Posted on 12/13/2006 6:49:09 PM PST by yochanan
Rattling the Cage: Holocaust denial and Jewish liberals By LARRY DERFNER
Talkbacks for this article: 24
Along with any number of other Jewish liberals, I have written often, and heatedly, against the exploitation of the Holocaust by official Israel, the Diaspora Jewish establishment and ordinary Jews who identify with them.
I get incensed that every official visitor to Israel has to stop first at Yad Vashem - to be softened up and put on the defensive before the give-and-take of diplomacy with Israel can begin. The March of the Living, where Israeli high school students visit concentration camps and then march through the Polish streets with Israeli flags, seems like a pre-army motivational camp more than anything else.
It angers me when the professional and amateur politicians of Israel and the Diaspora bring up the Holocaust to justify any Israeli military action against Arabs, when they invoke the Holocaust to silence Israel's critics, when they make political statements in the name of the Jews killed by the Nazis, when they wrap Israel - and, by extension, themselves as Israel's spokesmen - in the martyrdom of the Six Million.
So what is it that makes me, or the many Jewish liberals who share this attitude, any different from the people at this week's Holocaust denial conference in Teheran? Exploitation of the Holocaust by Israel and its supporters was one of the major themes there, along, of course, with the claim that the Holocaust never happened, or, if it did, that it wasn't remotely as bad as people think. (The real message of the Holocaust deniers - that the Holocaust was a good thing - was no doubt only mentioned quietly, when the conferees were chatting among themselves, and out of earshot of the collaborators from Natorei Karta.)
Are we Jewish liberals who criticize our own for exploiting the Holocaust in the same boat with those Jew-haters and Israel-haters in Teheran - or, at the very least, are we giving them aid and comfort? With Israel's worst enemies using the Holocaust as a weapon against it, shouldn't liberal Jewish critics of Israel finally realize the wisdom of keeping quiet on this subject?
I imagine a lot of Jews, probably most Jews, think we should. There is a taboo in the Jewish world against challenging how Jewish leaders and the Jewish mainstream treat the Holocaust, and that taboo went into force long before Ahmadinejad came around.
BUT WHAT happened this week in Teheran wasn't new. Those 50 or 60 individuals at that conference are not the first to deny the Holocaust, and Ahmadinejad is not the first Muslim leader to do so, or to use the Holocaust against Israel.
Jews have always had enemies and we always will. But Jews have to understand the difference between enemies and critics, especially Jewish critics.
Along with, I imagine, every other left-wing Zionist who's ever been appalled at the way Israeli and Diaspora Jewish leaders exploit the Holocaust, I would have been filled with joy if a bolt of lightning had struck that conference in Teheran and killed everybody inside, starting with Ahmadinejad.
With the exception of the collaborators from Natorei Karta, those people are modern-day Nazis. They want for the Jews what Hitler wanted.
What can I tell you? - Jewish liberals, left-wing Zionists, Jewish critics of Israel are not David Duke. Speaking for myself, when I criticize the enlistment of the Holocaust for Israeli nationalist causes, or to strengthen the Diaspora Jewish establishment, or to place modern-day Jews above criticism, it's because I think this trivializes what happened back then. I think the memory of the Six Million should fill modern-day Jews with humility; the last thing we should be doing is marching and waving flags, cheering ourselves.
Natorei Karta = soap wannabes.
Those European Jews all killed themselves as any reasonable person can discern.
Come on, they all walked into the gas chambers freely and of their own volition.
Even now we can see the evidence and rationalizing of Jewish self destruction simply by harking unto the words of the professional Jewish pundits who are claiming the contemporary pulpit duties.
No wonder six million Jews decided to collectively commit suicide with such as these assholes as their spokesmen.
What is the difference between Neturei Karta and Larry Derfner?
Neturei Karta doesn't get a regular column in the Jerusalem Post.
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
A couple of thousand words, no point!
Larry Derfner needs a kick in the kibbutz!
My father and all my grandparents are/were survivors. However, at Sunday School, I had a very different attitude from the other students. The children and grandchildren of the idolizers of FDR who did almost nothing to help who bathed in the pathos of the Holocaust. They read about Anne Frank and wanted to help the Muslims in Bosnia. I actually listened to a holocaust survivor and knew about the Bosnian SS units. They wept over "Sophies Choice" and wanted to help the poor Somalis. I too wept, but wanted to learn about Judaism or at least help other Jews.
"Come on, they all walked into the gas chambers freely and of their own volition"
no way! were you paying attention to the conference, there were no gas chambers.
"I think the memory of the Six Million should fill modern-day Jews with humility"
Why? So they can be massacred again? Yeah, Ahmadinejad and David Duke agree that Jews should be filled with humility. What a hole!
This man is a density. Those who push memory of the Holocaust into the corner will have one of their own.
I wouldn't want some people's obvious hatred of Jews to rattle this Jewish liberal's cage (sarcasm).
Can anyone can up with anything else more appropriate?
Loopy Larry
Kosherbat
The Mishuginah MoFo
Nerdfer
Dopey Derfner
Can anyone can up with anything else more appropriate?
Freaking scary.
When I was growing up and learning of the things done to Jews in Europe before and during WWII, I always wondered how any people could allow that to happen. Today I see 88% of American Jews voting for democrats, and 'leaders' in Israel STILL suggesting, today, that 'Maybe we should give up a little more land", and I wonder so much anymore.
guy who wold have been = guy who would have been
and I wonder so much anymore. = and I don't wonder so much anymore.
If I could type, I'd be dangerous...
Holocaust denial is a Divine punishment for Jewish silence in the face of denials of HaShem and His Torah.
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