How we remember Shoa and other atrocities - Page 5

I'm going to assume that you don't have intimate familiarity with the exercise of coercive power. If you really want to understand, I'd suggest that you listen to the accounts of battered women. Just recently, a professor at WSU was arrested for having had a sexual relationship with his niece, from the time she was 16 to the time he was arrested, when she was 18. She actually came from California to live with him, and he had sex with her several times a day. She did not report him until she was out of his house, and even then, it took some time for her to do it.

the challenge here is keeping the story of the holocaust alive and significant, not only in Israel, Germany or the US but everywhere.

Islamophobia is rampant in the Western world and has replaced even in far right policies antisemitism...

We're obviously in different times but believe me ,a lot of people will happily take extreme measures against them.

That was the point I was trying to make...

Jews and the irational fear of them made them scapegoats ,pariahs for centuries..

The fact no country is rounding Jews in camps anymore doesn't mean antisemitism is dead...

You're absolutely right...

It's difficult for us to understand how ordinary people can do such atrocities and lose empathy and personal identity in certain extreme situations.

Just a read about the Milgram experiment.

Judging the actions of German society as a monolithic entity is even more difficult because we're in a different society than post first war I Germany...

Mass unemployment, social explosion , ramapnt inflation,polarized politics, extreme nationalism and luck were part of Hitler's rise..

Extreme regimes have already skillfull in putting in place progaganda leading to deshumanize sections of the population such as political opponents ...

Just read articles about Julius Streicher (Der Sturm) who used to publish extreme antisemitic children books read in school ...

The degree of hatred was absolutely incredible and was part of the regime itself...

You called Arabs the new Jews, but your only evidence for this assertion is your claim that "Islamaphobia is rampant in the Western world". It's hard to fathom how you can stand by that. Even the words used to describe the two ideas should give you some sort of clue as to the distinctions. Antisemitism.. Islamaphobia. (And this is not even touching on the conflation of Arab and Muslim. A sizeable majority of Muslims are not Arab.)
Consider also the Jewish diaspora as opposed to the Muslim conquest of almost all the Middle East and North Africa.

Saying that Islamophobia is the same as antisemitism is like saying that a horse is the same as a car because they are both modes of transportation.

this.

look, Lasbar, I will assume that you really are not trying to troll or to be an asshole, but taken with your post about the german people, it is hard.

for more than 2,000 year and across europe, north africa and Asia, jews have been persecuted for their beliefs, and often just because they were believed to have some type of historical guilt for crimes against jesus and mohamed. there have been laws that restricted them, and violence has been used against them, often by the government and often supported by the government. at times large populations of jews have been killed off. even during the best of times, jewish children were stolen from their parents to be raised under the majority religion and jews have been tried and executed for trumpted up charges.

for about a decade, in a handful of western countries, muslims, while enjoying full legal equality and rights have had their loyalty accosionally questions, after a series of brutal terror attacks carried out by muslims on thier host countries and very often supported by prominent mulims leaders. no rights have been taken away, no violence has been carried out.

so how the fuck is that similar in any possible way?

Muslims have also been persecuted for centuries during the Crusades, during and after the Spanish Reconquista being forced to convert or die , in India (massacres during the Indian/Pakistan partition and still now) and more recently Bosnia..

I know the different between state oppression and a set of individual actions and we're luckily in the western world relatively immune to genodice ..

The Shoa is essentially an unique occurence because of the state machinery behind the delivery of ethnic cleansing and the propaganda attached to it in place behind these death factories..

I was referring to the rhetoric and imagery used to define Muslims and the potential for deshumanizing them in the eye of many...

I agree with you guys that democracy hasn't really blossomed in Muslims countries and the current wave of terrorism is not helping to breakdown certain imageries..

I didn't put my point across very well but English is not my mother tongue...

That is something I hope to never identify with, although I think it sheds some light on the atrocities such as Babi Yar.

It still doesn't square with other atrocities committed between German and Russian soldiers (I mean, they're already fighting, right?), but I suspect they occupied a mindset I can't fathom.

Lasbar - I am not defending either the reconquista or the crusades, but those were, essentially, wars. wars where for certain periods the muslims were killing and forecebly converting christians, and for periods enslaving christians and keeping them away from the christian and jewish holy sites - what I mean was, the crusades and the various wars between the muslims and the christians were wars where each side gave as good as it got. ditto bosnia - for hudreds of years muslims ruled the balkans and installed millions of muslims in christian lands, in wwii muslims were involved in horrible massecres of christians and jews in the balkans. again, I am not discussing anything against the muslims, I''m just saying this wasn't an issue of persecution against the muslims, the muslims attacked the christian world in the 7nth century, and a war between the sides continued more or less until today. that isn't an issue of persecution.

I am assuming that this was an issue of communication. again, for a decade, in a handful of countries, some fringe people have been speaking out against muslims - following a series of horrific attacks by muslims against countries that have welcomed them in warmly. the governments havne't suported this rhetoric, nor have the majority of people. any suggestion that this is in any way similar to the way jews were treated for 2,000 is disgusting.

you do realize that the muslims in greater india (before particion) were the ones that demanded partition, that the vast majoirty of the violence was carried out by them, and that something more than a million muslims live in prosperity and full citizenship in India while hindus and christians are persecuted in Paksitan and Bangladesh, right?

The Crusades? Really? Six hundred years ago? And how do you think the Muslims came to occupy the Middle East? Politely asking the Jews and Christians living there to leave?

And as Globe touched on, I can't believe you would use the partition as an example of Muslims being persecuted. That's profoundly ignorant.

I'd love to get some examples of the imagery and rhetoric used to define Muslims.

Your argument is absurd. A few people in predominately Christian countries saying stupid things about Muslims is a million fucking miles away from governments conducting organized genocide. Your persistence in trying to equate the two is just baffling.

UH, FL, the Muslims did not "come to occupy the ME" they or the people that would become the first Muslims were there pretty much from the start. Or at least long enough for it not to matter.
but Lasbar is still being an idiot.

1. i would prefer not to fuck you.

2. i will pass on answering that. i am a very religious, orthodox jew. we can leave it at that.

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re : the above debate. GT/F, when i said about the arab and jew comparison, that they are not the same at all, you guys pretty much elaborated on what i meant, and touched on the points i was hoping to get back to. and probably said it better than i could have, and without flying off the handle, like i may have. thanks for that.

lasbar, no hate, but i really dont see how you can equate the two. are their people in this country who fear every dude in a turban? sure. still does not make the arabs/islams, the new jews.

An POW is not the same as a soldier in combat. One has power and control, the other has been subjugated. I think that you overestimate the power of the human spirit. There is a reason coaches tell you to "break" your opponent, to demoralize them to the point that they offer no or token resistance, and at the same time, have to keep propping up their team or athlete. The human psyche is incredibly fragile.

Nvm - a total sidetrack