UPDATE: Holocaust Day Commemorated with Hate
Latest update: January 30th, 2013
print
tell a friend
But there are those who won’t pretend to honor the memory of the Holocaust. These are typically ones who are not in positions where the general public can have an impact on their bottom lines, as is the case in the media, or with public officials. A good example of such people are academics – and their game of Holocaust inversion goes one step beyond simply calling Israel the New Nazis.
For instance, in response to calling the Sunday Times Scarfe cartoon being published on Holocaust Remembrance Day “obscene,” a political science professor from Carleton University in Canada, who is also a blogger at Haaretz and the Daily Beast‘s Open Zion wrote, “It’s obscene. But so is the wall/barrier trapping Palestinians and ignoring the Green Line, as Israel maintains Occupation.”
When pressed about whether it was appropriate to run the cartoon on that day, the professor, Mira Sucharov, wrote that it was, and that she didn’t think “mourning the Holocaust should make any day immune from decrying justice.”
Finally, her interlocutor metaphorically threw up his hands, and wrote that for Haaretz writers, the “occupation” is bigger than anything else, “even common sense.” To this, Sucharov responded, “I think you’ve reversed the logic. The Holocaust obscures discussion of anything involving Israeli culpability.”
Professor Sucharov discounts the wounds of the Holocaust because she sees what she calls Israel’s “occupation” as being equivalent, if not worse. It’s the same for MP Ward and for the Sunday Times editors. But a bizarre twist is that Professor Sucharov has a Jewish bully pulpit from which to preach moral equivalence between the Nazis and the Israeli government, in addition to her academic position.
According to her bio on the Carleton University website, Mira Sucharov writes a regular column in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin and Vancouver’s Jewish Independent, and won an award in 2010 from the American Jewish Press Association for a column on Holocaust education and Israeli foreign policy. That article was critical of the organizers of the March of the Living because its organizers connect it too closely to Israel. She writes,
There is a potential problem with introducing youth to contemporary Israel on the heels of sending them to witness the remnants of humanity’s darkest moments. If the message is that the existence of Israel safeguards the “never again” imperative of Holocaust remembrance, then our generation’s youth may conclude that Israel is justified in taking any action in the name of security to protect Jews worldwide.
Sucharov fears the “continuing blockade over Gaza,” and the “daily humiliation and collective punishment” of the “Palestinians” by Israel may seem acceptable to impressionable adolescents who have just learned about the horrors of the Holocaust. But Sucharov’s Holocaust narrative is used to prove that whatever happened to Jews during World War II is not enough to forgive the Jewish State its right to self-defense. And that message is sounded even on the official Holocaust Remembrance Day.
UPDATE: Rupert Murdoch, who owns News Corporation which owns News International, the owner of the Sunday Times, issued an apology via twitter for what he called the “grotesque, offensive cartoon” in yesterday’s paper.
Waiting to hear if the spokesperson for the Sunday Times who issued the earlier non-apology suffers any consequences.
tell a friendAbout the Author: Lori Lowenthal Marcus is the US correspondent for The Jewish Press. She is a recovered lawyer who previously practiced First Amendment law and taught in Philadelphia-area graduate and law schools.
You might also be interested in:
You must log in to post a comment.
No Responses to “UPDATE: Holocaust Day Commemorated with Hate”
1
Loading ...
I have a critical view of Israeli treatment of Palestinian civilians but I am not a holocaust denier.
There is plenty of Palestinian blood for a wall. In the past 10 days IDF sharpshooters have murdered 6 Palestinian civilians, wounding others. In the West Bank an IDF sniper killed a woman near a a college and wounded her friend. In the village of Budrus in the West Bank a young man was shot in the back by a trigger happy IDF member. Four of the dead were in Gaza shot as they were walking or working on their own land.
It is not hard to imagine the outrage if 6 Israelis had been murdered in the same period of time. Netanyahu would once again attack Gaza saying that Israel has the right to defend itself. When will the Palestinians have the same right?
Checkmate: http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/an-evening-of-arab-terror/2013/01/27/
. I have bowed out of the local interfaith Holocaust service, because it was a custom to include Hatikvah at the end, but now some Christian groups object as they support the Palestinians and the Muslim Imams would either sit or leave during the Hatikvah. Perhaps interfaith Holocaust programs no longer make sense, at least to me. I do not need the stress of seeing disrespect being afforded to Israel and nor do I wish to compromise by leaving Hatikvah out. This is a personal choice and I DO NOT ADVOCATE ANYONE NOT PARTICIPATING IN ANY INTERFAITH HOLOCAUST SERVICE. I INTRODUCED INTERFAITH HOLOCAUST SERVICES IN 1974 AND WAS ONE OF THE FIRST IF NOT THE FIRST TO DO SO. This was a difficult decision for me based on personal principle. The interfaith Holocaust memorials started as well intentioned way for the Jewish people and other groups to pause and reflect on man's capacity to perpetuate unbelievable cruelty against his fellow and to commiserate as a group and others, with the Jews and hopefully prevent this nightmare from reoccurring. Over the years it was understandably modified to include other victims of genocidal mass killings, though these mass killings were not really analogous, as the Nazis were obsessed at not just killing Jews as a competing group, but Hitler desired to eliminate our creed and it's pervasive influence on humanity, particularly Christian doxy. As a result of Muslim participation and twisted liberalism, this is morphing into a twisted canard where Israel is being blamed for perpetuating ethnic killings against the Palestinians as the Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis. One can understand the Islamo-Nazis belief system with a quote from the Talmud. We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are. RABBI DR. BERNHARD ROSENBERG, CHILD OF Holocaust survivors and a refugee born in a D.P. camp.
Subject: Cementing Hate on Holocaust Memorial Day – Britain the thirsty for Jewish blood.
Cementing Hate on Holocaust Memorial Day.
This is a sign to every jew, who still lives in UK, it's time to return from "GALUT" to your native land.
Until you, Kerlvin and Jan, have walked in the shoes of the "trigger happy" soldiers, you have no business critizing them. Furthermore, having a wall to protect its civilians is like putting up a fence between you and your unpleasant next door neighbor!
More than six Israelis get shot down by the "downtrodden" daily. Does ANY Arab weep?
I am shocked that anyone would post a cartoon depicting Israel as the bully, Aren't they surrounded by hostile nations on every side, who want to drive them into the sea, so why should they not defend their homeland, which was promised to them by the Lord G-d Himself. As Psalm 105 "Firm stands His Word to Abraham spoken, His oath to Isaac never broken, His everlasting covenant, with Israel, God will not recant. He said "To you this land I give, that as my heirs you there may live, Let them live in peace, and let Palestine look after their own refugees,
The cartoon is despicable! The newspaper editor should not have allowed it to be printed. As Sientjie commented, the Scriptures state that G-d gave the land to His people, in the time of Moses and Joshua. Let us continue to pray for the peace of Jerusalem and all Israel's citizens.
Ok. So some of you believe the "Palestinians" aren't terrorists… just freedom fighters. But " terrorist atack" or not, to dead or maimed Israelis…Jews, Druze, or Arabs… , dead or maimed is dead or maimed. So get pragmatic. When military combatants… Gaza and/or West Bank… operate in and among civilians, and with the complicity of some civilians, they turn all civilians into potential military combatants. That why we have to remove our shoes for airport screening. So security fences, check points, and other security measures are to prevent ordinary looking civilians from killing or maiming Jews, Druze, and Arab Israelis. But you knew that, didn't you?
Rabbi Rosenberg and his 'interfaith' efforts for peace — Winds…
sheikyermami.com/2013/02/10/rabbi-rosenberg-and-his-interfaith-efforts-for-…
4 days ago… Organizers to vote on restoring 'Hatikva' to interfaith program… be omitted during the area's interfaith Holocaust commemoration, because,… of his position, Rosenberg is now calling for a boycott of the event he helped found,…