At 06:16 AM 05/09/2002 -0400, Ian cross posted article by Milne :
>With the far right on the march across the continent, it is hardly
>surprising that a community barely a couple of generations away from the
>most devastating genocide in human history feels beleaguered - a
>perception heightened by atrocities against civilians in Israel, such as
>Tuesday's suicide attack in Rishon Letzion.
-I get so tired of this "most devastating genocide in human history." I -think native Americans, to take just one example, could definitely make -that claim as well.
You can definitely make an alternative claim, and maybe be right, but it is exactly the "so tired" of hearing such comments that are rightly offensive to Jews, just as comments that conservatives are "tired" of hearing about slavery is offensive. For the people who suffered genocide, it is the "most devastating" act in history, since it effected their families.
Many leftist campaigns have a large problem in picking the victims it favors and diminishing the suffering of those it doesn't, instead of building a movement against suffering in all its forms. One can acknowledge the suffering of Jews, who lost a third of their global numbers in a space of a few years during World War II after centures of persecution, while at the same time arguing that suffering does not make Israeli oppression of the Palestinians valid. It is precisely the horrors and lessons of the Holocaust, like the suffering of other groups, that should make people sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians. But if the Left must base its sympathy for the Palestinians on downplaying the horror of the Holocaust, they should not be surprised if others find diminishing the suffering of the Palestinians as valid an exercise.
Trying to rank or diminish or express "being tired" at hearing about the suffering due to any atrocity is a losing strategy for humanistic progressive values.
In fact, it is the memory of the Holocaust that makes the destruction of land records and other markers of identity in Jenin and other camps so scary, because it has the markers of the early stages of that past genocide.
A left that cannot say "never again" to the Holocaust will probably be ineffectual in preventing the victimization of other peoples. Memory of the unique horrors of each genocide, whether of native americans or slaves in the Middle Passage or the ovens of Auschwitz, is the best chance of recognizing the coming of new genocides with their own unique horrors.
-- Nathan Newman