At any rate, I am as anti-Israel as they come, but I am very sensitive to Jews and their issues… They will let it go, whenever they feel they are ready to let it go. Each one at his own time.
I do believe that there are Jews out there who are milking the holocaust for all it’s got. That doesn’t mean anything about the community, though. Most Jews I know are more concerned about their fancy shoes and pricey cars than about the holocaust, their Jewish identity or the current reality of Israel. TMDV (Their Mileage Does Vary).
As for the lady, well, it is hard to know exactly what is going through her mind. The world has come to terms with the word “Nazi” at this point. It is used casually for humour and emphasis on all kinds of mixed company. “Hitler” is not quite there yet, but it won’t be long.
Would I use either word in a Synagogue? I think not. In a company owned by orthodox jews? Well, that depends on how good my resume is looking, I guess. They guy was a complete idiot for what he said. The lady’s reaction is hard to judge for us from this distance. I tend to assume over-reaction and taking advantage of the situation, but what do I know?
And there’s your answer. That’s a comment that’s generally going to raise some hackles.
I disagree with lots if Israeli policies, but i’m not sure what it means to be “anti-Israel,” unless you actually believe that the country doesn’t even deserve to exist. Is that your position? Because it would put you in some pretty unpleasant company.
I disagree with the whole drunken map drawing that followed WWII. But so this doesn’t turn into a major hijack of the thread, let me just say that I believe that Israel is enjoying a special protected status that it has no right to. Still, that does not colour my perception of either Israelis or Jews.
I was going to be lazy and just comment “What Malthus said”, but then this popped up:
As long as there are assholes passing on gratuitous slurs like these, there will be individual Jews overreacting to lesser insults.
Personally, I wouldn’t get bent out of shape about someone calling me “Hitler” (I’d be tempted to respond “I’ll bet you didn’t know Hitler was a wonderful dancer.”)*
*obscure The Producers reference.
You might want to elaborate just a tad on this, because “as anti-Israel as they come,” usually means, “Slaughter everyone in the country, man, woman, and child.” And I’m really hoping that’s not what you meant to say.
Although I have lost all hope of unhijacking this thread, let me try to keep this short. No, I do not want Israel blanket bombed. I do not want anything that implies the destruction of innocents.
I had a girlfriend who was a manager for a leading Brit. bank(NOT a bank mgr. though) who told me that her staff called her Hitler behind her back,she found it quite amusing .(She was a practicing Christian by the way)
I think the use of Hitler or Little Hitler refers to a bossy person and has no religous or national connotations.
Slightly related ,Ken Livingstone,Mayor of London on being approached by a journo after an official function and being in a somewhat relaxed frame of mind basically told the reporter to go away and asked him if he was some sort of concentration camp guard .
Well, since my parents, who were at Aushwitz (and my dad has a number on his arm) are still alive…
not yet.
The generation who lived through and the next generation who suffered the effects of being raised by profoundly damaged (yet heroic and brave) people are still affected by the immediacy of it.
It may seem long ago to you- it’s not to too many of us.
FWIW refernces to the “Soup Nazi” on Seinfeld made my skin crawl. I don’t choose to react this way- it’s how I react on a visceral level. So I can’t imagine how being called “Hiltler” would feel.
It doesn’t matter how religous you are- being Jewish is a cultural identity independant of religon. You have no idea if any immediate family of hers were survivors as well.
I din’t read the whole thread (a no-no, I know) so I apologize if any of this is repetitive.
Some good points have been made, but, speaking as someone who was quite recently raised Jewish in the US, in a synagogue that’s 99% second-and-higher generation Americans (ie, few if any congregants were in Europe when Hitler was in power*), there is an irrationally high level of focus on the Holocaust within the Jewish community.
Obviously my experience is just mine, I’m sure there’s plenty of places where it’s different, etc. But go to any synagogue for a few weeks and there’s bound to be a holocaust reference. That on it’s own irks me a bit, as I think it borders on victimism and is a rather dreary approach to life, but that’s not my big problem with it. My big problem with it is that so often that ‘remembrance’ or whatever you want to call it is forcibly applied to current events. The implication behind a lot of the ‘fixation’, in my opinion, is that the world is chock full of people just waiting for the chance to give it another try.
I don’t deny that there are some people like that out there. But I think when a community assumes that there’s lots of them and that there’s some degree of actual risk of this happening, then…well, it’s not going to help the situation. I’ve actually heard people compare the Israel/Palestine situation to the Holocaust. I’ve heard people say that a random act of teenage vandalism at a high school was ‘just like the precursors to the holocaust’.
Remembering what happened and those who were killed** is important, yes. But I think the Jewish community does sometimes go too far, which can lead to separatism, which can lead to genuine fear and hatred, etc. It’s not a productive attitude.
*I just found out a few weeks ago that the head rabbi’s parents were actually survivors; obviously this had a pretty big effect on him.
**I won’t go into this much, but for every Jew killed in those camps, in pogroms, etc, there was another non-Jew killed as well. I think if it were truly an issue of ‘remember and honor those who died’, we’d see a lot more about those non-Jews.
Why in the world should they let it go? My late father-in-law was held as a POW by the Germans - should he have let it go?
How can you say - how can you even think - such a thing? There are people still living with tattoos on their arms, who often watched their family members taken from them - and you want to “let it go”?
I often read things on the Dope I don’t agree with; one reason I love this board is because I am exposed to different viewpoints. This is the first “different viewpoint” that has me sitting in slack-jawed amazement.
You’re as anti-Israel as they come? What the fuck do you mean exactly by that comment? Especially considering that there are plenty of people who would be happy to see Israel wiped off the face of the map and every man, woman and child dead.
How would you react to someone who said “I’m as anti-Puerto Rico as they come?” What kind of impression would you form of someone who said something like that?
Well, that’s my big problem with it. I think that’s a terrible way to look at life. Okay, I take that back. “Never Again” bothers me as much; I feel like it’s lost all meaning since it’s happened “Again” so many times (just not to Jews) over the last six decades. I wish the people who had those posters and signs hanging up would do more to take the lead in drawing attention to other genocides.
Or what if we were discussing Puerto Rican statehood/independence and somebody said “I live in New York, and most of the Puerto Ricans I know care a lot more about their hot clothing and tricked out cars than Puerto Rican statehood/independance”?
Great cite with wrmea, a dedicated anti-Israel website.
It’s really bizarre to claim that Israel has some special protected status. What other country except the United States has a vast panoply of organizations devoted to hating it? That’s sort of the opposite of special protected status, isn’t it?