POINT ONE: I do not capitalize the word holocaust deliberately. It has nothing to do with questioning what happened or belittling it.
For Zionists, it is intentional that the word be capitalized because to them it represents something unique that justifies their claim to be unique along with what they have done and do in Palestine. For them, Jews are victims of the rest of humanity. This can never change. As PM Netanyahu has put it, "we must always live by the sword". For Jews the other will always be the aggressor. Humanity is divided between Jews and all others. In this cosmic injustice, Jews can never be anything other than defenders and in the right whatever means are chosen for this assumed defense.
This is the reason that the 20:1 kill ratio (Pals/Israelis) is not of real note to Israelis, nor is the destruction of Gaza. It is an imperative. Six million dead Jews say this, so Israel claims, without being able to actually hear what the dead might say. No non-Jew can question this in spite of many living Jews vehemently saying, "Not in Our Name" over much of the history of Israel up to right now.
This is way Netanyahu has said with a straight face that we are witnessing the forces of light (Israel) vs the forces of darkness (the Palestinians but really all the Arabs, the Turks, the Iranians and any others opposed to what Israel does). He is gracious enough to include the US as an ally on the side of light.
I want to look at Oct 7 in a way you may be able to understand by using a scene from the movie, Sophie's Choice, as powerful a flick as any I have seen. Sophie is a resident of a concentration camp. She is fortunate to have obtained a job as maid for the Nazi commandant. He has a family and a nice home with a lawn and garden. His children play happily in this comfortable life that answers all the needs one could want including parental love and complete security.
But there is a gate on the yard of the commandant's house. When Sophie leaves the house and opens the gate she is presented with the horror of the death camp. Nothing but the wall at the edge of the commandant's yard separates the ideal life from hell. Of course this is no secret to the commandant, yet he is not bothered by it in the least...one place is home, one place is work.
On Oct 7 we saw this same scene, the carefree, delightful music festival for those with clear consciences on one side of the Gaza fence and the hell of the Gaza prison on the other. The big difference is the Gazans, in the form of HAMAS, had managed to build a capability to attack those living the good life seemingly without any fear of what was right next door to which they had no objection.
Oct 7 happened. What has been topic one for the Israelis and in the US? The horror of the day or the horror of the years, the decades, the entire lives of those on the other side of the fence? It is no accident that we are told "this is the greatest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust!" while the unlimited killing and destruction continues as I write, 20 times the loss of life, with the US supplying the means without question. Yet Americans for the most part don't see anything but "our ally" under attack. The Nazi commandant from the movie would understand this if ever any group of prisoners could storm his hearth and home. His response would be a duplication of what Israel is doing right now.
POINT TWO: The taking of the land
Right now there is a continuing uproar in the United States over the outrage of illegal immigration. The Mexicans and other groups must be stopped at the border using any means necessary, a wall, arrest and imprisonment. This influx cannot be tolerated. Democrats and Republicans both agree something must be done...this about an influx of people who in number do not make up even a fraction of a percentage of the US population.
But the Palestinians are wrong to have objected to an unlimited number of Jews coming to Palestine. They are wrong to have turned to violence against Jews. They are wrong to think this process should not continue right up to the present with plans for it to go on indefinitely as they are herded into a corner in Gaza. It is an outrage that some Palestinians have turned to violence resulting in JEWS BEING KILLED! and we should all think of the holocaust.
Now the Jews who have immigrated to Palestine with the intent of becoming a majority of the population everywhere in Palestine are not the same as the immigrants trying to get into the US. These people at the US/Mexican border simply want a better life, any life at all compared to what they have known.
Not one of them is thinking of turning the US into Mexico, of replacing English with Spanish, of ejecting the present non-Latino citizens of the US, of depriving such citizens of their civil rights, of tearing down what has been built in the US and replacing it with what the immigrants want to build, of getting rid of all English place-names and passing a law the puts English beneath Spanish as the national language, of claiming the US as their rightful homeland (though that is true enough), of banning the display of the American flag, of taking all firearms away from non-Latinos. I could go on and on in this truth telling.
I rest my case. You be the judges. Most Americans, completely ignorant had long ago come down on the side of Israel, those people "just like us" but the Oct 7 attack has thrown open wide a door to reveal Israel as its true, unvarnished self and the sight is not appealing. Just possibly justice might be served at least in some way, if only partial, for a long standing horror of death and dispossession.
PS...I recall talking with a Jewish woman years ago who had just returned from Israel. It was at a meeting of JVP where people were telling of their experiences there. This woman told of walking in Jerusalem when she saw an armed Israeli policewoman hit an elderly Arab woman with the butt of her rifle.
This visitor walked up to the Israeli and said "I just saw what you did. Why did you do that?" The response was "It's just an Arab". Note the use of the word "it" for a human being.
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