Sauron

Which every nutcase denomination has used to feel smug and self-satisfied. My distant cousins are snake-handlers from West Virginia. Whenever anyone tells them that they are absolutely fucking nuts for picking up copperheads and rattlesnakes, they quote the same silly rationale you do: "Jesus told us we'd be persecuted for our beliefs. Thank you for proving Jesus to be true!"

No, it only shows what a self-fulfilling prophecy looks like. It provides no evidence or proof that the belief is correct.

Sauron

Yeah, but you have the math backwards.

You read that as "support for Israel costs each US taxpayer $23,241."

What it actually says is that "support for Israel costs $23,241 per Israeli citizen (that we support)." In other words, when you divide all US foreign assistance by the total population of Israel, it comes out to about $23K per Israeli.

But the per capita cost to the US taxpayer of providing that foreign assistance is far lower than $23K.

Sauron

Or, they could both abandon their respective religions. That would liberate them to create a new moral consensus that contained neither of the two flaws of the original religions.

Freethought. What a concept.

Sauron

Well, no. They haven't.

What caused mass genocide wasn't critiques of Judaism. Nor did examinations of Jewish claims about Jericho, the Exodus, cause death camps. What caused mass genocide was a twisted political theory called national socialism.

You pay lip service to the idea that Jews and Judaism are fair game to criticize - just like Christianity and Islam. Yet barely out of the starting gate, and presto! you are slippery-sloping your way right back to declaring criticism of Jews/Judaism to be a taboo topic, or a "handle with kid gloves" situation.

It is neither one.

jcain6

It really boils down to how you insult the Jewish person. I am of a Jewish background but I am not religious. If you insult or criticize my family's theology I would probably join you. But if you tell me that I am cheap, or make a lampshade joke or something like that I will get pissed. Now if someone started going around and killing off all of the Christians I would certainly never make a comment to be used as an insult with regards to that. Along with the whole Jewish title comes a lot of prejudice. If a Christian becomes an atheist, that is the end of it. But if I become an atheist I am still a Jew, not because I see it as a different race but because others see it as a different race. Hitler killed many Jews who were not religious because their parents were Jewish. It was a very bad time to have a Jewish last name. People who didn’t even know that they had a Jewish background were sent to the camps. There is no problem with insulting the theology of any religion. Insulting the suffering of a group of people who, in some way, are connected to an identity is wrong, especially when the suffering is recent.

Epinoia

False as in racism implies a race, which Jews have responded to by saying we're a religion who accepts converts. Among them Geraldo Rivera, Connie Chung, Sammy Davis Jr. and so on. And so it is copacetic until it comes to arguing that menorahs are OK in public displays but crosses are not because menorahs aren't about a religion but about us as an ethnocultural group, an ethnic group, and imprecisely, a race. As I said, as long as that's the rule now, having a couple swastikas next to each unaccompanied menorah should be just fine, as swastikas remain an ethnocultural symbol of good luck among Taoists, Buddhists and Confucianists--the last of which definitely isn't a religion. It's none of their fault that their swastika got expropriated and used such an evil way. The swastika has every right that the menorah has to be there. That this isn't pushed more has to do with not hurting others' feelings. The less someone gives a rat's ass for your feelings, the less likely you are to always put theirs first.

The Holocaust, as I understand it, applies to the Nazi-driven genocide. Widely quoted figures put total Holocaust deaths at 11 million people, slightly half of whom were Jewish. There is no reason to balkanize the victims with new categorical words. There is a reason why U.S.-tax supported memorials like HoloMus of DC should be remembering others in proportion to their dead. IOW, making the museum 95 percent plus about Jews, Jews, Jews and 3-5 percent everyone else is a diss on the 45 percent everyone else. Governments have given more than enough space and resources for Holocaust education. Those who use this public funding must portray the dead in proportionate terms, because that's what they get paid to do. I could be for gov't funding of Holocaust education as long as all the dead are respected. As it is, that isn't happening, and it is up to the publicly supported Holocaust infrastructure to do better or close up.

We may have to split off of this soon, but for now and briefly, explain what construes "holocaust denial" as you've cited this term.

You didn't ask me for a general blacklist. You asked me did anyone lose their job. The JDO post chronicled JDO's frenetic efforts to get all their friends with clout to call up the Congressman. They worked on his staff. Soon after the guy was off and JDO was nearly orgasmic with delight, crowing about how THEY THEMSELVES brought it on. So what if it wasn't "his opinion" but a group he'd been supportive of before? Same thing, IMO.

Finkelstein's own job complications are detailed in the prologue of Holocaust Industry. If you're interested in getting a feel for the harassment in general, go to normanfinkelstein.com and read everything. (Small site). Pay special attention to the letters section and the language used by his supporters and his detractors.

I don't understand what is up with the above, so this is a guess: Are you saying that your answer to me is that more ppl with Xtian expertise have submitted articles so far but they hope others do too?



Look. I'll be working for 20 more years yet, will have to move around, and I would just as soon not have problems. This is all I can say to you before I know and trust you IRL, and not personal, it applies to everyone. I don't need anyone tracking me down and/or blacklisting me, nor do I need anyone going truly michelmah amelek and doing things like calling people's kids with nasty messages. Such things can and do happen.

\

Epinoia

As I noted, insults and criticisms are different things, although overlaps exist. What I'm getting at is an INCONSISTENCY in how J/J/I is treated compared to Islam/Muslims/Arabia or the comparative Xtian example.

The lampshade and soap theory has long since been debunked. I'd refer you to nizkor.org on this, but the site still seems to be down. (N.B.: Nizkor.org's mission is to debunk what it calls "Holocaust denial.") Further, the only lampshade and soap jokes I've heard over the past 10 years have come from Jews. Al Franken and more recently Michael Savage (Weiner) made cracks that essentially went along the lines of "if whoever had their way, we'd all be bars of soap." That is demonstrably untrue and inflammatory. It is in poor taste, even if a Jew says it. I wish that would stop.

A lot of Jews are atheist/agnostic and even more don't care about Orthodox or even Reform/Conservative theology, so that's less off limits than the modern fundamentalist strain of an emerging quasi-religion best described as Judeocultural Israelism. I don't blame Jews who get pissed about "Jews are cheap." But how about "Jews are good with money" or "Jews control the media"? Neither say "all Jews" and neither implies that. Most everyone knows, for example, a Jew who has nothing to do with the media. Most everyone here likely will know that "Jews" may very well mean "most Jews," "many Jews," "Jewish mainstream organizations," or "Jews as a group." This discussion is about the issues at hand rather than the minutae of which caveat to use and what others to bring in. That's a whole separate discussion that I hope won't be bogging down this one.

That said, while mainstream Jewish organizations like ADL have historically and heroically fought groups that were anti-Jewish but predominately anti-black (like the KKK), they haven’t said too much about Israelis gunning down 13 year olds or bulldozing houses. On the rare instance ADL does criticize Israel, it is over the language used rather than the thuggish policies implemented! (http://www.adl.org/PresRele/IslME_62/4602_62.htm) Correct me if I’m wrong, but AJC/WJC, ADL, AIPAC et al largely tolerated a mainstream book that suggested it would be fine if one day the U.S. just dispensed with Korea and Taiwan to pacify China, and that the U.S. should be twisting Great Britain’s arm so that it doesn’t join the EU. Should someone happen to mention that Richard Perle and David Frum (authors of An End to Evil) and about half of the top 50 most powerful neocons are Jewish, only then do such organizations start exhibiting concern about “fomenting hate.�

Ethics should transcend one's own interests, even if you're not oft-cited as "the world's conscience" as Jews are. Ethics are not a matter of what's good for the Jews, and if others happen to benefit, that's good too. If Jews happen to disagree with what said in the previous sentence, it would only be honest--and ethical--to say so.

Similarly, while the specific facts and figures concerning, say, Pol Pot’s doings or the Rwandan genocide can and have been dispassionately debated, it’s a whole ‘nother thing to say "Jews engage in indirect Holocaust denial by putting 95 percent of the emphasis on Jews alone," or "The Holocaust has become another way to rhetorically ask 'Why do they hate us' so that they'll give us (Israel) more money." Both statements above can be defended with dispassionate, sound argument and as such are closer to fact than irrational "hate." Yet the ADL, in particular, is increasingly relied upon to define what the latter even is, putting the line between speech and "hate" even more in question. I'm not speaking specifically about Zundel, here. I'm asking where is that line, exactly, when it comes to so-called anti-Holocaust Denial laws outside the U.S.? Few people may know. It isn't very clear. That, along with the laws and their penalties, along with social sanctions and automatic dismissals as "nonsense" or "anti-Jewish propaganda," act to keep any questions about the Jewish version from coming up at all.

Alternate views on any aspect of the Holy Holocaust (that is, the Jewish one, let alone the fact that the Jews don’t own it) are dismissed with an airy "this has all been disproven" (really? what did they say?) or "this doesn't even merit a response" (but why?) or this is “nonsense� and “anti-Jewish propaganda.� Any question risks the branding of "revisionism," which the Jewish establishment has firmly equated with "Holocaust denial," meaning that if you bring up one technical issue, you're de facto denying that Hitler wanted to kill Jews, that Jews died in gas chambers and that few if any died at all. You may as well think nothing happened and that Hitler was totally innocent. Very few people actually think this. I doubt even most self-declared white supremacists think this. Quite frankly, such tactics reek more of anti-blasphemy enforcement than encouragement of skeptical scholarship. At worst, it looks like someone has something to hide, even though that well may not be the case.

If a presidential candidate said, "U.S. aid to Israel should be cut, at least until they take back at least 75 percent of the “settlers� and disarm say 290 of their 300 nukes," think they'd have a chance of even making the Iowa primary? Even if they were hypotheticaly correct on every other issue, too? Would that have anything to do with AIPAC and with Israeli-Jewish interests' concerted campaign to encourage Holy Israel dispensationalism?

If you were to guess, would you say that more Jews than not believe that it’s unfair to allow menorahs but not creches in Xmas public displays? Why aren't the ones who do not speaking up? Or do most merely chalk it up to “the law� (one that they’re just fine with) and cite case law to the “uneducated�? If the issue is the “law� and not Jews, then Jews should find no fault with the display of swastikas next to their menorah in the public square if the same legal argument applies. (See my prev. posts here and in the ADL-menorah thread.) Somehow, that probably wouldn't happen.

Inconsistent standards. Laws that hamper scholarship. Backdoor shenanigans to stop professors from speaking (this one’s at NormanFinkelstein.com). Pressuring politicians into supporting what may not actually be in America’s interests. Failing to make a case for how it is by increasingly resorting to intimidation. A cabal in Washington that’s 10 times more Jewish than Jews in the population, which spawns books laying out the case for the U.S. being thuggish on everyone else, which brings the U.S. into a war that Israel heartily supported, which now has one of its top minions mixed up in a spy scandal involving a top Jewish PAC (though astoundingly AIPAC says it isn’t a PAC). The loud Jewish silence around all of this, mostly broken only to defend Jews when non-Jews bring it up: Is anti-Semitism is ever, ever, even partially the fault of what Jews as a group actually do? Anti-Semitism is regrettable. There should be less of it. Yet arguably the actions of so-called pro-Jewish groups and individuals have incited more anti-Semitism than the most rabid and marginal white supremacist group, particularly over the past decade or two. Referring to the majority, mainstream organizations, many or most, have Jews ever actually been in the wrong over the past 50-60 years or so? The answer is obvious and were Jews to admit this, anti-Semitism would not increase. Far from it. Everyone else has done wrong, and admitting it has been to their long-term credit and credibility. Jews would be no different.

Dr Rick

:down:

Epinoia

ACT-UP has been HEAVILY criticized in the mainstream media AND within the community AND outside of it. There are not tons of gays reflexively defending it while only a tiny minority appear to be speaking out against it. The latter group are not largely subject to being smeared in the mainstream media, which have actually done a fair job in representing views of people who dislike ACT-UP instead of ignoring or smearing them. They are not regularly outmuscled out of any forum by gays who call them "self-hating queers" and try to pressure conference-room managers into canceling their forums.

Same with women. Same, actually, for racial minorities. It's actually a lot easier and feels a lot safer to have a blunt talk about racial minorities, even the ones who actually DO have disparities in money and education, than about the Sacred J/J/I. Besides that, dragging out all these folks--a lot of whom have a lot less--merely to defend a chosen elite and its beatified interest could conceivably be, uh, rather condensending from the POV of those you're using. More to the point of this thread, however, the conversation is about J/J/I. If you want to discuss someone/something else, start another thread.

P.S.: It's not prejudice. It's parity. I've only stated how exactly it is about six times in the past two weeks or so. Moreover, shame-word intimidation is just spiffed up anti-blasphemy. Nice haircut, but it's still the same thing meriting the same reply: So what.

Epinoia

Feel free to substitute your "blacks/gays" and so on in here: http://ohr.edu/ask_db/ask_main.php/191/Q1/

Imagine. And did the rabbi just say that intermarriage is anti-Semitic? I think he just did: