"'NEVER AGAIN' OVER AGAIN" — on Holocaust Remembrance Day
Joseph Anderson, Berkeley, California, USA | 13.05.2005 10:01 | Analysis | Anti-racism | Repression | London | Oxford
I thought that “Never again!” meant never again for all humanity — not just never again for European Jews.
-
The Daily Californian newspaper
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley, CA
Friday, May 6, 2005
Holocaust Remembrance Day
‘Never Again’ Over Again
- by Joseph Anderson
Berkeley, California, city councilperson Kris Worthington’s letter to the Daily Californian (“Lurking Legacy of Discrimination,” May 3) deals with Holocaust Remembrance Day and the very profound tragedy European Jews suffered under the Nazi regime. We are called again to learn the lessons of history. But have we?
The primary lesson was supposed to be “Never again!” But, a very sad disappointment — and even for many Jews, including some Holocaust survivors — is that we really have not learned. For, as I grew up seeing the horrors revealed in Holocaust documentaries and movies, I thought that “Never again!” meant never again for all humanity — not just never again for European Jews. Where is remembrance day for the Native American, the black slave, the Filipino, the Armenian, in effect the Vietnamese, and the U.S. Vietnam war expansion-triggered Cambodian holocausts?
Blacks were also victims of Nazi Germany's holocaust machine that consumed other ethnic minorities like the Roma, in addition to the mentally handicapped, and before that blacks were genocidal victims of Germany's colonizations in Africa — as with genocidal Western European colonizers (there and in the Americas).
As a member myself of an often oppressed minority whose religious traditions have identified with the Biblical legend of the Jews’ oppression, it saddens me to see many pro-Israel Jews oppress others via a foreign state that would claim to embody Jewish values. For African American ideals, “The Promised Land” is not a land to be "reclaimed" after hundreds, or even thousands, of years, citing God as the real estate agent. The Promised Land doesn’t echo the injustices of the past by, in part, replicating them upon others. The Promised Land is the creation of a just society with an appreciation for the diversity of all humanity and equality for all.
I appreciate Worthington’s letter, but I object that it makes it seem like Berkeley has become a bastion of Jew-hatred: “In Berkeley itself, Jews have far too frequently been victims of hate crimes,” he wrote.
California criminal-justice statistics show that hate crimes for all minority groups have gone down — except for indigenous Middle Easterners and Muslims.
Kris writes that overt prejudice, discrimination and institutionalized exclusion are unacceptable. But, that’s exactly what Jews who commemorate the Holocaust — yet who also ideologically believe in an exclusionary Jewish state — support every day for Israel.
Others, like many of us, like “the good Germans” of another era, turn our heads away from this human rights catastrophe against, in turn, another 'despised' minority: the Palestinian people. Their resistance to brutal ethnic cleansing — something any people would resist from any other people — is, ironically, labeled “anti-Semitic.”
To paraphrase Worthington, Holocaust Remembrance Day should cause us to reflect, to learn that the horrors of all these catastrophes did in fact happen, to support the oppressed everywhere, and to join in the activism to say, “Never again!” — for all humanity.
__________________________________________________________________
Joseph Anderson is a Berkeley resident, an occasional
contributing columnist/essayist to various newspapers,
political and literary publications, a grassroots progressive
political activist, and an occasional interview guest on KPFA's
Hard Knock Radio in Berkeley.
(the above is the slightly longer, original version
of the word length-constrained version published at
http://dailycal.org/article.php?id=18630 )
-
The Daily Californian newspaper
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley, CA
Friday, May 6, 2005
Holocaust Remembrance Day
‘Never Again’ Over Again
- by Joseph Anderson
Berkeley, California, city councilperson Kris Worthington’s letter to the Daily Californian (“Lurking Legacy of Discrimination,” May 3) deals with Holocaust Remembrance Day and the very profound tragedy European Jews suffered under the Nazi regime. We are called again to learn the lessons of history. But have we?
The primary lesson was supposed to be “Never again!” But, a very sad disappointment — and even for many Jews, including some Holocaust survivors — is that we really have not learned. For, as I grew up seeing the horrors revealed in Holocaust documentaries and movies, I thought that “Never again!” meant never again for all humanity — not just never again for European Jews. Where is remembrance day for the Native American, the black slave, the Filipino, the Armenian, in effect the Vietnamese, and the U.S. Vietnam war expansion-triggered Cambodian holocausts?
Blacks were also victims of Nazi Germany's holocaust machine that consumed other ethnic minorities like the Roma, in addition to the mentally handicapped, and before that blacks were genocidal victims of Germany's colonizations in Africa — as with genocidal Western European colonizers (there and in the Americas).
As a member myself of an often oppressed minority whose religious traditions have identified with the Biblical legend of the Jews’ oppression, it saddens me to see many pro-Israel Jews oppress others via a foreign state that would claim to embody Jewish values. For African American ideals, “The Promised Land” is not a land to be "reclaimed" after hundreds, or even thousands, of years, citing God as the real estate agent. The Promised Land doesn’t echo the injustices of the past by, in part, replicating them upon others. The Promised Land is the creation of a just society with an appreciation for the diversity of all humanity and equality for all.
I appreciate Worthington’s letter, but I object that it makes it seem like Berkeley has become a bastion of Jew-hatred: “In Berkeley itself, Jews have far too frequently been victims of hate crimes,” he wrote.
California criminal-justice statistics show that hate crimes for all minority groups have gone down — except for indigenous Middle Easterners and Muslims.
Kris writes that overt prejudice, discrimination and institutionalized exclusion are unacceptable. But, that’s exactly what Jews who commemorate the Holocaust — yet who also ideologically believe in an exclusionary Jewish state — support every day for Israel.
Others, like many of us, like “the good Germans” of another era, turn our heads away from this human rights catastrophe against, in turn, another 'despised' minority: the Palestinian people. Their resistance to brutal ethnic cleansing — something any people would resist from any other people — is, ironically, labeled “anti-Semitic.”
To paraphrase Worthington, Holocaust Remembrance Day should cause us to reflect, to learn that the horrors of all these catastrophes did in fact happen, to support the oppressed everywhere, and to join in the activism to say, “Never again!” — for all humanity.
__________________________________________________________________
Joseph Anderson is a Berkeley resident, an occasional
contributing columnist/essayist to various newspapers,
political and literary publications, a grassroots progressive
political activist, and an occasional interview guest on KPFA's
Hard Knock Radio in Berkeley.
(the above is the slightly longer, original version
of the word length-constrained version published at
http://dailycal.org/article.php?id=18630 ) -
Joseph Anderson, Berkeley, California, USA
Comments
Hide the following 6 comments
10 out of 10
13.05.2005 12:24
Desendent of Slaves
the thing is ...
13.05.2005 21:43
How many blacks died in slavery: historically, analytically, and statistically (combined methods since complete records were difficult to come by or not kept) estimated up to **100 million**!!
This includes those who died on the ships (the "spoilage/loss rate"); those who were thrown overboard in the open ocean (sometimes a whole line chained together) for disciplinary examples (or after Britain finally made slavery illegal, because those ship captains might get caught with slaves on board); those who died from hunger, the elements, disease or other harsh conditions; those killed trying to run away; and those killed in the 'softening up' holding-stations or on the plantations as brutal disciplinary examples to other blacks. This doesn't include the thousands of blacks lynched, shot, burned alive, or dragged to death during American apartheid--and commonly, well into the 1960's in the American South (sometimes even in today's times, as what happened just this week in Mississippi), as well as black political activists killed/assassinated by the police in various notorious American cities. And, in England, the Stephen Lawrence case is still well-remembered by blacks.
Blacks wouldn't use our history of being brutally oppressed and often *continued* oppression as an excuse to go brutally and semi-genocidally oppress others -- we wouldn't go start up a slave system somewhere against Mexican immigrant workers, or poor working-class Asians, or indigenous South Pacific Islanders -- and then if anyone were to criticize us for it, we could, hypothetically, then call them anti-black racists!
Finally, when are England and the U.S. going to start building slave memorials and slave museums, somewhere every year, as well as statues to great black slave resistors?
In the U.S. South there are all those Conderate memorials and lots of giant Confederate general/officer statues -- paid for by the state. White Southerners often ride around in their pick-up trucks with Confederate flags; they even often wear Confederate symbols on their hats or clothes (even on TV). But, one doesn't see a bunch of slave memorials and statues of great slave insurrectionists paid for by the state. This would be like if Germany today had statues all over the place of 'great' Nazi generals/officers and memorials commemorating the Nazi regime, but none commemorating the Jewish holocaust.
I don't believe that you're a "Desendent of Slaves" (13.05.2005). I know how bad things often are for blacks in England (even, comparatively, for those who are university educated) and no black would say such a thing as you have about my article. I've been to England before and have numerous friends (black, Jewish, and non-Jewish) there. Now, if you've got a specific argument to make, then make it. You're just making a vauge, ad hominem, blanket accusation; not a reasoned, logical argument. Your "anti-Semitic" name-calling silencing method won't work on me.
Lastly, let's see what Albert Einstein had to say about Palestine/Israel: "It would be my greatest sadness to see Jews do to [Palestinian] Arabs, much of what Nazis did to Jews."
Joseph
to the editors:
13.05.2005 23:52
Joseph
Again ???
15.05.2005 09:28
Again - top marks
Descendent of Slaves
to Zionist/pro-Israel Jew trying to pose as black "Descendent of Slaves"
15.05.2005 17:52
And all oppressors try to justify their oppression of others by representing themselves as the superior, historically (if not Biblically) chosen people and those they oppress as despised and subhuman.
Your underhanded attempt to be glib and smarmy doesn't undermine or change those historical constants. It, obviously, only undermines your intellectual and moral credibility.
Joseph
Crush The Neo-Nazis
18.05.2005 09:33
They exploit racist headlines against immigrants in the Daily Mail, Daily Express, and the Sun, newspapers which the editors are freely promoting the fascist politik.
They are our common enemy.
THEY MUST BE DEFEATED.
uaf.org
Our Common Enemy