The article linked below made me wonder about this.
The professor indicated below may be brilliant in his field but he is apparently a political idiot. It does seem, however, that based on the article, his attitude apparently reflects the personal (not institutional) attitudes of a significant number of English and European academics and non-academics, who feel that Israel has played or otherwise relied on the Holocaust card once too often at this point in justifying their (perceived) gross human rights abuses and oppression of the Palestinians.
In the eyes of Europeans is the moral leverage of the Holocaust experience about used up at this point in Israel justifying their behavior toward the Palestinians?
I can’t see in what way the Holocaust ever gave the Israelis any justification for their behavior toward the palestinians. If what the Israelis are doing is wrong, the holocaust is totally irrelevant and don’t offer them any sort of moral high ground. It doesn’t now, and it never did. So, in my mind this “moral leverage” isn’t exhausted, it never existed at the first place.
Or else, anybody whose people has been opressed during the last 60 years would also keep a moral leverage which would allow him to opress anybody else he sees fit. I don’t think it works that way. For instance, if you’ve been the victim of an attempted murder 20 years ago, it doesn’t give you the right to steal my wallet.
However, I indeed remember there has been some arguments in some academic circles last year because some institutions or some individual scholar decided to boycott Israel and sometimes Israeli scholars. I didn’t know it was still an issue.
As for the crossword puzzle, I couldn’t find on online source about it in french . I was curious to read the actual definition in french and to check whether they have been all used in the same puzzle…it would make a difference, IMO…
For instance, “kike”…I assume it was “youpine” in french… is indeed a derogatory word for a jewish woman, so I’ve no issue with that. What is insulting is calling someone names, not mentionning that the word exists. But perhaps there’s a different view over here since I noticed on this board that people apparently don’t even dare to write the word “nigger”, even when mentionning it without any intent to be derogatory. Similarily, taken far from home" is a correct definition for “deported”, and doesn’t have to refer to Jewish people or WWII in any way. But if the three definitions, including “genocide” actually appeared in the same puzzle, there’s indeed a problem. As for the “wholesale meat”, that’s why I wanted to search the actual definition used in french, but I couldn’t find any references.
Sorry for my doubts, but the site you provided a link to, ** december ** appears to be extremely biased, as usual, and to say the truth, I lost most confidence in the truthfulness of your sources.
I can’t see in what way the Holocaust ever gave the Israelis any justification for their behavior toward the palestinians. If what the Israelis are doing is wrong, the holocaust is totally irrelevant and don’t offer them any sort of moral high ground. It doesn’t now, and it never did. So, in my mind this “moral leverage” isn’t exhausted, it never existed at the first place.
Or else, anybody whose people has been opressed during the last 60 years would also keep a moral leverage which would allow him to opress anybody else he sees fit. I don’t think it works that way. For instance, if you’ve been the victim of an attempted murder 20 years ago, it doesn’t give you the right to steal my wallet.
However, I indeed remember there has been some arguments in some academic circles last year because some institutions or some individual scholar decided to boycott Israel and sometimes Israeli scholars. I didn’t know it was still an issue.
As for the crossword puzzle, I couldn’t find on online source about it in french . I was curious to read the actual definition in french and to check whether they have been all used in the same puzzle…it would make a difference, IMO…
For instance, “kike”…I assume it was “youpine” in french… is indeed a derogatory word for a jewish woman, so I’ve no issue with that. What is insulting is calling someone names, not mentionning that the word exists. But perhaps there’s a different view over here since I noticed on this board that people apparently don’t even dare to write the word “nigger”, even when mentionning it without any intent to be derogatory. Similarily, taken far from home" is a correct definition for “deported”, and doesn’t have to refer to Jewish people or WWII in any way. But if the three definitions, including “genocide” actually appeared in the same puzzle, there’s indeed a problem. As for the “wholesale meat”, that’s why I wanted to search for the actual definition used in french, but I couldn’t find any references.
Sorry for my doubts, but the site you provided a link to, ** december ** appears to be extremely biased, as usual, and to say the truth, I lost most confidence in the truthfulness of your sources.
My cite took its information from this site, which shows the original French and the English translation. The word “Youpine” is used, as you thought. Note that the source of the story is Liberation and the story has also been reported in Isranews. I have no idea what the reliability of these two sources is.
Can you tell us what is the reputation of Le Parisien? Is this a respectable magazine or newspaper?
Europe seems to be the source of most of the people claiming to be “anti-Zionist,” the ones I see on the web. I’ve never, ever seen or heard someone claim that it’s alright to treat the Palestinians badly because of the Holocaust, so I’ll need a cite to believe it. Until then I’ll assume that the Holocaust is a reason given for Zionism…and if the Europeans are tired of hearing it as an excuse for Zionism, I’m not sure what to tell them. The answer isn’t going to change, you know…“times up, we need another reason now or no more Jewish state.” That’s ridiculous.
Ok…I read the article. By the way “boucherie en gros” has a double meaning. It can be understood as "wholesale meat " but also as “large-scale slaughter” or “slaughter, roughly”. Indeed it was quite distasteful to use all these definitions.
Liberation is a quite acceptable paper, strongly left-leaning, targeting a rather young, leftist, urban and “open-minded” readership. The kind of paper where you’ll find a lot of articles about gay issues, about helpless immigrants being victimized by evil police officers, about culture, about social isues, that sort of things. I suppose you get the picture. It has a (relatively ) well-developped international section. It has on the overall a good reputation, and is quite reliable, with some investigation, but as I said with a strong leftist bia. It’s one of the the main french nation-wide papers. Concerning the issue at hand, it tends to be strongly pro-palestinian, but I’m not surprised that it’s the paper which pointed out the crossword issue, since anti-racism is one of its main peet-peeves.
“Le Parisien” is a popular paper sold in the Paris area. It has articles about current issues “real people” are concerned about, about the various crimes/disasters which were commited/happened the day before, a lot of sport pages, and a little bit of international news, the ones which are making the headlines. Nothing too complicated, nothing its readers could find boring or irritating. That’s the kind of paper bar owners often leave on the corner of the counter for their patrons to read while drinking a beer or sipping their morning coffee. I suppose you get the picture, once again. Just popular press (though not gutter press). You can guess I don’t consider it as a reliable and interesting source (well…perhaps it’s reliable, but there isn’t much to learn reading it, anyway). However it doesn’t have the reputation of being antisemitic (or anti or pro-anything, for that matter. Perhaps remotely right-wing). So, I had doubts about them publishing a distasteful crossword puzzle.
I think the Jewish state should never have been created at the first place, Holocaust or not, so, as far as I’m concerned this reason isn’t going to satisfy me. The only good reason for Israel to exist in my mind is that now, a large part of its population are people who were born and always lived there. So, now, that’s their country. But it has nothing to do with what happened to their parents or grand-parents during WWII.
And I’m not very fond of the selective immigration policy of Isreal, and I particulary dislike thinking that some of these immigrants come to settle in the occupied territories, further complicating the issue. Contrarily to an israeli-born citizen, a recent Jewish immigrant (barring refugees coming for really good reasons, but AFAIK, there aren’t much of them nowadays) has no particulary good claim to come and live in this region or at least a claim way less valid than a random Palestinian.
The site which december linked to is a rasism hate site. He has been asked by others here not to link to that site previously.
Incidently, the quote in the OP also appears on the very same page which december linked too, but the OP links to The Telegraph. May I ask you, december and astro, are any of you involved in running that site, or are you members there?
In the thread that I know of which december was asked not to link to that site anymore, swami checked the site out and posted some comments from it. It’s comments about Palestinians:
“Every time I think they couldn’t disgust me more, they do. I am convinced we are watching evolution-in-reverse.”
“The “Night of the Living Dead” parallels draw ever closer”
"Yeah…good thing their kids are right smack in the middle of the scene. Islam, Muslims, Palestinians MUST be destroyed…every last one of 'em. "
"i cannot even dignify these creatures with my hatred… im too exhausted for that, they simply disgust me on the smae gut level a cockroach would.
i just want to stomp on them already and make them all, all, all, dissapear, to be squasehd and swept up and flushed down the toilet… and mostly, i cant forgive them for bringing me feel that way… "
Personally I feel links to such sites should not be on a repectable board as SDMB, or any other board.
I dont think the Holocaust ever did or ever could justify Israeli behaviour towards the Palestinians. It would have justified a Jewish state being created at the German’s expense in say what was formerly East Prussia. But People A’s crimes against People B does not justify crimes against People C, and nor does People D’s guilt over not having done all they could to help People B justify disposing of People C as a colonial chattel.
And yes having looked at the site Alien is referring to, its a hate-site and doesnt belong here.
I fail to see the relevance of Decembers words “Apparently the Holocaust is now a source of humor for some Europeans…” to what he actually quoted. There is the implication that “some” Europeans find the Holocaust funny and then there are those stupid anecdotes and nothing in the form of relevance between them.
Is it ok to spew ignorance and hatred like that in this forum? Is it ok to link to a hatefilled, racist, malignant website like that in here? December, is that a website you frequent?
Not so. What you have demonstrated is that some offensive comments about Palestinians were posted. However, Charles Johnson’s columns in Little Green Footballs are factual. Many are based on translations of Arabic publications. Note that the article I cited was accurate and provided links to its sources.
From time to time, racist comments have been posted in the SDMB, but that doesn’t mean that the entire Straight Dope is racist.
It isn’t all that hard to see how Israel keeps its moral leverage from the Holocaust alive and well. They are a country surrounded by enemies dedicated to their destruction and those countries have attempted that very thing on several occasions. Arguing that Israel antagonizes the issue or that Israel maybe should never have been created in the first place is beside the point as far as this discussion is concerned (whether or not the Israelis play the holocaust card too much). Like it or not Israel does exist and there is no reasonable way to expect them to go anywhere. By no means are the Israeli saints in all of this but it isn’t hard to see why they have a bunker mentality and feel perpetually persecuted.
As to the Europeans I certainly can’t speak for all of them (or even any of them) but I did notice in my travels in Germany that Germans seem to retain a suitable level of chagrin over WWII and the holocaust. They didn’t seem (to me) to be abasing themselves but neither had they seemed to have forgotten and I got a mild sense of an abiding embarassment over the whole thing. Mind you these are broad strokes and certainly there are skinhead groups and such in Germany but on the whole this was the sense I got (from some very specific encounters and discussions I had while I was there).
Thank you for answering. I will have to look at LGF more closely later. But it strikes me that this is not only user comments. The editor himself wrote the following about the new Palestinian cease-fire offer:
“Islamic Jihad has announced that they will take a short pause to rest, reload, and rearm, before they resume murdering Jews.”
That sounds beyond bias too me, and I’m not comfortable with you linking to such from a board, such as SDMB. But I’ll look at the site tomorrow.
Rachel Corrie Commentary from Zionist Supremacist Weblog Little Green Footballs:
“Charles, last time you posted that witch, I printed it out, taped it to my bulls eye and unloaded a few magazines at that piece of trash. I though it was finally over, but now this…”
“Will the bitch never die?”
“How 'bout we all get together at Rachel’s grave and stage a vomit-in on it.”
" I have much too much respect for my own vomit than to waste it on such trash."
“I’m thinking to offer her a tribute by buying a fine bottle of wine and pouring it on her grave, after filtering it through my kidneys.”
“We recall dhimmi-dupe Rachel Corrie
In Gaza for human shield glory;
But her outlook turned flat
When a 'dozer went splat
And now she’s the left’s favorite sob story.”
“I am working today but when I get home I will take a leak in Rachel Corrie’s honor.”
“Can we all just forget about this creep? Jeeze, how many times is Charles gonna force us to look at her twisted up, hate-filled skanky mug?”
Taken from one thread. I ask again. Is it ok to link to this site?
I think you might be horribly ignorant of history. The Holocaust was just the last stage in a very long history of mistreatment of Jews by not just European countries, but in virtually every country where Jews lived. Zionism was founded by Theodore Hertzl after the Dreyfus trial in 1894. When Dreyfus was convicted of treason soley because he was Jewish, Hertzel realized that unless Jews had a state of their own, they would always be subject to the anti-semetic whims of whatever countries they lived in; there would be no place to escape to.
Considering what happened less than 50 years later, it’s hard to argue with Hertzl’s conclusion. Before the Holocaust, Hitler first offered to just expel the Jews from Germany. There was a worldwide conference, and shock of all shocks, no one wanted the Jews. So, he exterminated them, with large numbers of non-German Europeans providing all the help they could (for example, the French rounded up their Jewish citizens before the Nazis asked).
Don’t think that the Arab world was immune to this, either. Jews either lived in Dhimmi status, or they were exterminated. Most of the population of Israel is descended from Arab Jews who were thrown out of Arab countries post-1948, often arriving in Israel with nothing more than the shirts on their backs.
As for “selective immigration policies”, can you point out to me the country which DOESN’T have a selective immigration policy? Every country chooses who they want to let in. In Israel’s case, as the Jewish homeland, it lets in Jews. This should not shock, as it is the location of the ancestral home of the Jews.
If there was going to be a refuge for Jews anywhere, why shouldn’t it be in their ancestral home? What other piece of land do you think Jews should be able to run to the next time the world decides it wants to blame them for their ills? Or do you think they should just hop on the trains and go off to die again?
Why is that biased? If you mean biased, as in “has a point of view”, then yeah, it’s a point of view, and I’d love to hear how it’s not an accurate one, given the history of Islamic Jihad and their public statements.
If you mean biased as in “bigoted”, I’d like you to explain exactly how it is bigoted to take someone at their word. Islamic Jihad hasn’t laid down their arms. They haven’t forsworn violence. They do not accept a two-state solution. I’ll say it again: how is this statement not accurate?