Following on the Hamas attack of 7 October, the ongoing Israeli response, consisting of the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank in a genocidal attempt to complete their ethnic cleansing, has become an intellectual and, above all, ethical test for the rest of the world.
Great article! Good to see you on a Substack, I used to follow you on Twitter, but left last February. Anyway, Shlomo Sand has made a similar argument regarding the current cultural degradation in France where now Islamophobia and racism towards Arab citizens has replaced the anti-Semitism prevalent in France in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and where criticism of the Israeli state is punished.
Great points made by Mr. Amar! To purge itself of its guilt for perpetrating history's most infamous* genocide, Germany enthusiastically backs and assists in carrying out a new genocide by the state claiming to represent the victims of Germany's most industrial (but not its only) genocide. Germany's leaders think this expiates their guilt but in fact it does the opposite: it compounds it, adding the blood of Palestinians to that of 6 million Jews.
*Most infamous for well-known reasons, but not the greatest in magnitude. Take for example Japan's killing of an estimated 20 million Chinese in the 20th century as its method for exploiting and colonizing large areas of China. Was that not a genocidal campaign lasting decades? Japan also backs Israel's Gaza slaughter. If Italy's right-wing government does as well, the Axis millions died to defeat has had a posthumous revival of a core component of its evil.
In the point, again. So necessary thoughts, in a place, just as you describe, where thinking becames a way of being ostracized, and looking at the new increasingly obtuse laws, endangerous as well.
"Vergangenheitbewältigung? Nein, danke" could be a favorite sticker in the hip, or "Freespeech? No thanks" or even "I will not missuse my brain thinking, I will do whatever the government recommend"
(the latter applied for the politicians, only that for them "the government" is the real one: the filthy floating corporatist, oligarchs,militar and banquers cartel, la créme de la créme).
Now people forget that the Nazis didn't just kill Jews.
"An estimated 17 million people were murdered by the German Nazi regime and their collaborators between 1933 and 1945, according to data published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). The estimates are based on the regime’s own reports as well as demographic studies of population loss during World War II. The latest estimate of the number of homosexual victims is based on research by German historian Alexander Zinn, who carried out extensive research on this group of victims."
Completely apart from what is happening in Israel, which is rooted in the same kind of murderous ethno-religious purist desire ... but yes you should take it seriously.
The forced labor and the concentration camps were not the same. My late father, as a teenager, and my grandfather and others, were initially forced laborers, ie slaves, taken to Austria around 1944. After the substandard diet made them ineffective at digging etc, they were shipped to a concentration camp in 1945, which was an entirely different operation. In some of those camps, the relatively "lucky" ones, the inmates were simply neglected and left to rot, and many did survive (barely). Others, like Auschwitz, nobody our family knew of returned from. The "ovens" were to scale up the disposal of the bodies of those already dead, regardless of the method by which they died - whether starved, shot, or poisoned.
A peculiarity of that episode of genocide was that surprisingly detailed records were kept, compared to similar modern episodes in semi-literate peasant societies. Both by the victims (eg my grandfather, previously a doctor, carried around papers of the names of those from his small town that he knew were killed, and of course after the war the reunited communities figured it out in detail) - and also by the operators of the concentration camps, as they initially had other purposes besides wholesale ethnic cleansing, and when repurposed to "neatly" dispose of masses of human beings, the bureaucracy that counted everyone still remained. It is remembered, among many things, as a reminder of what ordinary people are capable of (not in a good way), if and when things go wrong. Germany was, after all, considered one of the most "civilized" in the west in culture, science, rule-following, etc.
As for Israel, today they're very disgustingly hiding behind this entire history, to stifle criticism of today's episode of ethnic cleansing and mass murder in Gaza (likely to accelerate from mere thousands, into tens or even hundreds of thousands, as the lack of fuel and clean water etc eventually kicks in) - all the while Israeli leaders claim victimhood -- which is not the case at all in today's balance of power. Regardless of the instigating cause, what is happening is quite deliberate, and a direct expression of the strategic end state the Israeli far right has consistently wanted.
You are misunderstanding my post, it seems. I do NOT state that there was a "paradigmatic" genocide; I consider that view false (as you do). I state that the Holocaust is very often treated as such (yes, that is still a fact).
Great article! Good to see you on a Substack, I used to follow you on Twitter, but left last February. Anyway, Shlomo Sand has made a similar argument regarding the current cultural degradation in France where now Islamophobia and racism towards Arab citizens has replaced the anti-Semitism prevalent in France in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and where criticism of the Israeli state is punished.
Thanks so much for sharing yr article. Deeply appreciated.
Great points made by Mr. Amar! To purge itself of its guilt for perpetrating history's most infamous* genocide, Germany enthusiastically backs and assists in carrying out a new genocide by the state claiming to represent the victims of Germany's most industrial (but not its only) genocide. Germany's leaders think this expiates their guilt but in fact it does the opposite: it compounds it, adding the blood of Palestinians to that of 6 million Jews.
*Most infamous for well-known reasons, but not the greatest in magnitude. Take for example Japan's killing of an estimated 20 million Chinese in the 20th century as its method for exploiting and colonizing large areas of China. Was that not a genocidal campaign lasting decades? Japan also backs Israel's Gaza slaughter. If Italy's right-wing government does as well, the Axis millions died to defeat has had a posthumous revival of a core component of its evil.
In the point, again. So necessary thoughts, in a place, just as you describe, where thinking becames a way of being ostracized, and looking at the new increasingly obtuse laws, endangerous as well.
"Vergangenheitbewältigung? Nein, danke" could be a favorite sticker in the hip, or "Freespeech? No thanks" or even "I will not missuse my brain thinking, I will do whatever the government recommend"
(the latter applied for the politicians, only that for them "the government" is the real one: the filthy floating corporatist, oligarchs,militar and banquers cartel, la créme de la créme).
Now people forget that the Nazis didn't just kill Jews.
"An estimated 17 million people were murdered by the German Nazi regime and their collaborators between 1933 and 1945, according to data published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). The estimates are based on the regime’s own reports as well as demographic studies of population loss during World War II. The latest estimate of the number of homosexual victims is based on research by German historian Alexander Zinn, who carried out extensive research on this group of victims."
https://www.statista.com/chart/24024/number-of-victims-nazi-regime/
Completely apart from what is happening in Israel, which is rooted in the same kind of murderous ethno-religious purist desire ... but yes you should take it seriously.
The forced labor and the concentration camps were not the same. My late father, as a teenager, and my grandfather and others, were initially forced laborers, ie slaves, taken to Austria around 1944. After the substandard diet made them ineffective at digging etc, they were shipped to a concentration camp in 1945, which was an entirely different operation. In some of those camps, the relatively "lucky" ones, the inmates were simply neglected and left to rot, and many did survive (barely). Others, like Auschwitz, nobody our family knew of returned from. The "ovens" were to scale up the disposal of the bodies of those already dead, regardless of the method by which they died - whether starved, shot, or poisoned.
A peculiarity of that episode of genocide was that surprisingly detailed records were kept, compared to similar modern episodes in semi-literate peasant societies. Both by the victims (eg my grandfather, previously a doctor, carried around papers of the names of those from his small town that he knew were killed, and of course after the war the reunited communities figured it out in detail) - and also by the operators of the concentration camps, as they initially had other purposes besides wholesale ethnic cleansing, and when repurposed to "neatly" dispose of masses of human beings, the bureaucracy that counted everyone still remained. It is remembered, among many things, as a reminder of what ordinary people are capable of (not in a good way), if and when things go wrong. Germany was, after all, considered one of the most "civilized" in the west in culture, science, rule-following, etc.
As for Israel, today they're very disgustingly hiding behind this entire history, to stifle criticism of today's episode of ethnic cleansing and mass murder in Gaza (likely to accelerate from mere thousands, into tens or even hundreds of thousands, as the lack of fuel and clean water etc eventually kicks in) - all the while Israeli leaders claim victimhood -- which is not the case at all in today's balance of power. Regardless of the instigating cause, what is happening is quite deliberate, and a direct expression of the strategic end state the Israeli far right has consistently wanted.
You are misunderstanding my post, it seems. I do NOT state that there was a "paradigmatic" genocide; I consider that view false (as you do). I state that the Holocaust is very often treated as such (yes, that is still a fact).
Thank you.
I've deleted it.
My apologies.
No problem!