politicians or the media. They’ll denounce you as Jew-hater and then you lose your reputation and career.
Some non-Jewish German Israel supporter recently complained on TV that the prevalent opinion among the German people is that Zionists are the new Nazis. He claimed that in no other country would Zionists be compared to Nazis.
What do you think? Maybe they are happy either way (unjust “peace” or no peace)
I think that Bibi doesn’t want peace. What he wants is Palestinian land. And in order to get this, he pretends to want peace and accuses Palestinians of not wanting peace. He plays the victim while stealing more and more Palestinian land. Incredible how this works. I don’t believe that Bibi would be content with an “unjust peace”, because in such a case there would still be Palestinians on Palestinian land and Bibi doesn’t accept that.
“I may be mistaken, but I think the Germans actually modified the subs so that they could take nuclear missiles.”
You are perfectly correct. German military support for Israel began in the 1950′s and their collaboration in this area has frequently been shrouded in secrecy, and in violation of German constitutional law. German military cooperation with Israel may be said to be even closer than that between Germany and Nato. The reasons for this are complex, and German Holocaust guilt has little if anything to do with it.
@ Antidote:
The reasons for this are complex, and German Holocaust guilt has little if anything to do with it.
Could you elaborate on that? I’ve always assumed that it’s mainly because of guilt.
@ German Lefty
Maybe Antidote is thinking of the post-1950 history and reasons and trending discussed here regarding Germany’s giving Israel arms it would give no another country:link to dontbombiran.info
Also, according to Der Spiegel, Merkel tied the delivery of the sixth submarine to a number of conditions, including a demand that Israel stop its expansionist settlement policy and allow the completion of a sewage treatment plant in the Gaza Strip that is significantly financed with German money. So far, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has met none of the terms.
Well, Merkel has done more than any POTUS, none of whom have ever tied any strings to US foreign aid to Israel, the biggest chunk of said foreign aid, and the only distribution sans strings and with interest going to the beneficiary state. Sucha deal!
“2) The higher rate of beating in black families is indirectly, but strongly, caused by the severe abuse they were singled out and subjected to generations ago in slavery.”
And slavery ended, and the abuse stopped, but the hereditary effects come to us through the generations?
Well, all I can say is, thank God white folks don’t beat kids. As you so well show, it’s like cutting off a mouse’s tail, all it’s children will be tailless, too.
Or do white people beat their children, or get beaten, whatever, but just have strong enough chromosomes to resist the beating gene, unlike the more primitive heredity of dark-skinned people.
♪I feel a song coming on!♪
If you’re white, you’ll treat kids right,
If you’re brown, you might slap them around,
But if you’re black, oh brother!,
Get the strap, get the strap, get the strap!
Now me, I would say that conditions in families mat erode into violence when the people are subjected to institutionalised and systematic discrimination and oppression in the present, or if people like to beat kids, but your abuse through heredity hypothesis opens up new vistas in family relations. ‘Son, this is gonna hurt your great-great-great grandfather more than it hurts you!’
@ Mooser
The cycle of abuse is an historical macro to some, and closely associated with the scapegoat theme.
“The cycle of abuse is an historical macro to some, and closely associated with the scapegoat theme”.
I wish I could have gotten it down to one sentence like that. Good work.
Here’s the in depth Der Spiegel background on it. Officially Merkel tries to deny Germany made the modification. But at Thyssen-Krupp where the subs are built the Israelis have basically their own closed and secret shop set up to oversee modifications.
link to spiegel.de
some key excerpts…..
”Even managers from Thyssen-Krupp, which bought HDW in 2005, are denied access. “The main goal of everyone involved was to ensure that there would be no public debate about the project, neither in Israel nor in Germany,” says former Israeli navy chief Ayalon. This explains why everything related to the equipment on the ships remains hidden behind a veil of secrecy.
One of the special features is the equipment used in the Dolphin class, which is named after the first ship. Unlike conventional submarines, the Dolphins don’t just have torpedo tubes with a 533-millimeter diameter in the steel bow. In response to a special Israeli request, the HDW engineers designed four additional tubes that are 650 millimeters in diameter — a special design not found in any other submarine in the Western world.
What is the purpose of the large tubes? In a classified 2006 memo, the German government argued that the tubes are an “option for the transfer of special forces and the pressure-free stowage of their equipment” — combat swimmers, for example –, who can be released through the narrow shaft for secret operations. The same explanation is given by the Israelis.
Keeping Options Open
In the United States, however, it has long been speculated that the wider shafts could be intended for ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads. This suspicion was fueled by an Israeli request for US Tomahawk cruise missiles in 2000. The missiles have a range of over 600 kilometers, while nuclear versions can even fly about 2,500 kilometers. But Washington rejected the request twice. This is why the Israelis still rely on ballistic missiles of their own design today, such as Popeye Turbo.
Their use as nuclear carrier missiles is readily possible in the Dolphins. Contrary to official assumptions, HDW equipped the Israeli submarines with a newly developed hydraulic ejection system instead of a compressed air ejection system. In this process, water is compressed with the help of a hydraulic ram. The resulting pressure is then used to catapult the weapon out of the shaft.
The resulting momentum is limited, however, and it isn’t enough to eject a three to five-ton midrange missile out of the ship, at least according to insiders. This is not the case with lighter-weight missiles weighing up to 1.5 tons — like the Popeye Turbo or the American Tomahawk, which weighs just that, nuclear warhead included.
There are indications that, with the expanded tubes, the Israelis wanted to keep open the option of future, more voluminous developments.
The Germans don’t want to know anything about that. “It was clear to each of us, without anything being said, that the ships had been tailored to the needs of the Israelis, and that that could also include nuclear capabilities,” says a senior German official involved during the Kohl era. “But in politics there are questions that it’s better not to ask, because the answer would be a problem.”
To this day, former German Foreign Minister Genscher and former Defense Minister Volker Ruhe say they do not believe that Israel has equipped the submarines with nuclear weapons.
For their part, experts with the German military, the Bundeswehr, do not doubt the nuclear capability of the submarines, but they do doubt whether cruise missiles could be developed on the basis of the Popeye Turbo that could fly 1,500 kilometers.
Some military experts suggest, therefore, that the Israeli government is bluffing, in a bid to make Iran believe that the Jewish state already has a sea-based second-strike capability. That alone would be enough to force Tehran to commit considerable resources to defending itself.The first person to publicly voice suspicions that the German government was supporting Israel in its nuclear weapons program was Norbert Gansel, an SPD politician from Kiel. Speaking in the German parliament, the Bundestag, he stated that the SPD opposed the shipment of “submarines suitable for nuclear missions” to Israel.
Netanyahu’s “ranting about preventive war” touches on a difficult aspect of international law. In reality, it is unlikely that Israel will use the submarines in a war with Iran as long as Tehran does not have nuclear missiles — even though the Israeli government has considered using the “Samson” option on at least two occasions in the past.
The country’s military situation following the Egyptian and Syrian surprise attack during the 1973 Yom Kippur holiday was so desperate that Prime Minister Golda Meir — as intelligence service reports have now revealed — ordered her Defense Minister Moshe Dayan to prepare several nuclear bombs for combat and deliver them to air force units. Then, just before the warheads were to be armed, the tide turned. Israel’s forces gained the upper hand on the battlefield, and the bombs made their way back to their underground bunkers.
Unwillingness to Compromise
And in the first hours of the 1991 Gulf War, an American satellite registered that Israel had responded to the bombardment by Iraqi Scud missiles by mobilizing its nuclear force. Israeli analysts had mistakenly assumed that the Scuds would be armed with poison gas. It remains unclear how Israel would have acted if a Scud missile tipped with nerve gas had hit a residential area.
Only Netanyahu and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, probably know how close the world stands today to a new war. The Israeli prime minister and Khamenei have “one thing in common,” says Walther Stützle, a former state secretary in Germany’s Federal Defense Ministry: “They enjoy conflict. If Israel attacks, Iran slips out of the aggressor role and into that of victim.” The UN won’t provide the mandate that would legitimize such an attack, which means Israel would be breaking the law, argues Stützle, who is now at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), a Berlin-based think tank. “True friendship,” he believes, “requires the German chancellor to stay Netanyahu’s arm and prevent him from resorting to an armed attack. Germany’s obligation to protect Israel includes protecting the country from embarking on suicidal adventures.”
Helmut Schmidt went even further, long before Grass. “Hardly anyone dares to criticize Israel here, out of fear of being accused of anti-Semitism,” the former chancellor told Jewish American historian Fritz Stern. Yet Israel is a country, Schmidt suggests, that “makes a peaceful solution practically impossible, through its policies of settlement in the West Bank and, for far longer, in the Gaza Strip.” He also condemns the current chancellor for, in his view, allowing herself to be essentially taken hostage by Israel. Schmidt says, “I wonder whether it was a feeling of closeness with American policies, or nebulous moral motives, that led Chancellor Merkel to publicly state in 2008 that Germany bears responsibility for the security of the State of Israel. From my point of view, this is a serious exaggeration, one that sounds very nearly like the type of obligation that exists within an alliance.”
Schmidt considers it plain that Berlin has no business participating in adventurous policies, and he draws clear boundaries: “Germany has a particular responsibility to make sure that a crime such as the Holocaust never again occurs. Germany does not have a responsibility for Israel.”
From the start, Merkel viewed the matter differently from her predecessor Schröder, who approved the delivery of submarines number 4 and 5 on his last working day in office in 2005. For Chancellor Merkel, on the other hand, there was never any doubt that she would do what Israel asked, even at the cost of violating Germany’s own arms export guidelines. The rules, amended in 2000 by the SPD-Green coalition government, do allow weapons to be supplied to countries that are not part of the EU or NATO in the case of “special foreign or security policy interests.” But there is a clear regulation for crisis regions: The rules state that supplying weapons “is not authorized in countries that are involved in armed conflicts or where there is a threat of one.” There is no question that that rule would include Israel. But that did not stop the chancellor from making a deal for the delivery of submarine number 6 — just as she was not deterred by Netanyahu’s unwillingness to make compromises.”
“Likewise, the mass colonization/emigration to the Holy Land were directly caused by the Nazi Holocaust.”
You should try reading a blog called “mondoweiss” sometimes. You might learn some surprising things about Zionism and Palestine.
I am sorry you are wrong. It’s clear, if there wouldn’t have been the Nazis and a Holocaust, there would be no Israel now and no Israelis to oppress Palestinians. The Zionists needed “re-educable” human material, to fight their wars, the Nazis took care the refugee flow increased.
So if you look at it via a cause and effect lens, I am afraid, Germany has quite a bit of responsibility for the fate of the Palestinians too. Why do you think Sumaya Farhat-Naser is honored to such an extend in Germany?
But something else is true too, before 1967 not only in Germany but also in Israel and the United States the Holocaust was covered beneath a cloak of silence. One was busy with building up respectively the Cold War, America helped the Germans and the Germans in return paid reparations for something that can’t be repaired with money, mind you not to the survivors or their children, but to Israel, and that may well have helped to suppress Palestinians even further.
So ethically, I am afraid, there is no way out of this for us. I know about the Gnade der späten Geburt (grace of the late birth) but it is meaningless, and if you take a hard look at the submarines it is still going on.
There is no way out of it said the joker to the thief
“Let me give you some spiritual counseling.”…W Jones
I don’t think you should be counseling anyone. Your line of reasoning indicates you have problems of your own you need to work on.
“3) How can we blame black people for beating kids when we ourselves do not ban it? ” ….. W Jones
I hate to say it, but the more I see of your comments the more I believe you are some kind of ignorant throwback to the primitive missionaries who thought they were specially ordainded by God because of their personal superiority to go save the heathern darkies and slant eyes.
So blacks beat their children because it isn’t banned?
So like what?….because they aren’t pompous little white religious freaks like you they’re animals who don’t know any better unless the law tells them so?
Revolting.
@ LeaNder:
So if you look at it via a cause and effect lens, I am afraid, Germany has quite a bit of responsibility for the fate of the Palestinians too.
There is one thing that I hate even more than being mistaken for a Jew-hater. And that’s when people try to make me feel guilty for
something that I haven’t done. It’s already terrible enough that German politicians and media constantly try to guilt-trip the present generations of Germans for the Holocaust. Now, you go even further and try to guilt-trip us for the dispossession of Palestinians, too. That’s stretching it way too far! Das schlägt dem Fass den Boden aus.
Zionism predates Nazism. Therefore, you can’t blame the Nazis for that crappy idea. Also, there were plenty of countries that German Jews could have fled to. Nobody forced them to go to Palestine and steal Palestinian land. This was their OWN decision.
People are responsible for their own deeds. No more, no less. Nazis were responsible for Nazi crimes. And Zionists were and still are responsible for Zionist crimes. I am neither a Nazi nor a Zionist. That’s why I don’t bear any responsibility for their deeds. If you feel guilty for stuff that you haven’t done, then that’s YOUR problem, not mine. Don’t try to impose your irrational guilt pangs on me or anyone else. There is no perpetual perpetratorhood, just like there’s no perpetual victimhood. How come that people constantly blame the USA or Europe for Israel’s deeds, but never Israel, the actual perpetrator?
the Germans in return paid reparations for something that can’t be repaired with money, mind you not to the survivors or their children, but to Israel, and that may well have helped to suppress Palestinians even further. [...] if you take a hard look at the submarines it is still going on.
I am not the German government and I didn’t vote for any of the governing parties. So, I have nothing to do with that.
I know about the Gnade der späten Geburt (grace of the late birth) but it is meaningless
No idea why you invoke this strange phrase now. Some Zionist called jonah introduced me to it last month. Here’s what I replied to him:
“I have never heard of this phrase. I find it really stupid and creepy. It’s so Holocaust-centric. It sounds as if Germany only consists of the Holocaust and nothing else. Personally, I don’t consider my date of birth a mercy but simply a happenstance.”
I think that we have a duty to help, by voting or whatever political action is open to us, to help put right the effects of wrongs or mistakes by our polity. That is to say we don’t inherit credit or guilt for what our predecessors did but we do inherit the situations that they created for us and we have the responsibility to make the best of these. We gain credit or guilt for how we manage our inheritance not for how it came to exist.
German Lefty,
You wrote:
“People are responsible for their own deeds. No more, no less. Nazis were responsible for Nazi crimes. And Zionists were and still are responsible for Zionist crimes. I am neither a Nazi nor a Zionist. That’s why I don’t bear any responsibility for their deeds.”
Indeed. PEOPLE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR OWN DEEDS. That belief is in alignment with modern Western democratic and Enlightenment values.
People who habitually assign collective guilt to entire ethnic groups and religions are hopelessly mired down in pre-Enlightenment mystical collectivism and tribalism.
Also, live by primitive tribalism, die by primitive tribalism. If you try to manipulate the political system by assigning collective guilt to entire ethnic or religious groups, others will similarly smear and abuse your own group.
“Das schlägt dem Fass den Boden aus.”
That takes the biscuit out of the ground!
LeaNder wrote:
“I know about the Gnade der späten Geburt (grace of the late birth) but it is meaningless”. And you replied:
No idea why you invoke this strange phrase now. Some Zionist called jonah introduced me to it last month. Here’s what I replied to him: “I have never heard of this phrase. I find it really stupid and creepy.”
Der Spiegel had an article called “Who invented the phrase of the ‘grace of late birth’?” But the article is in German and I don’t understand it:
link to spiegel.de
If someone wants to counterargue the phrase he/she could say that his/she grandparents weren’t supporters of the German government in WWII. Or he/she could say that he/she disagree with his/her parents’ conservative politics, so living in an earlier generation he/she could have as well. Or they could point out that there were alot of Germans who disagreed with the Nazis, etc.
Regards.
“So blacks beat their children because it isn’t banned?”
Yes and that’s true about white parents as well.
“So like what?….”
So I think it’s better that white Americans shouldn’t start off conversations with random Native Americans and African Americans by picking on them about problems in their communities, in part because white society put them in the tough position they are in. Now if the other person says beating children is good, then the person (eg. you) should oppose that strongly.
“….because they aren’t pompous little white religious freaks like you they’re animals who don’t know any better unless the law tells them so?”
Some pompous white religious freaks beat their children too, and black people are not more animals than whites.
Beating children should be outlawed in every state and school. People often know better, but often times they don’t. In the latter case they often think it is OK because they themselves were beaten. And in turn their parents thought beating children was OK because they themselves were beaten. This goes back to the slave days, and there are quotes by grandparents confirming this “passing down.”
Public awareness campaigns are not enough. They may think public awareness campaigns are just somebody’s opinion. Outlawing beating kids would help alot to raise awareness and lowering its rate.
Germany banned hitting children several years ago. Meanwhile, thousands of students in all grades get beatings with bruises in US public schools every year. We should follow Germany’s example on this.
@ LeaNder:
So if you look at it via a cause and effect lens, I am afraid, Germany has quite a bit of responsibility for the fate of the Palestinians too.
Wrong.
Except in the sense Germany is enabling Israel in a genocide-lite in Palestine.
@Germanlefty
People are responsible for their own deeds.
Right.
@MHughes
That is to say we don’t inherit credit or guilt for what our predecessors did but we do inherit the situations that they created for us and we have the responsibility to make the best of these.
Also right.
>> German Lefty @ August 25, 2012 at 10:31 am
Good post.
Lefty,
I am amazed you never heard of the “Gnade der späten Geburt”. How old are you? 15? Or is it your political orientation/camp that has conveniently assigned this infamous quote, and the infamous reaction that followed, to the memory hole?
I don’t know whether Jonah revealed that it was long-time German chancellor Helmut Kohl who said it, during an address to the Knesset in 1984, only to be condemned into, as the Germans say “Grund und Boden” by the entire German Left, among other critics. The famous Historikerstreit was one of the results, unleashed by German historian Nolte attack on the cult and myth of unique German guilt and depravity, and the eternal rituals of moral and material atonement (wikipedia is a good start, see “Historikerstreit”).
“It sounds as if Germany only consists of the Holocaust and nothing else.”
Well, this is exactly what the Lefties, for political gain on the domestic and international scene, said. Here are some pithy and prominent quotations, focussed on the very same foreign minister who clubbed the Bundestag into bombing Serbia on the pretense of preventing another Holocaust, with comments from a member of the German Right, or ultra-nationalists, neo-Nazi, or whatever slanderous labels have been applied to Nordbruch by Lefties and Centrists alike. As a matter of fact, you, Leftie, sound a lot like a Rightie (This is not an accusation or insinuation. The terms have become meaningless for me. In fact, I feel about having voted for Fischer much like I imagine many Germans feel/felt for having voted for Hitler: I barely dare to admit it to myself, and have declined to vote for any German (or other) politician ever since. I’m resigned to the fact that the world is currently divided between people who strive for democracy (in the non-democratic countries) and those who increasingly doubt it exists (in the democratic countries) Here is Nordbruch:
link to nordbruch.org
As to your question above on the Holocaust/German military support for Israel question: Citizen has already provided you with further information on military cooperation. I did overstate the case when I wrote that German Holocaust guilt has little or nothing to do with it. To see the connection you should look into the connection between guilt and debt, which, as Nietzsche famously pointed out in his Genealogie der Moral forms the basis of Western ethics, the connection being highlighted in the German word SCHULD meaning both guilt and debt. Here are some links on the issues involved, from WW II and the Holocaust to the Greek debt crisis and the “Euro-Sünder” (Euro-sinners)
link to books.google.ca
link to literaturundwirtschaft.de
link to spiegel.de
link to time.com
link to jungefreiheit.de
@ Antidote:
I am amazed you never heard of the “Gnade der späten Geburt”. How old are you? 15?
Ha, ha. No. It’s just that until recently I have never read anything in German about the I/P conflict because of the pro-Israel bias of the German media. Also, I was born in East Germany. So, West Germany was a foreign country until 1990.
with comments from a member of the German Right, or ultra-nationalists, neo-Nazi, or whatever slanderous labels have been applied to Nordbruch by Lefties and Centrists alike. [...] link to nordbruch.org [...] link to jungefreiheit.de
Wikipedia says that Claus Nordbruch is a right-wing extremist, a racist and a supporter of apartheid. Therefore, he clearly deserves the labels that were given to him by lefties and centrists.
“Junge Freiheit” is a very right-wing weekly newspaper.
I am not going to read articles from such right-wing sources. I have my principles.
As a matter of fact, you, Leftie, sound a lot like a Rightie
Such a statement doesn’t shock me. Right-wingers and left-wingers occasionally agree on something, just for totally different reasons. Both the NPD and the Left Party are Israel critics. However, the National “Democrats” criticise Israel, because they hate Jews. The Democratic Socialists criticise Israel, because they hate discrimination and ethnic cleansing. That’s the crucial difference. You need to do the right thing for the right reason.
link to news.de
@ MHughes976 & seanmcbride:
I agree.
I make an exception with you German Lefty, but then I am gone definitively.
I can’t help, but I find the idea that I want to blame something on the Nazis that they can’t be blamed for, admittedly slightly hilarious.
You mistake the ethical responsibility I talk about for personal guilt, neither you nor me are personally guilty, obviously.
Interesting that you start your comment with hate, I was no stranger to hate when young myself. It wears off with age. But why, honestly, do you worry what people think about you, if their judgements are misguided? That didn’t even worry me when I was young. Water down the Rhine, to use another German proverb, one expressing less outrage than yours. My capacities at indignation are rather limited, you know.
But what personal desire or need forces you to read something into my statement that isn’t there, I’ll ask myself? To be able to celebrate all the things you hate? I guilt tripped you, really? How? By complicating matters? I could go on and complicate quite a bit more, believe me, obviously you have much to learn.
@ LeaNder:
You mistake the ethical responsibility I talk about for personal guilt, neither you nor me are personally guilty, obviously.
These two things are the same. I am only ethically responsible for things that are my personal fault.
But why, honestly, do you worry what people think about you, if their judgements are misguided?
I don’t worry. I merely used me as example to explain my point of view.
I could go on and complicate quite a bit more, believe me, obviously you have much to learn.
Yeah, right!
LeaNder:
What are you referring to when you wrote: “There is no way out of it said the joker to the thief”.
German Lefty,
Well, considering you are East German, and East Germany spent so much effort opposing imperialism, Apartheid in South Africa, and the situation in the Israeli State, and you found my advice upsetting on August 19 upsetting, I withdraw my comment to you.
Frieden.
@ LeaNder:
One quick addition to my statement: “I am only ethically responsible for things that are my personal fault.”
If I speak out against anti-Semitism and Zionism, then I do that because I WANT it, not because I feel OBLIGED or RESPONSIBLE.
Leftie:
” “Junge Freiheit” is a very right-wing weekly newspaper.
I am not going to read articles from such right-wing sources. I have my principles.”
Your principles don’t seem to include free speech, much less any attempt at dialogue with political opponents or whoever becomes the target f a major demonization campaign, be it one “Hitler” or another. Not that I believe there is anything particularly East German about this but I did respond to a discussion I had with one of my East German friends the other day by saying: “What have you guys learned about propaganda and brainwashing?” The subject of our discussion was his claim that Iran wants to “wipe Israel off the map” and thus initiate “another Holocaust”. He cited Ahmadinejad as proof that they want to “wipe Israel off the map” etc. “Did you ever bother to find out what Ahmadinejad actually said?” I asked. “No”, he replied. “The guy is a Holocaust denier who wants to wipe Israel off the map. I’m not interested in reading his speeches. If he hadn’t said it, why would UN delegates leave the room?”
What are the principles involved here, other than some herd instinct?
I’m having the very same discussion with my American brother-in-law right now. He is also convinced that Ahmadinejad said that Iran wants to “wipe Israel off the map”. Did he?
Believe what you want, simpletons. Don’t bother checking the facts. Don’t listen to the lies of the enemy (West German radio stations, Holocaust deniers, apologists for Hitler and his successors).
“You need to do the right thing for the right reason.”
LOL
@ Antidote:
Your principles don’t seem to include free speech
What’s that supposed to mean? I am not trying to censor right-wing (extremist) sources. I just choose not to read them, because I don’t consider them trustworthy. That’s all.
The subject of our discussion was his claim that Iran wants to “wipe Israel off the map” and thus initiate “another Holocaust”. He cited Ahmadinejad as proof that they want to “wipe Israel off the map” etc. “Did you ever bother to find out what Ahmadinejad actually said?” I asked. “No”, he replied.
A while ago, I did look up what Ahmadinejad actually said. And you don’t need to resort to right-wing sources to do that. So, I don’t know what you are trying to tell me with this example.
Besides, Ahmadinejad doesn’t deny the Holocaust, he “merely” questions it. That’s a little less terrible. Also, questioning (or denying) something doesn’t kill anyone. Furthermore, just because someone questions whether Jews were mass-murdered doesn’t mean that he wants to mass-murder Jews. I am aware of these things. So, please don’t throw me into the same pot with your East German friend. Also, please refrain from calling me names.
Don’t bother checking the facts. Don’t listen to the lies of the enemy (West German radio stations, Holocaust deniers, apologists for Hitler and his successors).
What party do you feel connected to? NPD?
“What are you referring to when you wrote: “There is no way out of it said the joker to the thief”.
Ahha! There’s something going on here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr Jones?
“because they aren’t pompous little white religious freaks like you they’re animals who don’t know any better unless the law tells them so?”
That’s not what he said at all! As near as I can figure it, W. Jones hypothesises that when African slaves in America where whipped, and impression was made on their chromosomes which about 3 or 4 generations later makes them whallop their kids. That doesn’t sound reasonable to you?
Certainly their can’t be anything going on today which might erode African-American families, in spite of their best efforts! Not with spiritual advisors like W. Jones here to prevent it.
“I’ll reiterate what I wrote”
No you won’t, you’ll iterate what you wrote. “Reiterate” is a redundancy. Yup, I was surprised, too, when my wife told me so, but she’s right. So if you wish to repeat what you wrote, iterate away with my blessing.
I feel blessed to have a wife who is a good editor and proofreader. Funny thing, I just thought of it, both of them.
@ Moserer:
No you won’t, you’ll iterate what you wrote. “Reiterate” is a redundancy. Yup, I was surprised, too, when my wife told me so, but she’s right.
Okay, I just looked it up. As I understand it, “iterate” means repeating something once and “reiterate” means repeating something more than once, i.e. over and over again. As I repeated my statement only once, you are correct in that I should have used “iterate”. Do you have any further complaints about my English?
Besides, please don’t forget to also pick on the native speakers for their imperfect English. Or do you want to be accused of “unfairly singling someone out for criticism”?
Funny thing, I just thought of it, both of them.
WTF are you talking about?
“What party do you feel connected to? NPD?”
I had already answered that question above: none. But I used to be Green or Red/Green. Unlike you, I no longer consider them any more “trustworthy” than any other party and its members, including the NDP. It is a nonsense to automatically assume that people deliberately lie and distort the truth -factual, historical or moral – just because they don’t agree with your views on whatever issue.
“Ahmadinejad doesn’t deny the Holocaust, he “merely” questions it. That’s a little less terrible. Also, questioning (or denying) something doesn’t kill anyone. Furthermore, just because someone questions whether Jews were mass-murdered doesn’t mean that he wants to mass-murder Jews.”
As far as I can tell this is true for prominent Holocaust deniers from Rassinier (a ‘Lefty’ and Buchenwald survivor, often cited as the founding father of the European/North American Holocaust denial movement) to David Irving and Ernst Zundel (both served prison terms for the offense). But I’m sure your principles won’t allow that you actually read what they write and say and depend on second-hand sources. My approach is different. I’m also curious, especially in the case of ‘discredited historians’ whose books are more widely read than the tomes of ‘serious historians’. So I’ve read both Goldhagen and Irving. What I don’t understand is why one is thrown into jail and the other is not, if both misrepresent the Holocaust by ‘selective citation’ of sources?
The German public was much more willing to follow Goldhagen than were historians, including Israeli historians. A former West German told me the other day: “I don’t understand why Germans voted for Hitler when he announced everything he was going to do in Mein Kampf, including the Holocaust.” “Have you read Mein Kampf?” I asked. “No”, she said.
I give up.
To German Lefty: ““The Expulsion of Germans after World War II by, among others, Czechs and Poles, has been sometimes justified as collective punishment.”
As always, there were other motives as well. Stalin was in the process of helping himself to that chunk of Eastern Poland that Poland had acquired in 1920, that he had gotten back in the 1939 division of Poland with Nazi Germany, and that he now wanted for good.
The Poles were to be compensated with land taken from Eastern Germany. The areas in question were emptied of Germans, and then Poles from what had been Eastern Poland were literally loaded onto trains and shipped to what were to be their new homes — and now are.
Collective punishment may have been the justification — but obviously, the motive was also to reverse the outcome of the Russo-Polish war of 1920 — and this time, physically move the people so it couldn’t be undone yet again.
This isn’t to make the Poles saints. When they’d held the land from 1920 to 1939, they’d energetically settled it with Poles — and encouraged the Poles in question to think of themselves as the petty Polish nobility that had once ruled over serfs in the region. They hadn’t made themselves very popular.
Your history here makes sense.
I’ve been reading Norman Rose, “‘A Senseless, Squalid War’: Voices from Palestine, 1890s-1948.” Rose is at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and the book is one long apologia for Zionism. He relativizes the Nakba, saying in effect that it was “no big deal” in the context of the mass deportations that occurred during and in the aftermath of World War Two. After all those millions, why make a fuss about an extra few hundred thousand? When one atrocity is legitimized, that makes it easier to legitimize another (“in relative terms”).
Jewish Americans face essentially the same quandary that German Jews faced in the last century, that of tying their destiny to the universalism of building a better world (or so it seemed at the time) or to the ethnocentric goal of taking over another people’s (the Palestinian’s) homeland and the rest of the world be damned.
“Jewish Americans face essentially the same quandary that German Jews faced in the last century, that of tying their destiny to the universalism of building a better world (or so it seemed at the time) or to the ethnocentric goal “… yourstruly
From my reading of German Jews most were basically practical—-did not want what they currently had in Germany ‘messed up’ ……the ones who could and did get out when they saw the mess coming didn’t choose to go to Palestine according to everything I’ve read on it.
I don’t think rank and file US Jews are in the same kind of quandary as in Germany. I also don’t think a lot of them recognize there is a serious quandary going on re Israel and the US. And even if some do they don’t see it as a dangerous one despite the 24/7 anti semite zio pumping.
However if it ever got to the level as in Germany my bet is instead of seeing Jews flee to Israel you would see most of them marching around reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to America out of practical self interest and holding onto what they have if for no other reasons. Not to sound conceited about the US, but if they lost America then Israel wouldn’t be much consolation to them.
“I remember those first days when even the national media were asking how dangerous the American connection with Israel had become. In the background, the Twin Towers smoldered.”
I don’t remember this at all. The only reference to Israel/9-11 that I remember was Sharon’s warning: “Don’t appease the Arabs at Israel’s expense.” He said this only days after the attack and made it clear that, in its aftermath, the US shouldn’t forget it’s most important priority. Press Secretary Ari Fleischer scolded Sharon saying that his comments were “inappropriate”. As it turned out Sharon didn’t need to worry because we were told, ad nauseum, that, “they hate us because we’re free!”. If Israel had been a serious part of the discussion about “why 9-11?” we could well be looking at a different scenario today. No such thing took place. Bin Laden’s statments about what inspired the attacks (watching an Israeli bomb destroy a high rise in Beruit, 1982) were never covered.
The “celebrated” victory in ’67 also marked the begining of our era of international terrorism against American citizens. Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian national, assasinated Secretary of State Bobby Kennedy in Los Angeles one year to the day after he approved the shipment of fighter jets to Israel, June 6, 1967. Have his motives ever been seriously discussed? How about the motives of Imad Mugniah, Ramzi Yousef, Abu Nidal, Abu Zubayda, Khalid Sheik Muhammed, Muhammed Atta…
In the post 9-11 era, the US has gone to the ends of the Earth to seek out and destroy our terrorist enemies but in more than forty years Americans have not been presented with a frank, open discussion that attempts to understand our enemies.
“It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.”
-Sun Tzu
the Israeli bomb that Osama bin Laden referred to could have been the israeli “vacuum” (fuel-air explosive) bomb that destroyed an apartment building in West Beirut during the ’82 U.S. supported Israeli war upon Lebanon. Being in West Beirut at the time, I decided to check on exactly what said bomb had “accomplished.” What I found was an 11 story apartment building flattened into a 20-30 foot pile of rubble. The next day in a makeshift Red Crescent Hospital I happened upon Yusuf. His wife and 10 other relatives had been killed by that bomb. While himself physically unscathed he obviously was in a great deal of pain, as over and over he said “everyone’s gone, everyone’s gone.” Yet President George W. Bush must have thought the public would fall for his “they hate us because of our freedom.” Bin Laden obviously wasn’t taken in by Bush’s “reasoning”.
yourstruly-
The dazed trauma you discribed was then visited on Americans nearly 20 years later, but we’re still very far from understanding “why?”
dbroncos: ““I remember those first days when even the national media were asking how dangerous the American connection with Israel had become. In the background, the Twin Towers smoldered.”
I don’t remember this at all…”
Ditto. No such memories. Those were the days of ‘they hate us for our freedom’ and even more extravagant theories. There was even something of a tacit taboo on the notion that there could have been any connection between our behavior and the 9/11 attacks. There still is, in many quarters.
@ ColinWright
Ditto here too. The national media virtually didn’t even mention Israel in connection with 9/11′s immediate aftermath. Nobody even discussed motives for it other than, see we gotta stop Islamic terrorism–”get them over there before they get us again!.” As you say, mostly it was “they hate us for our freedom.” And this mental bent has not really changed much at all.
“Ditto here too. The national media virtually didn’t even mention Israel in connection with 9/11′s immediate aftermath. Nobody even discussed motives for it other than, see we gotta stop Islamic terrorism–”get them over there before they get us again!.” As you say, mostly it was “they hate us for our freedom.” And this mental bent has not really changed much at all.”
At the time — and I remember it quite clearly — on the one hand my feelings about Israel weren’t as clear-cut as they are now, while on the other hand, to offer the suggestion that our support for Israel had led to 9/11 seemed tantamount to excusing the act.
And I didn’t feel like doing that. The thought did cross my mind — but it didn’t seem like a very good idea to suggest it. I had no desire to wind up defending the perpetrators of 9/11.
More to the point, I can’t recall many others offering the suggestion either. At one level or another, the idea was almost universally suppressed. The motives of the 9/11 attackers had to be indefensible. That was a prerequisite for any explanation.
It’s interesting to recall those days. I remember arguing in the morning that no — 50,000 couldn’t have been killed. Not even 20,000. I went out on a limb — and said the final toll would be under 10,000. I remember people sanctimoniously saying ‘well, I hope you’re right Colin, but I think it’s going to be a lot more than that.’ Like they didn’t want the number to be absolutely apocalyptic…
And the theories. ‘They hate us for our freedom’ was the least of it. I remember willingly considering but finally reluctantly abandoning some guy’s rather detailed explanation of it all as a matter of wholesale sexual perversion on the part of Muslims (I forget just how that was supposed to work).
Wild times…and we hadda get somebody back. That’s important to understanding the sequel. It really is. We…had…to…get…somebody…back. I seriously think that we invaded Iraq partly simply because Afghanistan had folded so easily. It was barely a fight. Had it been, it’s entirely possible Iraq never would have happened.
There are lots of other things feeding into it now of course, but part of what all this Iran nonsense is about is the lingering suspicion that somehow we still haven’t really, properly paid off the score from 9/11. I mean, Pearl Harbor happened and we absolutely, conclusively, irrefutably blew the crap out of Japan. That was settled. No question.
We never got that with 9/11. And we’re still hunting…
I don’t remember Israel being mentioned that way either.
I do remember watching the news when Netanyahu said ….”This is good”…then tried to recoup by mumbling about Israel sympathizes with the US because Israel is attacked all the time.
Still, on the other side of the coin, listen to the German youth of today wandering in Jordan and Lebanon, being regaled with “Hitler was right stories” and how proud they must be to come from a land where Jews were on the run. Admired for something they are so ashamed of.
What makes you think that the German youth is ashamed of German history? I am not ashamed of it. There is no rational reason for being ashamed (or proud) of something that you had absolutely nothing to do with.
By the way, Hitler is also considered a big hero in India:
link to cbsnews.com
Imagine that one, these idealist young, wanting a different world and, at least, a different history – slate wiped clean – and find that they are celebrated for the hate crimes of the century and beyond.
You make it sound as if the German youth wants a different history for selfish reasons, so that they are not confronted with the past anymore. However, that’s not the case. The German youth wants a different history, because the actual history was unjust and they reject injustice.
Well, if everyone has to sit through our theatrical and liturgical renditions of the Holocaust, why shouldn’t we sit through the Palestinian evocation of their catastrophe as part of our (re)(re)education as Jews.
The difference is this: The Holocaust has been over for 67 years and most people who did it are dead. Therefore, there’s no reeducation of Germans necessary anymore. The eviction of Palestinians, however, is still going on. So, reeducation of (Zionist) Jews is badly needed.
To put it mildly, it isn’t the kind of romanticized memoir of the war that American Jews loved to read or still retain in our minds. Do we really think that the 1967 war didn’t include every type of disillusioned war stories that accompany every war?
OMG, how can anyone ever romanticise war? That’s totally disgusting.
What does it take for Jews to survive history, to make history, to survive the making of history, all the while retaining the innocence platform?
Why do you lump all Jews together? If I did that, I’d be called an anti-Semite.
RE: “Another boomerang, though, if American Jewish youth of a certain age remember, weren’t we celebrated after the 1967 war as if we had vanquished the Arab/Third World menace?” ~ Marc Ellis
MY COMMENT: I remember one Six-Day War joke in particular. Well, only the gist of the joke to be more accurate. As I recall it, there was a (school?) bus load of Egyptian children somewhere in the Sinai and the punchline was that the mighty Israeli military virtually vaporized the entire bus full of Egyptian children. Not a single survivor!
Needless to say, the joke made quite an impression on me.
German Lefty: “OMG, how can anyone ever romanticise war? That’s totally disgusting.”
Note that even if it is, the disgust isn’t exactly a universal or eternal verity.
“…Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us…”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, speaking of his service in the American Civil War. He served throughout the war, suffering wounds at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff, Antietam, and Chancellorsville. Antietam, incidentally, saw the bloodiest single day of combat in the Civil War, with a total of 22,000 casualties in one day of combat. Approximately one out of every six Union troops engaged was killed or wounded, while approximately one out of every four Confederate troops suffered the same fate.
So Holmes would seem to have been more than a couch warrior. He knew whereof he spoke. Nor was he in any sense mentally disturbed.
I’d say that since World War One, there has been a convention that war is unequivocally bad, without any conceivable appeal to anyone, etc. Well, like so many half-truths, that’s what it is — a half-truth.
@ ColinWright
As a pacifist, I believe that war is a mass violation of human rights and therefore unequivocally bad. You are free to disagree and believe that sometimes the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. However, war must never ever be romanticised or glorified. People who still do that are full of self-righteousness and have lost their sense of reality.
German Lefty says: “People who still do that are full of self-righteousness and have lost their sense of reality.”
These are pretty common human failings.
Equally to the point, whatever you may decide about war, you’ll be misreading people and failing to anticipate their reactions if you assume that they actually share your convictions.
Witness the response to 9/11. A lot of people jumped at the opportunity this created for righteous, full-throated…war. The same impulse lies behind the support many feel for Israel. Israel is legitimized violence. I seriously think that if through some unimaginable realignment of the planets, Israel was a tranquil, prosperous country at peace with its neighbors, it would lose much of its appeal for many. Not all — but many.
“A lot of people jumped at the opportunity this created for righteous, full-throated…war.”
As I remember it, a lot of people jumped at the opportunity this created for righteous, full throated verbal support for war. As for actually going there, well, not so much. But they lowered the recruiting standards, which helped quite a bit. The US military is expert, and has long experience matching the right men (or women) to the job.
“These are pretty common human failings.”
That’s true, but after his taking three wounds, and seeing the horrendous casualty rates at Antietam, I vote for common human failings compounded by insanity.
Witness the response to 9/11. A lot of people jumped at the…”
orders they were given, since they were in the service, and didn’t have much of a choice, and furthermore, had little information except being told that it would be Desert Storm all over again? (“six weeks, six months possibly, but not six years”)
“Nor was he in any sense mentally disturbed.”
Say what? Oliver Wendell Holmes? That Oliver Wendell Holmes? Where did you get that “nor was he in any sense..” hooey from? The man was nuttier than a fruitcake, and don’t think a lot of people at the time didn’t notice it, Colin. He was bats–t nuts, and it wouldn’t take more than a cursory perusal of his writings and sayings to see how goddam crazy he is. What about the Holmes quote dealing with the Civil War which goes:
“…Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us…”
You don’t think those are the words of a lunatic? Seems pretty obvious to me.
Wow, I just Googled ol’ OWH and read about him. Yup, nutty. And he wouldn’t listen to his Dad neither.
(Wiki) “In 1927, Holmes wrote the 8-1 majority opinion in the Buck v. Bell case that upheld the forced sterilization of a woman who was claimed to be of below average intelligence. In support of his argument that the interest of the states in a pure gene pool outweighed the interest of individuals in their bodily integrity, he argued:
“We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
Yup, nuttier than all heck. I also consider him a personal enemy of myself, parents, and grandparents and a tradition which has spammed three generations and more.
“I’d say that since World War One, there has been a convention that war is unequivocally bad, without any conceivable appeal to anyone, etc. Well, like so many half-truths, that’s what it is — a half-truth.”
You tell ‘em Colin. While it’s possible to see, just barely, why WW1 would engender such feelings, how could anyone say that about WW2, with all its ideological and technology improvements. And if that isn’t enough, isn’t the history of war since WW2 should convince anyone who isn’t a “severely disturbed individual” of the appeal and usefulness of war.
Oh BTW, Colin, from what experience do you get your feelings about war? I can’t help noticing that you’re, well, to put it bluntly, still alive.
Oh crap, I rhetorically screwed myself again! Why do I always do this. I should have realised, long before now, that those who bear the full brunt of war’s horror and uselessness never complain. Don’t hear a peep out of ‘em. So maybe war isn’t so bad after all.
Mooser says: “Why do I always do this. I should have realised, long before now, that those who bear the full brunt of war’s horror and uselessness never complain.”
Like Oliver Wendell Holmes. It would be impossible to conduct a serious conversation with you about this or about much of anything else, so I won’t try — but I will observe that you haven’t made any point worth rebutting.
Ah. There it goes. Mooser appears to like to respond to me on buried threads, which can be hard to find.
Anyway, got another one for ‘therefore, must have been nuttier than all heck’ gallery, Mooser.
Theodore Roosevelt. During the charge up San Juan Hill, he famously exclaimed to a (mortally wounded) Roughrider, ‘Isn’t war magnificent?’ There he was, right in it — and the charge was fairly bloody — and he thought war was great stuff.
He must have been as crazy as…Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Someday, you might want to wrap your head around the thought that values change, that there are few if any eternal verities, and the idea that war is a complete evil certainly isn’t one of them.
The tendency used to be to glamorize war as something wonderful — if admittedly terrible. Now, of course, it’s ‘disgusting,’ incomprehensible, any evidence of being susceptible to any appeal being ipso facto proof of profound mental illness or moral degeneration.
The truth — as with so many things — has always lain somewhere in between, and while it might simplify one’s moral universe wonderfully to deny that, it won’t alter what remains true.
The truth lies somewhere in between.
“Someday, you might want to wrap your head around the thought that values change, that there are few if any eternal verities”
You’re right, Colin, this insane attachment I have to my own life and health and other people’s, too, is without a result of my “seriously disturbed” personality. I’ve always thought the difference between life and death was a pretty goddam good verity, but you know better, I’m sure. I guess back in the good old days people didn’t take that whole lif/death thing so seriously.
“Like Oliver Wendell Holmes.”
Wait a minute, genius. I thought you said OWH survived the Civil War, and was not wounded seriously enough that he was unable to become a Supreme Court Judge, and make that insane Bell decision.
Those who know war’s ultimate horror are dead. And I’ve never heard the dead complain Do you get that? People who are dead are worse off than people who are alive and go on to federal Judgeships. Seems pretty basic to me.
You have a different way of looking at it?
“He must have been as crazy as…Oliver Wendell Holmes.”
Yup, if you ask me, any man who hasn’t been killed doesn’t know war’s full horror, so he’s just talking pretty much insane twaddle to get other’s killed. Not just insane, but malicious, too.
But Colin, if you want to go get killed in war, as even better, as an innocent child victim of war, and come back and report that it isn’t the ultimate horror of war, I’ll believe you, really, I will.