Thursday, April 19, 2012

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY); Huffington Post.com
How many days did Anne Frank, diary writer, spend in Nazi Germany? Answer: zero. She wrote in a land far away (AP/HuffingtonPost.com).

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, traffic will stop as a siren rings throughout the state of Israel. Throughout the world, synagogue members will light memorial candles and children will recite poems as well as the names of those who died.

But after sundown, when Holocaust Remembrance Day concludes, the responsibility to preserve the memories of those who tragically perished and fought to live will carry on.

Consider how you will bear that responsibility by learning how you can support, and get involved with, the organizations that are committed to educating about the horrors of the Holocaust and to never allowing the world to forget. More

Questioning the Holocaust
Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

My wife says I'm a "Holocaust denier." She should know. Maybe you are, too The definition is very flexible. And it's a crime in a growing number of places in Europe. How long will we be able to question history here? Already the consequences are massive. You will not be voted into office, you will be denied tenure, you will get a punch in the nose in the Catskills, and worse. You may even be called the worst thing we people nowadays, "racist." Of course the war happened, of course Jews (among others) were targeted, of course war crimes and atrocities were committed by Nazis.


What I question is the details, the numbers, the boring stuff behind the headlines. To question is to doubt, and that is what is not allowed. It's not PC. And the PC Police, like the Nazi Gestapo, do not allow dissenting opinions when it comes to corporate and governmental policies.

Thank goodness for organizations like CodePink, J Street, and luminaries like Medea Benjamin. Every supporter of Israel in America, just as every American with regard to the wars on geopolitically Middle Eastern countries like Palestine and Iraq and Afghanistan, needs to stand firm and say: NOT IN MY NAME.

They do not event tolerate implications. There is a story, special interests are served by that story, and (history and reality be d*mned) that story will not be subject to inquiry. Maybe the atrocity of the Holocaust was that only 200,000 human beings were unfairly rounded up, tortured, and exterminated. It is not acceptable if the number is only 2. But we are indoctrinated, without much evidence, to accept as an article of faith that the number was 6,000,000 even 30,000,000. The bigger the disinformation, the more believable it is. Hitler (the figurehead for Goebbels and worse Nazis), it is said, advocated bigger lies for the success of propaganda campaigns. Is it disinformation? I don't know. I'd like to know. But it can't be questioned. It can't even be brought up.

Who is profiting form this story, and who is suffering today? Why is the hypocrisy of Israel's treatment of Palestinians/Arabs unspeakable, unutterable, unquestionable? Why is our complicity, actually that of our government and tax dollars, unquestionable? Does any group, as Sarah Silverman jokes, have a disproportionate control of news and entertainment? (How dare you promote racist stereotypes! Why? Because to question is to "promote" in this arena). Zionism, banking, Flotillas and Flytillas threatened, double-standards galore, human rights abuses, AIPAC, Israeli PM Netanyahu browbeating the US Congress, the sexist religious roots of our culture? I think there's something going on here. Something's rotten in Denmark.

My wife won't talk to me. But in a Buddhist twist, someone more important -- with regard to this subject anyway -- would: the reborn Anne Frank. More on what she said to come.

Orthodox Jews are only following what their holy scriptures command them, scriptures sacred to many Christians. And for that they are called "ultra-orthodox," even when they stand with Iran's president on certain issues. Such integrity or the courage of their convictions is only used to discredit them as "extremists." And we never hear why they would oppose this or be for that. That is how censorship harms us all (alarbiya.net).

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