20071010

'Holocaust Fuels Modern Resentment of Jews & Israel' - Israeli Professor

Tel Aviv University Professor Dina Porat lays-out how the the Holocaust fuels anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism among leftist ideologues. Columnist Melanie Phillips' must-read interpretation:

"... the charge that Israeli Jews and Jews who support Israel have themselves turned into Nazis.
This deranged belief derives from a cocktail of ideology and prejudice. The victim culture championed by the left has created a large number of ‘victim’ groups all claiming primacy over each other. French thinkers such as Alain Finkielkraut and Bernard-Henri Levy have described this as a ‘competition of martyrdom’ in which groups such as American blacks, gays lesbians and other gender activists, American Indians and indigenous peoples everywhere, Muslims and so on, all compete to be considered the most victimised group on the planet. But the Holocaust, which although victimising others was specifically a Jewish genocide, made the Jews into the ultimate victims of a unique persecution. That uniqueness was considered a threat by others who resented the claim because it seemed to them to diminish their own claim to have suffered. {...}

And so if Jews defend Israel the left claim they are seeking to appropriate the role of ultimate victim and manipulate public debate to achieve that image at the expense of the universal brotherhood of victims across the globe. They are said to be waving the shroud of the Holocaust to sanitise the crimes of Israel.

And if Jews call attention to antisemitism they merely create it all over again, because this reinforces the belief that the Jews use this claim as a manipulative weapon for their own advantage. So Jews are never to be allowed to tell the truth about their own persecution; the more they tell this truth, the more they are to be cast out as pariahs for manipulating public debate. {...}

So apparently has it proved; according to Professor Porat, a study has now shown that Holocaust education does nothing to stop antisemitism and may even make it worse. If identifying Jewish victimhood with the Holocaust causes a murderous resentment, then obviously the more that the Holocaust is thrust down people’s throats, the more that resentment will increase.

While antisemitism once caused the Holocaust, the Holocaust now causes antisemitism. The fact that by their very existence the Jews are the incarnation of the incriminating memory of the crime committed against them - prompts a resurgence of the very prejudice that lay at the heart of that crime.

In short, as has often been observed, the problem is simply that the Jews have never been forgiven for the Holocaust.

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