Vigil - horror covered by the holocaust

The holocaust has been horribly exploited by Israel. In the US, Zionists have pressed to have individual states mandate holocaust education before high school in public schools, Illinois is one, no mention of the Nakba of course.

The holocaust should create remorse for the millions who died in the event, but this should not transfer to Israel, to those who shelter under this remorse (and guilt) to do horrible things to others while expecting to be excused for it as eternal victims. Netanyahu is among the worst holocaust exploiters as he spreads carnage and death freely while thinking it is righteous.

I cannot believe the many helpless people who died at Auschwitz would approve of what has been done using them as a cover. Morally, Netanyahu has nothing to stand on as he declares himself the leader of the "forces of light"!

The philosophy that drives my pro-Palestinian view

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.

The Holocaust as Learned PTSD

Many Jews after the holocaust, not just survivors, but Jews around the world including in the US, were subject to the ultimate PTSD that altered their outlook on the world and their fellow man. It was crystal clear that Jews had been marked for wholesale extermination, limited only by the fight against Nazism to spreading even further than it did. I know of one Jew in particular, now very elderly, who has a terrible case of misanthropy, can see no good in anyone, is the first to offer a harsh judgement on people that I know not to be what he sees in them. His entire family with the exception of his parents died in the holocaust and he is also a victim in a way that has him in a mental prison that has turned him against all but other Jews and even against them if they don't think, like he does, that the Palestinians are animals.

His example of this mega-PTSD has so warped the views of so many people that they cannot see themselves as anything but victims-in-waiting if not actual victims as was the case on Oct 7. In fact, for these people, Oct 7 was nothing but validation of their upside down view. The history of who did what and why amounts to nothing. Rational argument amounts to nothing. As Netanyahu has said "we will always live by the sword" never considering it is the sword that Israel wields that gives credence to his words. He repeatedly says "ask HAMAS" as he truly believes it is HAMAS that is responsible for all his killing of innocent people. His hand is forced, but it is a clean hand. Mega-PTSD.

Mega-PTSD fired up Zionism and drove the terrorism that was led by such as Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir who would both become Israeli Prime Ministers preceding Netanyahu (whose father was a rabid Zionist). Mega-PTSD drives the odd tunnel vision version of "never again" which means destroy before being destroyed (pre-emption) and the most perverted aspect of all which is that what one thinks is true, is true, and there can be no refutation of it by anyone, anyone who for the simple act of disputation is per se antisemitic. A Zionist cannot be questioned regarding any destruction or killing by Israel as it is, by definition if Israel is doing it, a necessity and only a pale shadow of what Jews suffered in the holocaust against which no tragedy, past, present or future is worthy of the name. Thus the slaughter without hesitation we are witnessing. Mega-PTSD.

Most Israelis suffer from this mental illness because of the holocaust though the problem is not limited to Israel. Israel promotes this mental illness, seeking to pass it on by sending public high school students to Auschwitz to be bathed in the horror and supplied with Israeli flags they are welcome to wrap around themselves as they contemplate what is clearly intended as a horror that is directed at them for which Israel is the one and only shelter.

This mental illness cannot be cured, short of some trauma that results in waking up, so the only hope of escape is the rise of new generations that can see clearly rather than down the dark holocaust tunnel with Israel a shining light at the end. Because of the indoctrination of Israeli youth, it is American Jews that offer real hope and that is evidenced by the outstanding actions of Jewish Voice for Peace, which I cannot praise too highly and with which I have been actively involved since before the turn of the century. These "kids" are inspired by their Judaism, using it as an escape from Zionism by which it has been hijacked.

If you hate what you see going on in Gaza, as I do, don't hesitate to not only give generously to JVP but to turn out for any event they sponsor near you. They welcome all, including Palestinians, Christians, atheists, you name it, because they understand so well the humanity we share and that they believe is not just valued but honored by their religion. They say "not in our name" and "never again for ANYONE!" from the heart and I say bless those hearts that have escaped the cruel grip of Zionism.

 

Where are the Nakba museums?

There is a new Holocaust museum within easy bike riding distance of my home. In downtown Chicago there is the excellent Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies.

The State of Illinois, by law, requires study of the Holocaust before students reach high school and also in high school. Here is the motivation for the law:

In November 1987, an outbreak of vandalism directed against Jewish stores and synagogues, prompted Erna I. Gans, Holocaust survivor and President of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois, to issue a call for action to combat such violence with education in the form of a state mandate.

Everyone should know about the Holocaust and the Spertus Museum and the Holocaust Museum are excellent places for learning.

But the fact that a catastrophe is going on as we speak, as we visit the Spertus Institute or the Holocaust Museum, and by the very folks who are descendents of those who suffered, who are so well represented in these places - that this current, ongoing, United States funded catastrophe has nothing but silence to represent it, is a hypocrisy that is stunning.

How many times do we hear that two wrongs do not make a right? Are Palestinians any less innocent than were the Jews of Europe? It's quite true that Israel is not executing Palestinians outright (that would eventually happen during the Great March of Return on the Gaza border with Israel), but to push a people out of their own land, to subject them to military justice, to deprive them of water, to prevent them building on their own property, to keep them from using the roads in their own land, to arrest them without warrants, without any reason given, to take them to prisons where their families cannot visit, to demand they have permits to leave and enter their own land - is this any less a catastrophe?

Today I am writing to my state representative and state senator. Here's my letter -

Senator Schoenberg:

In November 1987, an outbreak of vandalism directed against Jewish stores and synagogues, prompted Erna I. Gans, Holocaust survivor and President of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois, to issue a call for action to combat such violence with education in the form of a state mandate.

The result was the Illinois Holocaust and Genocide Mandate.

I am writing to you today to ask if you would be willing to help me get started on a similar campaign to educate Illinois youth on the long-term, yet current dispossession of Palestinians in the occupied territories held by Israel. There is only silence on this subject and I am concerned that our children, and even our citizens in general, are not aware that the United States is sending $3 billion yearly to a country that is systematically evicting an entire people from their homeland.

This is far more damaging than the acts of vandalism that spurred Ms. Gans effort, because it is being done by our country as a whole and, though the Holocaust is history, the eviction of the Palestinians, their loss of their land, is ongoing and has been for several decades. Unlike the Holocaust which we shamefully did nothing about, the horrors visited on the Palestinians as the Israeli settlements push them aside can be stopped immediately, if only more people were aware of how the United States supports it by continued yearly funding of Israel. You, as my state senator, are in an excellent position to get the word out.

You may reach me by return email or by telephone. As all the Israeli human rights organizations would agree - there is no time to lose on this issue.

Clif Brown

UPDATE - as of July, 2012 (almost two years since this post) there has been no reply from Mr. Schoenberg.