anti-zionism

[joanna bujes]

At 06:11 PM 05/09/2002 -0400, Nathan wrote:
>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.

I acknowledge it Nathan. My father, a jew, was imprisoned and tortured by 
the Romanian Iron Guard and barely escaped with his life. However, neither 
he nor I accept that the Holocaust was a unique or unparalleled act of 
genocide in human history, which is what I was responding to.


>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.

Unless they're Israeli Zionists...you see, because the sufferings of their 
ancestors were so unique.


>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.

You are misquoting me. I was referring to the unique/unparalleled claim.


>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.

Just the markers? Where have you been?

48 resulted in the eviction/dispossession of 75% of the population of 
Palestine. More in 67 and many more/all shortly if Sharon has his way.

Joanna