True Stories: Defamation

[Griffin NoName]

Just watched an interesting documentary by Yoav Shamir, an Israeli, "True Stories: Defamation".

Seasoned film-maker Yoav Shamir knows he's kicking a hornet's nest by questioning what antisemitism is today, whether it's a danger that requires continuous vigilance – a view put forward by the Anti-Defamation League – or a tool used by rightwing zionists for political gain, a claim made by the author Norman Finkelstein. Shamir tackles the subject like an Israeli Louis Theroux, sensing the moments of wry humour, knowing when to be direct, but mostly letting the interviewees speak for themselves. He begins with his mother, herself a product of Russian antisemitism, and works outwards, testing beliefs and motives.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/jan/12/survivors-simon-schama-true-stories

Definitely worth watching if you get a chance.

I was shocked by two things. One the pettiness of the sorts of things identified by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL, a US organisation) as anti-semitism and the other the policies of Israel which send teenage school-children and army trainees to visit the camps in Poland with what appeared in the documentary to be the intention of indoctrination.

I have no answers. I myself am quite capable of identifying certain things as anti-semitic and have called people on it. But the ADL struck me as a peculiarly US type of approach which I question as being OTT. I also believe in keeping faith with history and see Israel as an important place that must be maintained as a Jewish homeland and I recognise the need of keeping it so must be a critical part of Israeli policy, while at the same time disagreeing with most of the policies that ensue.

The visits to the camps were interesting. At the start of the tour the kids had little reaction, no more than seeing nasty stuff on TV, but by the end of the tour they were openly weeping. I remember reacting similarly when I visited Yad Vashem. I do wonder if keeping history alive in this way is a good or bad thing - as the documentary asks. I value the chance I had to connect with real feeling to the past, but have doubts about how that might be exploited.

[Swatopluk]

My father (who has been to Isreal and Jordan many times) told me that he heard of Israeli studies that found that the typical youngster in Israel knows little if anything about the 3rd Reich. Most have heard about Hitler but most other leading Nazis (like Goebbels, Göring) were completely unknown to a majority. Most had also never heard of Mussolini btw (a classmate of mine who was in the US as an exchange student for a year told similar tales).
One gets the impression that Israel has to keep the 'memory' awake artificially because there is seen a political need for it.
The radical settler movement on the other hand seems to embrace Nazism in all but name with the Palestinians as their Jew equivalent.
As for the antisemitism club, Glenn Greenwald had something to say about this recently.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/02/10/tnr/index.html
The German Jewish Central Comitee has similar tendencies. It undermines its own positions by seeing antisemitism everywhere. There is real antisemitism around here but the overreaction of 'organized' Jews now makes them look simply paranoid (or trying to make use of it for political gains). There is also the unfortunate tendency to monopolize the Holocaust including active attempts to suppress the rememberance of other victims. They seem to think that the Holocaust has to be 100% about them or it loses its value as a unique event.

[Sibling DavidH]

^ What Swato said.

There's a very narrow and tricky line to be walked here.
On the one hand the Holocaust was certainly the worst genocidal campaign we know of in all history, and must never be forgotten.  And yes, there is genuine antisemitism around today, and it's growing.  Vandalism of Jewish cemeteries is now quite common.
On the other hand, the Jewish community must avoid constantly bringing it up in every debate and appearing to underrate other serious incidents, as in Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka and Rwanda.  That makes it too easy for their enemies to write them off as whiners with a victim mentality.
None of this is helped by the current behaviour of the Israeli state and of some groups within it.

[beagle]

On the one hand the Holocaust was certainly the worst genocidal campaign we know of in all history, and must never be forgotten. 

At the risk of comparing infinities, Stalin's 10 million in the Ukraine is a possible contender. I'm letting Mao's "Great Leap Forward" famine 30 million go as incompetence rather than genocide, but that probably still leaves another 30 million "disappeared". 

[Griffin NoName]

Perhaps we should be talking percentages rather than absolute numbers

[Swatopluk]

Perhaps we should be talking percentages rather than absolute numbers

In that case Pol Pot would be the likely winner. 25% of the population in 4 years. Then he was stopped by the evil commie Vietnamese. One wonders (in horror) how far Mr. Saloth Sar would have gone otherwise.

[Sibling DavidH]

OK, the Holocaust was one of the worst.  (Almost nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.)  To me, one of the most chilling things about it was the cold, clinical way it was done.  It was as if they were shipping groceries.

[Swatopluk]

At least we can agree on that the Jews were not the only victims of the 20th century by far.

For the past all bets are off. Genocide was once the norm not the exception. Caesar's wars in Gaul killed 1/3, enslaved another 1/3 and left the rest for exploitation by Roman tax collectors. Gaul at the time is believed to have had 3-4 million inhabitants pre-Caesar. The Mongols were tolerant rulers but their standard method to become rulers included the killing of significant parts of the population. The Spaniards in America were even more successful (and did a lot of the dirty work for the later US, otherwise the latter's history would be even more bloody).
And, closer to home, Prussia is named after a people that was exterminated by Xtian crusaders so thoroughly that we are not even totally sure who they were and what language they spoke.
We can't even 100% exclude that the Neanderthals did meet the same fate at the hands of our own ancestors.

[Darlica]

I was going to post here sooner but I've been occupied elsewhere...

I can only agree to what Swato said.

Also, not to diminishing the suffering of the Jewish people during the second world war but let's not forget the others that was killed, mutilated and abused in the Nazi concentration and death -camps and ghettos.
Amongst others:

Romani people (who btw still is the target for a lot of hate crimes and a unprovoked violence all over Europe)
Homosexuals   
People who had soiled "the great Aryan race" (by either being "aryan" and having a relationship with someone not "Aryan" or the other way around)
People with mental health problems
People with actual intellectual handicaps
and all those who was stamped as "mentally retarded" or deemed "unfit to breed" because they just didn't fit into the dream of the Third Reich Nazi leaders had.

WWII wasn't all about the Jewish people, I don't know the numbers but most of Europe as well as most of Northern Africa was a huge battleground.
A big chunk of the male population of Europe was erased from the face of the earth, women got raped and murdered in the name of psychological warfare, hundred-thousands of civilians of all ages got caught by bombs, grenades and raining bullets or simply got executed for being on the wrong place in the wrong time or having the wrong name. Even parts of Asia was a battle field long before Pearl harbour. Both Japan and China committed atrocious crimes against civilians and captures soldiers. 

It was the Second World War, not the World against the Jews war.   



IMHO the State of Israel has played "we suffered the holocaust" card ten times to many, the past can not give them an eternal carte blanche to behave like they are towards the Palestinians and their neighbouring countries.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't the Nazi regime killed among the many a few million of Slavs too? (I seem to recall that he considered the Slavs inferior and that was one of the reasons to attack Russia before [if ever] was prudent).

Also, the Spaniards killed many in the Americas but the great majority in an indirect form via introduced pathogens. I've read accounts from central America (Mayas),  or the Amazon region (even back home in the New Granada) accounting for huge populations 'vanishing' right after their arrival.
---
In any case Swato is right, genocide was the common way to do business right up to WWII, from the heads pyramids of the Assyrian Sargon II, or some of Moses tactics told in the OT. Gassing people isn't more or less barbaric than killing them with a machete (Rwanda/70s & 80s Central America), rounding North American natives to kill them with Gatling guns or starving Ukrainians/Chinese to death.

And I wholeheartedly agree that it's frankly very hard to claim the monopoly of victimhood when there have been so many groups from Armenians, to Kurds, to Tutsis, and natives everywhere killed just on the XX century.

[Swatopluk]

Unless of course all those other victims are claimed to be the 10 lost tribes of Israel 
Don't say that's too absurd, there are enough groups/persons that believe in stuff like that. And additionally groups that claim that the Jews just falsely usurped the name of the old Hebrews while they are the true successors/descendants.

[Griffin NoName]

To me, one of the most chilling things about it was the cold, clinical way it was done.  It was as if they were shipping groceries.

I agree. It is chilling. Such organised extermination does seem different to the usual chaos of war. But what about when so called soldiers arrive in villages and wipe them out? This is fairly organised too. Perhaps it is the immediacy which is different. They arrive, they kill. Whereas the roundings up and transfers by train seem to involve longer premeditation. *I have my course work ethics hat on and am considering what a judgement would be - murder has to be premeditated....).

And it isn't just th XX century. It still goes on now.

[pieces o nine]

And it isn't just th XX century. It still goes on now.

And when it *isn't* going on, there are people who are angry that it isn't. 

Several co-workers in an otherwise moderate community expressed variations of, "Bomb them all back to the stone age!" when Operation Iraqi Destruction was initiated. When confronted with  [Iraq DOES *NOT* EQUAL 911]  many just shrugged and repeated the slogan. I was horrified by the invective on one hand and the chilling dismissal of error on the other.

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

Exactly what Pieces said. And I can add that a fairly significant number of people I know (including my parents) wouldn't bat an eyelash at the whole sale destruction of all Muslims. And hell, California's conservatives look like moderates in the rest of the country.