US Guilt

ravi gadfly at exitleft.org
Wed Apr 24 12:52:01 PDT 2002


joanna bujes wrote:
>
> I know you're just trying to account for a ridiculous position. But the
> question remains "Why do Americans feel guilty about Auschwitz?" Why,
> when they do not feel guilty about far worse things for which they bear
> far more direct responsibility? My answer is that the guilt (assuming
> there's any) has been drummed into them through repeated exposure to the
> zionist version of WWII: the only people who were involved in the
> Holocaust were jews; the US went in to liberate them; the sufferings of
> the jews were unique in human history; arabs hate jews and they must be
> made to pay for this. Every single statement here is a lie, and these
> lies have been repeated constantly for the last fifty years.
>
> This may account for the alleged American guilt about the jews. But
> alleged or not, it is not the guilt that drives the policy but the other
> way around.
>

i would say that the holocaust museum, schindlers list, the strangeness of arabs and the similarity of jewish people (cultural, physical, etc), the number and strength of the domestic jewish population, and things like these, are what drive the american attitude, which is a mix of guilt and sympathy.

why would you say that US policy is behind the guilt or sympathy that americans feel [exclusively] for israel? is/was there a concerted effort, by the powers that control the govt, to help create this perception? what motivates such a govt policy? is it the benefits of a client state in the middle east? is it the advantages derived by keeping the region unstable?

--ravi



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