1. Jews are an ethnic group, not a race.
2. Various criteria have been used throughout time to individuate groups targeted for deliberate slaughter. These include, without limitation, ethnicity, class, religion, ideology, race, location, birth order, and economic cost/inconvenience (e.g. as when the Nazis used “life unworthy of life” as a basis for murdering the old, infirm, handicapped, etc. and the feminists targeted unborn babies). In every case, there is collective intent. In the case of abortion it has gone one step further: the murder is now conducted on a commercial basis and the “businesses” engaged in the slaughter get to advertise for victims. This, I believe, is unprecedented. Of course, the commercialization of this form of mass murder has only been able to proceed because of “collective intent” (Note that “collective intent” can’t mean “unanimity”. Nevertheless, I don’t know of an instance of mass murder that has been more extensively or energetically promoted legally and publicly than abortion.).
3. In the 20th Century alone the list of peoples or groups deliberately murdered is depressingly long.
4. The “Shoah” was indeed a disaster and a horror. The fact that it was not a unique moral/hisorical event doesn’t diminish the utter evil of what the Nazis did to Jews.
5. Attempting to claim that different moral significance attaches to the various rationales for mass murder is senseless. It does not matter morally if people are murdered merely because they are kulaks, Armenians, Jews, class “enemies”, Hutus, “intellectuals”, not first-born, or handicapped or otherwise “inconvenient”. For example, claiming that murdering someone merely for being Armenian is “different” from murdering someone merely because he is a kulak is a distinction without a moral difference.
6. To the extent this thread is degenerating into a bizarre discussion of the alleged moral merits of the use of “holocaust”, “Shoah”, and “genocide” it is becoming absurd.
“... this thread is degenerating into a bizarre discussion...”
Yes it is. The Holocaust vs. the holocaust. After reading carefully, it sounds to me like some people just want to sound like they are smartest person in the room.
Use of “Shoah” by orthodox jews is an interesting footnote, but has nothing to do with the current, common, acceptable usage of the word holocaust to refer to events outside of The Holocaust. The fact that everybody reading this will understand this distinction proves this point.
As you point out, drawing moral distinctions between holocausts is pointless and not a little bit silly to me as well.