I have made up my mind to ban all Holocaust and/or Nazi Germany references on comments to my posts, for the following reasons:
1. Israel is not Nazi Germany. It’s not even close. I find the current political trends troubling, even dangerous, but this country is not engaged in a systematic, full-scale genocide, and since 1948, it hasn’t committed mass deportations. There are better ways to say that the Palestinians deserve justice.
2. Some argue that Israel has one or several laws that were introduced by the Nazis too. Even if that’s the case, so what? The same could be said of many laws, in many countries. Nazi Germany is the symbol of the ultimate historical evil because of the death camps and the industrialized genocide, and nothing else. It’s not even because of the concentration camps themselves, since those weren’t unique to Germany (the USSR had them, and so did the US), and surely not because of racist policies alone. Many countries have had racist policies at one stage or the other. Saying that a racist law immediately turns a country into the equivalent of Nazi Germany is like saying universal health care makes a country Nazi – a claim so stupid no sane person would even think of it.
3. Saying someone is a Nazi means he represents the ultimate evil – something that shouldn’t be negotiated or compromised with, but only fought. If you think Israel should be wiped off the map, not just the country but its people themselves, you won’t find support on this blog (if you think the political structure which makes Israel what it is should be changed, or that the country should become bi-national or multi-cultural, you are welcomed to express your ideas here – but leave the WWII references out).
4. My grandfather was a Holocaust survivor, and maybe because of that, I simply find these analogies offensive. I would rather not read them on my own blog.
5. Adding WWII references to your argument sounds like a good way to get attention, but it’s actually counter-productive. More often than not, people start debating Nazism (usually revealing very poor historical knowledge) and the real issue you wanted to discuss is forgotten. I want debates here to be focused and on-topic, and I want them to deal with real issues, not propaganda.
This policy will apply for both sides. I will not allow such references to Israelis and Jews, but I will also delete all comments comparing Palestinians, Arabs or Muslims to the Nazis, or calling left wing activists Kapos, as some readers have.
January 14, 2011
2:59 pm
D. Ben-Gurion will now explain few things:
“Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it’s true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations’ time, but for the moment there is no chance. So, it’s simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipe us out”
So, the whole idea was to come to Palestine and grab as much land as possible from them and leave a minimum number of Arabs around. Instead of leaving on their land they will be moved into refugee camps for decades and decades, like slaves, without country, without basic rights, without hope, without future. Then we will help ourselves to some more land and hope that as a result they will start loving us. However, if that fails, we will blockade them in their prison camps and throw all sorts of ammo on them from the sky because Jews strongly believe in their God. And if they will call us Nazis for doing all that for 60 years what the hell will we do then? Now that would be a lie we will not permit. We will never tolerate such accusation. Never! Heck, lets bomb them again, just for that audacity they deserve Cast Lead-2 . Hey Ashkenazi…. go! go! go!
January 14, 2011
3:28 pm
Maayan,
When the day comes, 5-10-15 years down the road, that the Palestinian state formally asks the world for voting rights with Israel as a bi-national state, do you think that I’m going to say no?
I’m an American. The way that the US came to peace with American Indians was making them US citizens. This is how all modern countries have solved the settler/colonialist issue.
I will say to you what I said to the contributor “eee” on the blog “Mondoweiss.net”: the day will come when you dance the Debka with the Hora, and the TV will have a public service announcement for “Palestinian History Month”.
Jews will still be in the new nation of Israel-Palestine, or Palestine-Israel, but there will be Arabs, too. And as Arabs have been exposed to the whole world via Internet for a few years now, the socio-economic differences will diminish. I’m writing from California and we are the living embodiment of the one-state solution.
I work with African Americans, Mexicans, Chinese, etc. etc. I go to the Lebanese chicken place down the road, and maybe their relative was Hezbollah, or maybe they were bombed by cluster bombs. Israel can’t draw this wall of separation anymore. What values can I apply to the Israel-Palestine situation but American values that I know and love and will teach to my kids?
January 14, 2011
5:06 pm
Not even close? We now have Orthodox rabbis calling for Palestinians to be sent to the ovens. Your editorial decision seems to have gone along with recent trends in Israel. I won’t read you anymore.
January 14, 2011
6:30 pm
I understand Noam Sheizaf in his view because I agree with his reasons.
Likewise what AngelaJerusalem said are very interesting thoughts too.
January 15, 2011
3:14 am
I’m not a right-winger, but I do use the terms Judea and Samaria every chance I get.
January 15, 2011
3:37 am
Robert, with all due respect, Arabs already live in Israel, vote in Israel, open businesses and work in Israel, worship freely in Israel, etc.
Unlike Americans who came to the New World in the 1600s, Jews have lived in Israel, including Judea and Samaria for thousands of years. This is why, despite the best efforts of Israel’s opponents to depict Jews as settlers/colonialists, they are neither. When I speak Hebrew, I speak a language that was spoken on this very land long before the Arabs or Muslims got here.
Additionally, my nation, the Jewish nation, has a right to self-determination. That right is equal to the right of any nation to self-determination. It means that we can decide how we live and with whom we live. Just as you close your borders with a massive fence to Mexican immigration on the one side and Canadian immigration on the other side.
It so happens that I and most other members of the Jewish nation want this state to be a democracy, so that others may live here among us with equal rights. However, there is no moral or ethical law that requires the Jewish nation to give up its right to self-determination in order to facilitate Muslim domination or Palestinian self-determination. The first rule of every democracy is that it must defend its own democratic institutions zealously and the first right of every nation is to guard its right to self-determination zealously. That’s what Israel is doing.
If you want the Palestinians to be part of a binational state, then you should encourage them to bring Jews into their midst, since they control 77% of Ottoman Palestine and are close to controlling another 11% of it. The Jews, in their tiny 12% of Ottoman Palestine – the historic Land of Israel – will continue to live democratically in a Jewish state.
January 15, 2011
3:41 am
Ex-Israeli, your quote is not just out of historical context, but your analysis of it is astonishingly poor.
January 24, 2011
1:42 am
Hey Noam,
I agree: the comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany, isn’t right. On the other hand, I think these analogies serve our subconscious – I think Jewish Israelis (like me), have not yet given enough thought to how our history in Europe in the time of the holocaust, has influenced our actions today. I’m not a historian, and I haven’t researched the holocaust deeply, but I think we can agree that this history affects Israel as a state, to this day.
We still live with the trauma of the possibility that we will one day get wiped out by a hating and anti-semitic people. Although anti-semitism does exist, our feeling of hatred from the world is unproportional, and it dictates policies, politics, peace negotiations etc., due to this past of ours that cannot be disregarded.
Why then, do people use this analogy between Israel and Nazi Germany? I think that we all feel, somewhere deep inside, that we have not yet given a deep enough thought to the connection between the two times in history, and how the one affects the other, while causing chain reactions that we see today. And it’s easier to just say: “Israel = Nazism!” than to actually understand the connection that *does* exist.
I think you are right in not giving people the opportunity to comment with this analogy to your posts. But when will we deal with our past and present, while leaving the reductions and superficial analogies behind us?
January 28, 2011
10:12 pm
Robert,
The way the US came to make “peace” with American indians, as you say, was by nearly wiping them out, and putting the survivors in reserves, with the worst discrimination suffered, the least integration into american life, worst poverty. It really is very funny to lecture on how well the americans have done by their natives!
June 6, 2011
7:05 am
Noam, thank you so much. I wish more people had this much common sense in every political debate.
While I agree with Robert that we should consider how the experience of the Holocaust impacts our actions today, that is a long process of self-examination and critical thinking that is vastly different from simply calling people Nazis. The only Nazis were… well, the Nazis.
You should mentor Glenn Beck
June 24, 2011
6:30 am
“Israel has one or several laws that were introduced by the Nazis too. Even if that’s the case, so what?”
incredible..
June 26, 2011
4:46 pm
Noam, note that Albert Einstein, Hanna Arendt, Yeha’aihu Leibowitz and many others, who were intimately familiar with Nazism and Nazi ideology, did not hesitate to compare certain Zionist parties with “Nazi and Fascist parties” http://goo.gl/71riy .
Do you think the reasons you give for not making such analogies are valid for these authors as well? If so, how do you explain that they didn’t follow your logic of abstaining from this analogy? If not, what makes these reasons invalid for these authors?
August 8, 2011
12:58 pm
If you applied the logic threaded through some of these comments and apply it to america, all the jews in New York city would have to move back to europe, or be rounded up into camps, after all the indians were there first. I am sure the indians god asurred them it was their land in the beginning.
November 16, 2011
3:45 pm
With point number one.
Agreed.
December 24, 2011
8:54 am
Sure! Enact censorship on your blog to prove that Israel isn’t like Nazi Germany. Doesn’t mean you aren’t acting like the Nazis did when they banned all references to Marx.
Ooooh, it’s offensive to you? Aww and your poor old grampa? Suck it up. Read Norman Finkelstein’s Holocaust Industry and get off your high horse. There’s no good reason NOT to refer to Israel as the ultimate evil that must be fought right now because if once Israel can get away with basically stealing an entire country, then what else will they get away with? All Israel has served to do is start a needless clash of civilizations between Islam and the West.
Why is anti-Semitism bad when anti-Nazism is perfectly fine? The Nazis caused WW2; Israel is going to cause WW3.
As a native american, I find this is utter bullshit. Typical Anglo-Saxon douchebaggery thinking it knows how to run the world, displacing people who have histories and cultures far exceeding modern times. Let me tell you that America and Canada (among others) did not come to peace with Natives by making them citizens! Natives are still denied basic human rights much in the same way that Palestinians are. I guess the Jews are just trying to nicely “civilize” Islam with its nukes, right?
January 19, 2012
8:53 pm
I think you are making a mistake.
I agree that Nazi Germany is used far too much in political debate for analogies, and used inaccurately. You make some good point about why comparisons with Nazi Germany are often unhelpful.
But those are not reasons to censor a blog.
Yes, on your own blogs you can make your own rules. But I think you have shown a lack of objectivity by singling out one particular type of analogy.
In fact, comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany are probably *more* relevant than in other political discussions. And the reason, ironically, is exactlyl BECAUSE people like you have grandfather’s who are survivors.
Discussions about Nazi Germany are central to Israeli domestic and foreign policy. The historical reasons are surely obvious. Much of the public support to create the state came from the Holocaust. The Holocaust hangs over Israel like a cloud.
Surely you aren’t saying the Holocaust or Nazi Germany has no relevance to Jewish people in Israel, or to how Israel is viewed or views itself?
It is because it is SO RELEVANT to the “Palestine Problem” that banning analogies is a crucial censorship.
EVEN IF Israel is completely different to Nazi Germany now (though you conceed there are similarities in law) WHAT IF it changes? WHAT IF it starts to create more and more laws that look similar to Nazi Germany? Will you lift your ban? When does institutionalised racism causing oppression and death become genocide? Who draws that line?
Many, many people shake their head at Israel’s actions and one of the common things you hear is “How can they oppress another people AFTER ALL THAT WAS DONE TO THEM, how can they do it another people”? The cycle of violence, the abuser becomes the abused – is clear to see.
What your grandfather went through was hell – but you are not him. You cannot wear his pain as yours. If he placed this rule, I would understand. But at some point, generations later, (especially if running a blog on the topic) shouldn’t some objectivity be applied?
That is why an analogy of Nazism should not be banned. I beleve you have placed your own sensitivies over honest debate and clear thinking about the subject.
January 19, 2012
9:02 pm
*Sorry my error – above it should the abused becomes the abuser, of course.
By the way, most of the reasons you give – apart from reason 4 – could also be applied to any comparisons with apartheid South Africa.
After all
- South Africa apartheid law and Israeli discriminatory law are not identical (of course)
- There are significant factual differences between the country (of course)
- People might start debating South African apartheid instead (of course that’s possible).
So…
1. Will you ban all analogies with South Africa in apartheid too? (Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and others will need to be censored by you then
2. Why not extend your ban to ALL OTHER COUNTRIES, as the risks also apply to some extent to them?
3. Perhaps ALL ANALOGIES should be banned, as there are also risks of misuse, inaccuracy or sidetracking?
February 7, 2012
12:29 am
I understand where you are coming from. OTOH, the cycle of the abused becoming the abuser does seem to apply here, and the original abusers were the Nazis. There is also the question of the motivation ‘never again’, which also takes us back to the Holocaust. These are valid points. I am not sure what the answer is, although this is the Internet and the tradition is Godwin’s Law, the ‘rule’ that mentioning the Nazis ends all discussion.