6/6 in SF: Protest Israel's National Genocide Day at Baseball Stadium

"It's just particularly abhorent and insensitive when applied to the victims of the very crime for which the word "genocide" was coined."

The Nazi's first victims were Communists and trade unionists (and Hitler killed a large percentage of the German far left) yet I dont hear most of the right complain when leftists are compared to Nazis. I think the complaints are in many ways more opportunistic and offensive than the use itself in that they are almost certainly insincere. On the surface it may sound reasonable that poeple in Israel will take special offense to Nazi comparisons and that comparing peopel one hates to the Nazis in Jewish circles is taboo but facts point in the opposite direction.
While the right takes offense at things like:
http://www.iht.com/articles/521406.html
they sit idly by as groups with ties to real Italian fascists make trips to Israel and praise Italian foreign policy;Berlusconi is allied with the remnants of the fascists party and has even made statements like http://www.guardian.co.uk/italy/story/0,12576,1040340,00.html Apparently its not appropriate for a concentration camp survivor to mention that the horrible images of Gaza brought back bad memories but it is ok for a leader who supports the Israeli right to make statements in praise of actual fascists? (sure there were complaints but Berlusconi was quickly forgiven).

Im sure some people are genuinely bothered by Nazi comparisons when applied to the treatment of the Palestinians and when asked will claim they are bothered by the constant Nazi comparisons used by all states that try to rally their countries to war (is Bush's latest comparison between Iraq and WWII offensive?). Settlers have even compared Sharon to Hitler since he is willing to get rid of some settlements and one always hears elders talking about how assimilation is more dangerous to the Jewish people than the Nazis were (Ive heard taht said for years but I have never heard anyone take offense at such comments even though its directly comparing the main group targeted by Hitler with the Nazis).

Intrestingly it tends to be self righteous folk with no immediate relatives who were killed by the Nazis who take the worst offense. Perhaps thats because the Jewish community has been moving to the right for some time as immediate memories of the horrors of the Nazis are forgotten and people who survived WWII are much more likely to feel sympathy for Palestinians? I would bet that there are just as many children of Hollocaust survivors (if not more) who march with teh anti-war and occupation groups as will be at the proIsrael rally; the immediate lesson of WWII and the call of "never again" used to mean a desire to prevent the scapegoating of minorities but has been manipulated by Republicans and the Israeli right to mean that the state of Israel should opperate on "ends justify the means" principles.

You're making a fundamental mistake by considering this a right-wing/left-wing issue. Both sides have those who make such comparisions, those who ignore such comparisons, and those deeply bothered by such comparisons. I'm on the left, and the Rabin-as-a-Nazi posters sickened me. But Lapid's comment was also a mistake, because it turned the argument among Israelis into one about the Nazi comparison, not the inhuman stupidity of Likud's failed hard-line policies in the occupied territories.

What it really is is a clueful/clueless issue. The Nazi/Israeli comparison is just one where wise people don't go. Those who are clueful don't through Nazi comparisons around like confetti.

@%<

I wouldn't excuse vile behavior of Israeli rightwing demonstrators a decade ago, yet I recall how I was somewhat shocked several years ago upon hearing on the news that the Shin Bet was responsible for printing and spreading copies of that poster. Agent provocateur Shai Raviv was involved in distributing these posters.

See:

http://www.sfimc.net/news/2002/12/1555696_comment.php#1692248

"to tell the truth. it is equally typical of racist scum like CT to try to divert your attention from the truth, to my personality. Remember, an ad hominem is not only not a rebuttal, it is a way to change the subject. Don't fall for it. Stay focused."

Yes, folks, that really _is_ nessie calling someone "racist scum" in one sentence and whinging about "ad hominem" attacks in the next sentence.

So much for "debate coach."

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LA Times.com
COMMENTARY
Last Word in Anti-Semitism
By Walter Reich

Genocidal mass murder continues to foul the world. So do large-scale massacres of civilians and brutal executions.

Yet the foulest epithet in any language — "Nazi" — is hurled not against any of the perpetrators of those crimes but, uniquely and systematically, against Israel.

It's not as if the real horrors are hard to find. To see a state-sponsored genocidal campaign, go to Sudan, where troops of the Muslim Arab government in Khartoum, and the Arab militias supplied by that government, are systematically targeting black tribes. Thousands have been murdered and a million driven from their homes by a program of bombing villages, shooting men, women and children, widespread rape and forced thirst and starvation. Yet the word "Nazi" isn't commonly used against the Sudanese authorities, whether by Arab countries or any others, just as it wasn't used against the Rwandan authorities who organized the genocide of about 800,000 Tutsis.

Deliberate massacres of civilians are even easier to find. During the last three years in the streets of Israel, numerous city buses, cafes and restaurants have been turned into bomb chambers by Palestinian organizations whose stated goal is to eradicate Israel and make the area free of Jews. In this way, they've systematically killed a dozen Israelis here, two dozen there, spraying arms, legs, lungs, livers, brains and strips of skin and muscle all over that country's streets. And at the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, as many innocents were murdered as during a day's gassing in Auschwitz. All of these actions, though they don't justify the term "Nazi," have been deliberate exterminations of civilians by organizations with clearly stated agendas of mass murder. Yet the epithet "Nazi" hasn't been commonly used against the organizers of these or other massacres around the world.

The word "Nazi" is, however, regularly thrown at Israel, even though that country's policy is to avoid killing Palestinian civilians. It's hurled, first of all, by Palestinians and their Arab and other Muslim allies. And it's hurled by European critics of Israel. "What is happening in Ramallah," Portuguese Nobel laureate Jose Saramago said in 2002, "is a crime that may be compared to Auschwitz." Jewish settlers in the West Bank, the Oxford poet Tom Paulin said a year later, "should be shot dead. I think they are Nazis, racists. I feel nothing but hatred for them." That same year, the Irish writer Tom McGurk approved of the comparison between Israel's assault on Jenin with the Nazi destruction of the Warsaw ghetto. "How extraordinary," he wrote, "that so many in the liberal democratic West should feel so strangely muted, so emotionally strangled in the face of Nazi-style barbarism toward the Palestinians by the state of Israel."

Why the Palestinians call Israelis "Nazis" isn't hard to understand. It's an effective accusation to make against a country that itself rose out of the ashes of the Holocaust and that received its legitimacy from the world in 1948 in part because of it. If the word "Nazi" could be successfully attached to that country, then its right to exist could be brought into question.

Why non-Palestinians direct the accusation at Israel rather than at other targets is more complex. Some are simply trying to use the most damaging and effective verbal ammunition possible in the war against the Jewish state. But some are anti-Semites who have finally found a way to free themselves of the strictures that have been in place for 60 years. After all, for six decades after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism was seen as having led to the worst genocide in human history. It wasn't possible to be an anti-Semite in polite company. As the years passed, some anti-Semites tried to break free of this taboo by saying the Holocaust had never happened — after all, if it never happened, or was exaggerated, then anti-Semitism was falsely accused of having been a genocidal ideology and could once again enter the arena of acceptable discourse. Yet Holocaust denial could never achieve widespread credibility in the West, given the mountain of evidence.

But if the public could be convinced that Israel is no better than Nazi Germany, then the anti-Semites could again be back in business. In fact, if the public came to see Israel as having engaged in Nazi-like behavior, it might conclude that the Jewish state is even worse than Nazi Germany. When we hear the epithet "Nazi" aimed at Israelis, we should understand its purpose. And we should understand that — whether the term is part of a verbal war or of an effort to make anti-Semitism once again respectable — it will continue to be aimed at Israel rather than at countries and groups that engage in genocide and mass murder.

Walter Reich, a psychiatrist and professor of international affairs, ethics and human behavior at George Washington University, was director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum from 1995 to 1998.

Let me just point out that nessie not only tried to stir up hatred by directing readers to typical repeated lies - thus muddying the truth, he also leveled at me an epithet that typifies himself and proceeded to bestow on his gospel an honorary title it does not deserve.