#21

I would tend to agree with you.

I have family members, however, not old people - people in their 50s, who are absolutely certain that there would have been more pogroms in recent years had Israel not behaved as it does. People are very angry and paranoid given what happened in the 1930s and 1940s and I do think Israeli political rhetoric plays on that.

It is unsurprising and rather boring, however, that the actions of the Israeli state are brought up at any mention of the Holocaust.

#22

I know it’s dangerous rhetoric - that’s precisely my point. The Holocaust is used as a shield by political actors in Israel so that those actors themselves can propagate the idea that they & they only are the true voice of Judaism…and it’s highly controversial because they have been so successful at it that my criticism of a political party/state apparatus/regime is read as a criticism of all Jews (which it most certainly isn’t).

I’m aware that what I’ve said here is a taboo but I grew up with a Jewish father (who was born on the floor of a school assembly hall that was a makeshift hospital in the internment camp on the Isle of Man that Churchill sent my grandparents to) and a grandfather who not only fled Germany to arrive in England to be put in that internment camp but also arrived in Germany in the first place as an orphan refugee of the Armenian genocide. He saw what was coming in Germany and managed to get my Grandma & her sister to France & then to England. Her parents - my great grandparents - who had survived pogroms and fled from Russia to Ukraine, to Poland & then to Germany, weren’t so lucky. They died in Auschwitz in 1943.

I was always taught; ‘beware of little men who use big words to speak for their people’

but I dunno, maybe I’m an anti-semite

4 Likes
#23

Israeli defence policy will always be linked to antisemitism and quite rightly really, I don’t think it ever won’t have historical roots to the holocaust and their place in the region will always be effected by being a Jewish state whether they soften or harden their approach to their neighbours.
Still doesn’t excuse their abuse of privilege particularly towards nonstate actors but essentially the only solutions anybody’s offering there is liberalising everything which I can’t see working either so it’s just a sad race to the bottom.

#24

…and your family members may be right …who knows?

The main thrust of my post though was some sympathy/empathy to the plight of Poland & Poles (both Jewish & gentile) who were subject to the crushing brutality of the Third Reich rolling into their country in 1939 and basically setting fire to the place and chopping off heads. Who knows how any of us would react to that - let alone years of that kind of occupation.

I mentioned Israel only in reference to the fact that the original article linked to is about the fury of Israeli MPs at the Polish bill

it’s a devastatingly difficult subject to discuss with any degree of nuance or deviation from the official decrees of the Knesset and obviously the Polish bill is hamfisted, counterproductive & entirely unnecessary but I do have some sympathy with the Polish position here and that was mainly what I wanted to express

#25

I just have a big problem with a right-wing, militaristic government monopolising the global voice of Judaism when the diaspora is a vast and pluralistic entity of a myriad different voices, colours & histories

2 Likes
#26

Aye that’s fair and I’d imagine all do, but antisemitism in the region and in history means the militarism is both paranoid and understandable means I doubt it’ll change
Essentially the only thing that’ll save us now is robot communism

#27

Yes, I think we’re in agreement. I do have sympathy with the Poles, to an extent. None of us can say with certainty how we would behave in such dire circumstances. I can’t help but find the attempts to rewrite verifiable history a bit comical though.

#28

Worth saying at this juncture that Israel has no problem whatsoever with supporting far right central European groups.

2 Likes
#29

Part of perpetuating wider islamaphobic feeling particularly concerning immigration related to refugees innit
Sickening

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#30

What I find particularly troubling is how relatively vague the bill is in regards to making references to specific individual’s working with the Nazis and as suggested it will probably have the effect (intended or otherwise) of stifling research work in that area.

#31

Opinions here are misinformed and immature.

#32

Enlighten us then

1 Like
#33

Please, go on.

#34

We going Burnley racist or danish idiot with this one?

#35

it’s not exactly recent though, is it? i mean there’s an ebb and a flow to it, but almost everywhere in europe goes through periodic swells of fascist mass movements/right wing populism. it stretches back decades, back before we even called it fascism.

#36

why would I be talking about the fascist swells of the thirties or 1870s in this instance though

#37

your exact words were that it’s been a worrying swell recently. i’m just saying it isn’t recent, especially in a place like poland. it’s just how europe is and has been for a long time. sometimes they can keep the lid on it, sometimes they can’t. it’s still concerning, obvs.

i think we in the uk perceive it as being a newer trend than it is because we’re currently going through our own far-right revival, and it’s been such a long time since the last one (maybe the 70s? 80s?)

#38

yeah but not necessarily exclusively, but i’m worried about the recent one not the one in 1656, but yeah whatever

#39

No really you dont understand people? 3/4 needs to enlist a serious historical lesson

government want to separate with a thick line the mixing of the Polish population in nazi or german holocaust! pogroms happened everywhere, from France to Georgia. The victims were hundreds, maybe thousands. But it was the Germans and their commandos who murdered hundreds of thousands. And then they burned the rest in camps, millions.

Germans killed 5-6 million Polish citizens during the war,
in pogroms - maybe thousands of Jews died.

Secondly - it is important - pogroms were made in the borderlands inhabited by Lithuanians, Ruthenians and Ukrainians. The majority / large part of these slaughters and pogroms of Jews was carried out by fascinating Lithuanians, Belarussians and Ukrainians who symphatized with the UPA / OUN. And now they are described as Poles.
to read:
UPA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Insurgent_Army
OUN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_of_Ukrainian_Nationalists

There is also visible Jewish- anti-Polish propaganda strategy, its seen that many Jews no longer use “Polish death camps” this propaganda has already burned out was too big false, they have made new, almost “warm” brand propaganda of- “Polish pogroms” and it is best to write about “Polish hands” this will sounds more credibly, “authenticate” these unreal false statements.

#40

Tone down the inner brat a little pal, there’s no need for this.