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Comparing Nazis to Israelis is unacceptable
Dvir Abramovich
From:The Australian
December 12, 201212:00AM
YESTERDAY in Melbourne's The Age Michael Leunig defended his cartoon "First they came for the Palestinians", previously published in that newspaper, and attacked those who supported Israel and who found his work objectionable.
Leunig's cartoon takes the noble words of anti-Nazi cleric Martin Niemoller decrying the passivity of bystanders in the face of Nazi evil and substitutes the Nazis referred to in the original poem with Israelis: "First they came for the Palestinians and I did not speak out".
Leunig obscenely equates the actions of Israel in Gaza to those of the Nazis and asserts the people who were once the objects of Hitler's extermination and their descendants are now committing genocide against the Palestinians and are thus the present world's Nazis.
I wonder if Leunig paused to consider how a survivor of the Holocaust would react when they came upon his cartoon?
Understandably shocked, they would ask, "How is it possible for anyone to compare the organised, industrial murder of six million Jews in gas chambers, in death camps, in ghettos and in open fields to what is happening in Gaza? Why would any person liken Israel's protection of its citizens from rockets to the genocidal and bestial liquidation of the Jews?"
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/comparing-nazis-to-israelis-is-unacceptable/story-e6frgd0x-1226534879253
147 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
"Wall"
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm688037120/tt0413018
I understand why people see similarities.
Nothing is black and white.
guard tower:
Israel and the Occupied Territories: The fence/wall violates human rights
Amnesty International 2/19/2004
Amnesty International believes that the construction by Israel of the fence/wall inside the Occupied Territories violates international law and is contributing to grave human rights violations.
According to the Israeli authorities the fence/wall is "a defensive measure, designed to block the passage of terrorists, weapons and explosives into the State of Israel...."
However, most of the fence/wall is not being constructed on the Green Line between Israel and the West Bank. Close to 90% of the route of the fence/wall is on Palestinian land inside the West Bank, encircling Palestinian towns and villages and cutting off communities and families from each other, separating farmers from their land and Palestinians from their places of work and education and health care facilities and other essential services.
....The fence/wall encompasses more than 50 Israeli civilian settlements in the Occupied Territories, in which the majority of Israeli settlers live and which are illegal under international law. The security exceptions in international humanitarian law cannot be invoked to justify measures that benefit unlawful civilian Israeli settlements at the expense of the occupied Palestinian population.
Amnesty International believes that the construction by Israel of the fence/wall inside the Occupied Territories violates international law and is contributing to grave human rights violations.
According to the Israeli authorities the fence/wall is "a defensive measure, designed to block the passage of terrorists, weapons and explosives into the State of Israel...."
However, most of the fence/wall is not being constructed on the Green Line between Israel and the West Bank. Close to 90% of the route of the fence/wall is on Palestinian land inside the West Bank, encircling Palestinian towns and villages and cutting off communities and families from each other, separating farmers from their land and Palestinians from their places of work and education and health care facilities and other essential services.
....The fence/wall encompasses more than 50 Israeli civilian settlements in the Occupied Territories, in which the majority of Israeli settlers live and which are illegal under international law. The security exceptions in international humanitarian law cannot be invoked to justify measures that benefit unlawful civilian Israeli settlements at the expense of the occupied Palestinian population.
http://www.vtjp.org/background/Separation_Wall_Report.htm
Have you seen the one on the US border? 
Enjoy your hypocrisy! 
And for all the progressives lurking:
Freedom of speech and expression <<< Calling any one I want a Nazi if i feel like it. Welcome to America. like it or GTFO.
Freedom of worship <<< Lets stop screening and metal detecting everyone going to the dome of the rock.
Freedom from want <<< Millions living in abject and chronic poverty per embargo policy and de juer law.
Freedom from fear <<< And no one likes getting rained on with phosphorus bombs.
Long live Freedom. Long live Democracy.
but still thank you for your reply and may I add that I expected no different
I will alert on it and eMail skinner myself to remove such a person.
Islamaphobia , Antisemitism ,Homophobia and all types of Bigotry should not be tolerated on DU or anywhere else for that matter.
Maybe the Nazis left a few Jews remaining to show the world just how Nazi-like the Jews were.
Great way for Europeans and others around the world to absolve themselves of the crimes of their parents and grandparents.
This cartoonist, Leunig, would probably feel right at home amongst demonstrators shouting 'We are Hamas' and of course, 'Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas'. Note that no other ethnic or religious group on the planet is ever compared to Nazis. Just Jews. This is a vulgar and deliberately painful slur used against Jews, which also serves to incite violence against them for being "just like" their former persecutors.
More from the article:
I wonder, did Leunig's "duty and conscience" compel him to sound the alarm all those years while thousands of rockets systematically fell on Israelis, attacks that Israeli author and peace activist Amos Oz called "a war crime and a crime against humanity"? Did Leunig ever express the "unspoken grief" of Israeli families who lost loved ones to terrorism?
Did he liken the actions of state genocides, brutal executions and large-scale massacres of civilians in Rwanda, Darfur, Congo, Nigeria, Syria, Myanmar, Somalia and Ethiopia to those of the Nazis? Did he call Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "excessively homicidal" for wanting to wipe Israel off the map? Or is this epitaph reserved only for Israel?
Why does Leunig absolve Palestinians of all responsibility for their situation and ignore their behaviour against Israel?
Criticism of Israeli policies is entirely acceptable and Leunig is entitled to his views. But such cartoons not only poison public debate, they close it. After all, how do you discuss the conflict with someone who compares Israelis to Nazis?
In his opinion piece this week, Leunig labels his critics in the Jewish community as "aggressive Israel supporters", "cynical", "bullying", "lazy", "false accusers" and "boys who cry wolf" who are engrossed in "obsessive and vapid denunciation". He accuses anyone who dares to see anti-Semitic tones in his cartoon as frauds who "are not really upset by any 'anti-Semitism' in my cartoons (there is none) but by the possible impact of a cartoon on the doubters".
Did he liken the actions of state genocides, brutal executions and large-scale massacres of civilians in Rwanda, Darfur, Congo, Nigeria, Syria, Myanmar, Somalia and Ethiopia to those of the Nazis? Did he call Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "excessively homicidal" for wanting to wipe Israel off the map? Or is this epitaph reserved only for Israel?
Why does Leunig absolve Palestinians of all responsibility for their situation and ignore their behaviour against Israel?
Criticism of Israeli policies is entirely acceptable and Leunig is entitled to his views. But such cartoons not only poison public debate, they close it. After all, how do you discuss the conflict with someone who compares Israelis to Nazis?
In his opinion piece this week, Leunig labels his critics in the Jewish community as "aggressive Israel supporters", "cynical", "bullying", "lazy", "false accusers" and "boys who cry wolf" who are engrossed in "obsessive and vapid denunciation". He accuses anyone who dares to see anti-Semitic tones in his cartoon as frauds who "are not really upset by any 'anti-Semitism' in my cartoons (there is none) but by the possible impact of a cartoon on the doubters".
Holocaust Inversion
The false accusation of Holocaust inversion-the portraying of Israel, Israelis, and Jews as Nazis-is a major distortion of history. This anti-Semitic concept claims that Israel behaves against the Palestinians as Germany did to the Jews in World War II. “The victims have become perpetrators,” is one major slogan of the inverters. By shifting the moral responsibility for genocide, Holocaust inversion also contains elements of Holocaust denial.
The motivations of the Holocaust inverters are manifold. Some aim at the destruction of Israel and seek to lay the infrastructure for its moral delegitimization through demonization... For Europeans it is also an effective way to cover up for Holocaust crimes of their countries and expunge guilt by claiming that what was done by the Nazi perpetrators and their many collaborators is a common phenomenon and by now is practiced by Israelis and Jews.
As anti-Semitism historian Robert Wistrich put it:
“anti-Zionists” who insist on comparing Zionism and the Jews with Hitler and the Third Reich appear unmistakably to be de facto anti-Semites, even if they vehemently deny the fact! This is largely because they knowingly exploit the reality that Nazism in the postwar world has become the defining metaphor of absolute evil. For if Zionists are “Nazis” and if Sharon really is Hitler, then it becomes a moral obligation to wage war against Israel. That is the bottom line of much contemporary anti-Zionism. In practice, this has become the most potent form of contemporary anti-Semitism.
more...
http://jcpa.org/article/holocaust-inversion-the-portraying-of-israel-and-jews-as-nazis/
The false accusation of Holocaust inversion-the portraying of Israel, Israelis, and Jews as Nazis-is a major distortion of history. This anti-Semitic concept claims that Israel behaves against the Palestinians as Germany did to the Jews in World War II. “The victims have become perpetrators,” is one major slogan of the inverters. By shifting the moral responsibility for genocide, Holocaust inversion also contains elements of Holocaust denial.
The motivations of the Holocaust inverters are manifold. Some aim at the destruction of Israel and seek to lay the infrastructure for its moral delegitimization through demonization... For Europeans it is also an effective way to cover up for Holocaust crimes of their countries and expunge guilt by claiming that what was done by the Nazi perpetrators and their many collaborators is a common phenomenon and by now is practiced by Israelis and Jews.
As anti-Semitism historian Robert Wistrich put it:
“anti-Zionists” who insist on comparing Zionism and the Jews with Hitler and the Third Reich appear unmistakably to be de facto anti-Semites, even if they vehemently deny the fact! This is largely because they knowingly exploit the reality that Nazism in the postwar world has become the defining metaphor of absolute evil. For if Zionists are “Nazis” and if Sharon really is Hitler, then it becomes a moral obligation to wage war against Israel. That is the bottom line of much contemporary anti-Zionism. In practice, this has become the most potent form of contemporary anti-Semitism.
more...
http://jcpa.org/article/holocaust-inversion-the-portraying-of-israel-and-jews-as-nazis/
The Livingstone Formulation
This paper is concerned with a rhetorical formulation which is sometimes deployed in response to an accusation of antisemitism, particularly when it relates to discourse which is of the form of criticism of Israel. This formulation is a defensive response which deploys a counter-accusation that the person raising the issue of antisemitism is doing so in bad faith and dishonestly. I have called it The Livingstone Formulation. It is defined by the presence of two elements. Firstly the conflation of legitimate criticism of Israel with what are alleged to be demonizing, exclusionary or antisemitic discourses or actions; secondly, the presence of the counteraccusation that the raisers of the issue of antisemitism do so with dishonest intent, in order to de-legitimize criticism of Israel. The allegation is that the accuser chooses to ‘play the antisemitism card’ rather than to relate seriously to, or to refute, the criticisms of Israel. While the issue of antisemitism is certainly sometimes raised in an unjustified way, and may even be raised in bad faith, the Livingstone Formulation may appear as a response to any discussion of contemporary antisemitism.
This paper is not concerned directly with those who are accused of employing antisemitic discourse and who respond in a measured and rational way to such accusations in a good faith effort to relate to the concern, and to refute it. Rather it is concerned with modes of refusal to engage with the issue of antisemitism. Those who argue that certain kinds of arguments, tropes, analogies and ideas are antisemitic are trying to have them recognized as being outside of the boundaries of legitimate antiracist discourse. The Livingstone Formulation as a response tries to have the raising itself of the issue of antisemitism recognized as being outside of the boundaries of legitimate discourse. In this paper I describe and analyse a number of examples of the formulation which come from a number of profoundly different sources, including antiracist, openly antisemitic, antizionist, and mainstream ones.
http://engageonline.wordpress.com/2010/10/05/david-hirsh-the-livingstone-formulation/
This paper is concerned with a rhetorical formulation which is sometimes deployed in response to an accusation of antisemitism, particularly when it relates to discourse which is of the form of criticism of Israel. This formulation is a defensive response which deploys a counter-accusation that the person raising the issue of antisemitism is doing so in bad faith and dishonestly. I have called it The Livingstone Formulation. It is defined by the presence of two elements. Firstly the conflation of legitimate criticism of Israel with what are alleged to be demonizing, exclusionary or antisemitic discourses or actions; secondly, the presence of the counteraccusation that the raisers of the issue of antisemitism do so with dishonest intent, in order to de-legitimize criticism of Israel. The allegation is that the accuser chooses to ‘play the antisemitism card’ rather than to relate seriously to, or to refute, the criticisms of Israel. While the issue of antisemitism is certainly sometimes raised in an unjustified way, and may even be raised in bad faith, the Livingstone Formulation may appear as a response to any discussion of contemporary antisemitism.
This paper is not concerned directly with those who are accused of employing antisemitic discourse and who respond in a measured and rational way to such accusations in a good faith effort to relate to the concern, and to refute it. Rather it is concerned with modes of refusal to engage with the issue of antisemitism. Those who argue that certain kinds of arguments, tropes, analogies and ideas are antisemitic are trying to have them recognized as being outside of the boundaries of legitimate antiracist discourse. The Livingstone Formulation as a response tries to have the raising itself of the issue of antisemitism recognized as being outside of the boundaries of legitimate discourse. In this paper I describe and analyse a number of examples of the formulation which come from a number of profoundly different sources, including antiracist, openly antisemitic, antizionist, and mainstream ones.
http://engageonline.wordpress.com/2010/10/05/david-hirsh-the-livingstone-formulation/
It's a great time to be an anti-semite. Attack the bloodthirsty, Nazi Jews. Claim you're just an anti-zionist. And when the Jews complain, put them in their place by telling them they do so dishonestly and in bad faith in order to stifle all criticism of Israel.
You have the flair for the dramatic.
Or don't we need to see it to pass judgement?
It is kinda very telling that those expressing the most outrage over a cartoon drawn by an Australian cartoonist behave as though it's far, far more horrendous and outrageworthy than the killing of Palestinians. I'm pretty sure Luenig and his cartoons aren't going to kill anyone, not even readers of The Age, who of course tend not to be readers of Murdoch's RW flagship, The Australian
Here's an earlier one from him...
It's the really, old school style of jew-hate...
