No. The BS is your willingness to play the Holocaust card and the antisemitic card to justify your defence of the current genocide.
Dude what are you talking about. The "Holocaust card"? It's not a "card" that I play, it's the most heinous, generational trauma-inducing event that's happened to my people. SIX MILLION PEOPLE. Do you understand the magnitude of that? We're talking 4 times the size of metro Calgary, killed, simply because they were Jewish. Would you ever accuse a different racialized minority of playing their "generational trauma card"?
I think many here misunderstood the intention of my initial post, that's on me for not better explaining it. Sorry. In reading through this thread, I felt that people were treating this conflict as black and white. Like many are quick to contextualize October 7 (i.e. it didn't happen in a vacuum), I attempted to give some context (justifiable or not) from the Israeli perspective. I actually think it's fair to criticize/question the Israeli government for the disproportionate response to October 7, but saying stuff like "39 guests reading. Looks like the Israeli bots are working over time." isn't helpful and unnecessarily demonizes Israel/Israelis (who are primarily Jewish) and furthers antisemitic tropes.
The only other thing I'd like to mention, as I've seen the Nakba be brought up recently, is that around the time of the founding of Israel in 1948, many Arab nations exiled their Jewish populations (hundreds of thousands of people) in protest. This obviously led to a massive influx of Jews into Israel. Just some additional context that isn't really mentioned ever. https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/...untold-history
Dude what are you talking about. The "Holocaust card"? It's not a "card" that I play, it's the most heinous, generational trauma-inducing event that's happened to my people. SIX MILLION PEOPLE. Do you understand the magnitude of that? We're talking 4 times the size of metro Calgary, killed, simply because they were Jewish. Would you ever accuse a different racialized minority of playing their "generational trauma card"?
I think many here misunderstood the intention of my initial post, that's on me for not better explaining it. Sorry. In reading through this thread, I felt that people were treating this conflict as black and white. Like many are quick to contextualize October 7 (i.e. it didn't happen in a vacuum), I attempted to give some context (justifiable or not) from the Israeli perspective. I actually think it's fair to criticize/question the Israeli government for the disproportionate response to October 7, but saying stuff like "39 guests reading. Looks like the Israeli bots are working over time." isn't helpful and unnecessarily demonizes Israel/Israelis (who are primarily Jewish) and furthers antisemitic tropes.
The only other thing I'd like to mention, as I've seen the Nakba be brought up recently, is that around the time of the founding of Israel in 1948, many Arab nations exiled their Jewish populations (hundreds of thousands of people) in protest. This obviously led to a massive influx of Jews into Israel. Just some additional context that isn't really mentioned ever. https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/...untold-history
I can't speak on behalf of anyone else. Yes, those historical events happened. yes they are awful. Yes you cannot understand Oct 7th without understanding antisemitism in the Arab world.
Still, these things combined do not justify the ongoing genocide in Palestine.
This is a well written and positioned long form analysis of the current situation in Israel. I really appreciate the Ambivalence and intellectual hospitality. My quotes don't do this work justice.
As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I was deeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel
Quote:
The Hamas attack on 7 October came as a tremendous shock to Israeli society, one from which it has not begun to recover. It was the first time Israel has lost control of part of its territory for an extended period of time, with the IDF unable to prevent the massacre of more than 1,200 people – many killed in the cruellest ways imaginable – and the taking of well over 200 hostages, including scores of children. The sense of abandonment by the state and of ongoing insecurity – with tens of thousands of Israeli citizens still displaced from their homes along the Gaza Strip and by the Lebanese border – is profound.
Quote:
the Israeli public long ago became inured to the brutal occupation that has characterised the country for 57 out of the 76 years of its existence. But the scale of what is being perpetrated in Gaza right now by the IDF is as unprecedented as the complete indifference of most Israelis to what is being done in their name. In 1982, hundreds of thousands of Israelis protested against the massacre of the Palestinian population in the refugee camps Sabra and Shatila in western Beirut by Maronite Christian militias, facilitated by the IDF. Today, this kind of response is inconceivable. The way people’s eyes glaze over whenever one mentions the suffering of Palestinian civilians, and the deaths of thousands of children and women and elderly people, is deeply unsettling.
Quote:
One young woman, recently returned from long military service in Gaza, leapt on the stage and spoke forcefully about the friends she had lost, the evil nature of Hamas, and the fact that she and her comrades were sacrificing themselves to ensure the country’s future safety. Deeply distraught, she began crying halfway through her speech and stepped down. A young man, collected and articulate, rejected my suggestion that criticism of Israeli policies was not necessarily motivated by antisemitism. He then launched on a brief survey of the history of Zionism as a response to antisemitism and as a political path that no gentiles had a right to deny. While they were upset by my views and agitated by their own recent experiences in Gaza, the opinions expressed by the students were in no way exceptional. They reflected much greater swaths of public opinion in Israel.
Knowing that I had previously warned of genocide, the students were especially keen to show me that they were humane, that they were not murderers. They had no doubt that the IDF was, in fact, the most moral army in the world. But they were also convinced that any damage done to the people and buildings in Gaza was totally justified, that it was all the fault of Hamas using them as human shields.
They showed me photos on their phones to prove that they had behaved admirably toward children, denied that there was any hunger in Gaza, insisted that the systematic destruction of schools, universities, hospitals, public buildings, residences and infrastructure was necessary and justifiable. They viewed any criticism of Israeli policies by other countries and the United Nations as simply antisemitic.
Unlike the majority of Israelis, these young people had seen the destruction of Gaza with their own eyes. It seemed to me that they had not only internalised a particular view that has become commonplace in Israel – namely, that the destruction of Gaza as such was a legitimate response to 7 October – but had also developed a way of thinking that I had observed many years ago when studying the conduct, worldview and self-perception of German army soldiers in the second world war. Having internalised certain views of the enemy – the Bolsheviks as Untermenschen; Hamas as human animals – and of the wider population as less than human and undeserving of rights, soldiers observing or perpetrating atrocities tend to ascribe them not to their own military, or to themselves, but to the enemy.
Thousands of children were killed? It’s the enemy’s fault. Our own children were killed? That is certainly the enemy’s fault. If Hamas carry out a massacre in a kibbutz, they are Nazis. If we drop 2,000-pound bombs on refugee shelters and kill hundreds of civilians, it’s Hamas’s fault for hiding close to these shelters. After what they did to us, we have no choice but to root them out. After what we did to them, we can only imagine what they would do to us if we don’t destroy them. We simply have no choice.
Quote:
Two days after the Hamas attack, defence minister Yoav Gallant declared, “We are fighting human animals, and we must act accordingly,” later adding that Israel would “break apart one neighbourhood after another in Gaza”. Former prime minister Naftali Bennett confirmed: “We are fighting Nazis.” Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu exhorted Israelis to “remember what Amalek has done to you”, alluding to the biblical call to exterminate Amalek’s “men and women, children and infants”. In a radio interview, he said about Hamas: “I don’t call them human animals because that would be insulting to animals.” Deputy Knesset speaker Nissim Vaturi wrote on X that Israel’s goal should be “erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the Earth”. On Israeli TV he stated, “There are no uninvolved people … we must go in there and kill, kill, kill. We must kill them before they kill us.” Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich stressed in a speech, “The work must be completed … Total destruction. ‘Blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.’” Avi Dichter, agriculture minister and former head of the Shin Bet intelligence service, spoke about “rolling out the Gaza Nakba”. One Israeli 95-year-old military veteran, whose motivational speech to IDF troops preparing for the invasion of Gaza exhorted them to “wipe out their memory, their families, mothers and children”, was given a certificate of honour by Israeli president Herzog for “providing a wonderful example to generations of soldiers”. No wonder that there have been innumerable social media posts by IDF troops in Gaza calling to “kill the Arabs”, “burn their mothers” and “flatten” Gaza. There has been no known disciplinary action by their commanders.
Dude what are you talking about. The "Holocaust card"? It's not a "card" that I play, it's the most heinous, generational trauma-inducing event that's happened to my people. SIX MILLION PEOPLE. Do you understand the magnitude of that? We're talking 4 times the size of metro Calgary, killed, simply because they were Jewish. Would you ever accuse a different racialized minority of playing their "generational trauma card"?
Yes it is and it is exactly what you did. We're all aware of the magnitude of the Holocaust.
But you chose to respond to me NOT actual survivors of the Holocaust who find your behaviour insulting.
Respond to the survivors. What are they talking about then.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bagor
I'll let some survivors respond to you. Basically they find your behaviour insulting.
Below is a letter signed by ten Holocaust survivors condemning the genocide in Gaza and the misuse of antisemitism accusations by politicians.
The co-founder of Human Rights Watch, Aryeh Neier, has recently said that Israel is engaged in genocide in Gaza. He’s also said that using accusations of antisemitism to attack Israel’s critics “debases the whole concept of antisemitism.” As Holocaust survivors, we are writing to agree wholeheartedly with Professor Neier — who himself only survived the Holocaust by escaping Nazi Germany as a child in 1939.
At a recent Holocaust memorial, Netanyahu declared: “We’ll defeat our genocidal enemies. Never again is now!”
Meanwhile, at another memorial, Biden warned of a “ferocious surge of antisemitism” on college campuses.
In our opinion, to use the memory of the Holocaust like this to justify either genocide in Gaza or repression on college campuses is a complete insult to the memory of the Holocaust.
The dehumanization of Palestinians, describing them as “human animals,” the killing of tens of thousands of civilians, indiscriminate bombing, the destruction of universities and hospitals, and the use of mass starvation — these are clearly stages of ethnic cleansing and genocide. They cannot be defended any more than sending weapons to commit this genocide or refusing funding to UNRWA. With no better arguments, our politicians have resorted to misusing the memory of the Holocaust while claiming that protesting against Israeli genocide is somehow antisemitic.
As Holocaust survivors, we have no special authority on the Middle East but we do know about antisemitism. It’s simply wrong to claim that it’s antisemitic to oppose Israeli genocide. It’s also wrong to claim that calling for equal rights for Jews and Arabs “from the river to the sea” is antisemitic.
Hi
As Holocaust survivors, we are just a few individuals but we want to add our voices to the growing global movement to demand a permanent ceasefire, an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and for the West to stop arming and supporting genocide.
Now. Address the survivors who I said I would have respond to you.
Do you agree with their viewpoint that they find your behaviour insulting?
I'm not going to play this gotcha game with you where you try to paint me into a corner. I understand you're speaking from a place of pain (as am I). If you want to have an actual intellectual conversation with me, we can. But this is not how to do it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bagor
Yes it is and it is exactly what you did. We're all aware of the magnitude of the Holocaust.
No you aren't. And in fairness to you, how could you be? You're not Jewish, you've never experienced antisemitism. But don't dare tell me that I'm trying to milk my generational trauma.
Also, I did a quick credibility search of this Mondoweiss website you keep posting links to. It scored low (same level as Fox News) according to the following website. Not saying that the story isn't real or true, but just pointing out the aforementioned website is highly biased. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/mondoweiss/
The Following User Says Thank You to CalgaryKid12 For This Useful Post:
I'm not going to play this gotcha game with you where you try to paint me into a corner. I understand you're speaking from a place of pain (as am I). If you want to have an actual intellectual conversation with me, we can. But this is not how to do it.
I'm not speaking. Holocaust survivors are speaking.
to you. You want to have a conversation why don't you respond to the Holocaust survivors that find your behaviour insulting.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CalgaryKid12
Also, I did a quick credibility search of this Mondoweiss website you keep posting links to. It scored low (same level as Fox News) according to the following website. Not saying that the story isn't real or true, but just pointing out the aforementioned website is highly biased.
What do you mean "keep posting links to"? Point out one other post where I reference it? But what's that got to do with the Holocaust survivor's letter which you continue your insulting behaviour by ignoring.
The Holocaust survivors are saying you're milking your generational trauma. That you're insulting them.
Gideon Levy had you figured out a long time ago. Poor you.
Another reminder that when they tell you they aren't antisemitic, only against "zionists" they're just putting on a mask so they can dogwhistle their friends. Yup just anti-zionist but they don't mind sending bomb threats to anything even a little Jewish.
Another reminder that when they tell you they aren't antisemitic, only against "zionists" they're just putting on a mask so they can dogwhistle their friends. Yup just anti-zionist but they don't mind sending bomb threats to anything even a little Jewish.
Are you ok? Who's "they"? This was a bomb threat and that's all it was. It does not represent "they" just like the man who shot those 3 Palestinian students don't represent you.
Are you ok? Who's "they"? This was a bomb threat and that's all it was. It does not represent "they" just like the man who shot those 3 Palestinian students don't represent you.
Yeah just like months of harrassing Jewish people and businesses across the world doesn't represent the wildy anti-semitic left. Attacking Jews and threatening them at colleges with genocidal chants and violence. Does this represent you? You certainly have no problem making excuses for this behavior and have throughout the whole ordeal even going so far as to get angry at anyone threatening Hamas. Are you ok? Shouldn't you be tongue punching Trumps fart box right now?
Yeah just like months of harrassing Jewish people and businesses across the world doesn't represent the wildy anti-semitic left. Attacking Jews and threatening them at colleges with genocidal chants and violence. Does this represent you? You certainly have no problem making excuses for this behavior and have throughout the whole ordeal even going so far as to get angry at anyone threatening Hamas. Are you ok? Shouldn't you be tongue punching Trumps fart box right now?
Wow using a homophobic comment to insult me. You're finally showing your true colors and that you don't care about the LGBTQ issues you pretend you cared about until you were called out and then disappeared.
The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to Zary's-Mustache For This Useful Post:
Wow using a homophobic comment to insult me. You're finally showing your true colors and that you don't care about the LGBTQ issues you pretend you cared about until you were called out and then disappeared.
I think his true colours were shown a long time ago....
It is pretty hilarious, like you called out, that he paints any violence by "Pro-Palestinian" groups as representing everyone who supports Palestine but completely ignores any violence by Pro-Israeli groups.
This is a well written and positioned long form analysis of the current situation in Israel. I really appreciate the Ambivalence and intellectual hospitality. My quotes don't do this work justice.
As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I was deeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel
It was expected that Israel would respond like this.
Was also expected that Hamas would utilize social media and the regular media to dupe people, but everyday still seeing people fall for the same lies.
The only country that can control what Israel does and how this turns out is the US.
Every week more weapons get sent to Israel.
Israel has turned up the heat on their campaign again.
All while the Democrats are in power.
Israel is playing the US like a fool. The Democrats are seen as the party that will 'keep Israel in line', which clearly isn't true given you know, supposed genocide, and continued weapon shipments. And at the same time the Democrats play to their party base by repeatedly telling everyone how its so bad what is happening and that ceasefire must happen and the hostages must come home, and the Republicans and Trump are actually WORSE. Because there is something WORSE than what is going on. Around and around we go and nothing really changes.
It was expected that Israel would respond like this.
Was also expected that Hamas would utilize social media and the regular media to dupe people, but everyday still seeing people fall for the same lies
It was expected that Israel would respond like this.
Was also expected that Hamas would utilize social media and the regular media to dupe people, but everyday still seeing people fall for the same lies.
The only country that can control what Israel does and how this turns out is the US.
Every week more weapons get sent to Israel.
Israel has turned up the heat on their campaign again.
All while the Democrats are in power.
Israel is playing the US like a fool. The Democrats are seen as the party that will 'keep Israel in line', which clearly isn't true given you know, supposed genocide, and continued weapon shipments. And at the same time the Democrats play to their party base by repeatedly telling everyone how its so bad what is happening and that ceasefire must happen and the hostages must come home, and the Republicans and Trump are actually WORSE. Because there is something WORSE than what is going on. Around and around we go and nothing really changes.
Who is delusional here?
Omer Bartov is a leading academic in the history of the Holocaust, he is not some Hamas social media influencer. The article, if you read it, is refreshing because it involves an honest reflection of a discussion with young Israeli veterans of this war. It seeks to show humanity and create understanding despite the genocide that is well underway.
Wow using a homophobic comment to insult me. You're finally showing your true colors and that you don't care about the LGBTQ issues you pretend you cared about until you were called out and then disappeared.
Uhhh did I break your brain? There is nothing "homophobic" in my post but keep desperately reaching bro. I think you are projecting pretty hard right now 😆
Wow using a homophobic comment to insult me. You're finally showing your true colors and that you don't care about the LGBTQ issues you pretend you cared about until you were called out and then disappeared.
Uhhh did I break your brain? There is nothing "homophobic" in my post but keep desperately reaching bro. I think you are projecting pretty hard right now 😆
Are you ashamed when people bring up you loving Trump?
Yeah just like months of harrassing Jewish people and businesses across the world doesn't represent the wildy anti-semitic left. Attacking Jews and threatening them at colleges with genocidal chants and violence. Does this represent you? You certainly have no problem making excuses for this behavior and have throughout the whole ordeal even going so far as to get angry at anyone threatening Hamas. Are you ok? Shouldn't you be tongue punching Trumps fart box right now?
