The Daily Californian newspaper
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley, California, USA
Friday, May 6, 2005
Holocaust Remembrance Day
‘Never Again’ Over Again
- by Joseph Anderson
Berkeley 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 )
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Comments
Hide the following 7 comments
Let's not forget
18.05.2005 10:16
Before then the Vikings of Sweden, Denmark and Norway laid wasted to large parts of the North East Britain and abducted peoples to be used as slaves.
Where are the apologies and reperations from these countries ?
Dan
Dan, a Zionist Jew, ironically making fun of others' oppression and suffering:
18.05.2005 17:43
Dan (Zionist): "Let's not forget that the English peoples where oppressed and slaughted by the French in 1066 following the Battle of Hastings. Hundreds hearded into camps, villages burned and women raped. Before then the Vikings of Sweden, Denmark and Norway laid wasted to large parts of the North East Britain and abducted peoples to be used as slaves. Where are the apologies and reperations from these countries?"
The English and the French -- which includes native Christians, Jews, non-Jews and secular people -- have their own country: secular democratic countries with (legally or in legal theory, at least, no discrimination on the basis of ethnicity or religion. The English and the French have peacefully reconciled (even though some of its citizens have been latently and negatively conditioned by the war manipulations of prior monarchs) and now have full diplomatic relations and exchange of trade. Likewise, Sweden, Denmark and Norway have long long since peacefully reconciled with Britain. None of these countries -- which also includes native Christians, Jews, non-Jews and secular people -- are oppressing the inhabitants of Britain or any of the other country.
However, I am not talking about ancient history: well, not, perhaps, with exception of the total absurdness of Zionist Jews claiming that they have a divine right to Israel/Palestine because their ancient religious ancestors -- who themselves were not Palestine's first inhabitants -- lived in parts of Palestine, for a while, 2,000 years ago -- and claim their right to do so, today, by a "promise from God" 3,000 years ago.
ISRAEL -- an ideologically, ethno-exclusionary, semi-theocratic, apartheid "Jewish state" -- *NOT* a secular democratic state with equal rights for all regardless of ethnicity or religion (the same that even Zionist Jews would demand anywhere else) -- *IS* -- QUITE *IRONICALLY* -- however, *CONTINUING* to brutally oppress the indigenous people of Palestine, the Palestinians -- for the Palestinians' evident *'CRIME'* of not being born Jewish -- after having semi-genocidally, ethnically cleansed them off -- in different stages, from pre-1947 (European Jewish invasion), to 1947 (the imperialists' partition), to 1948 (the war of expansion), to 1967 (a major pretextual war land grab), up through the present (the settlement of the remaining territories) -- at least 90% of the land. What was the Israeli maxxim?: 'After Hitler, our turn'?
And what does Zionist Israel call itself?: "a light unto the world"!!???
[You probably don't know, Dan, that when the Armenians went to Palestine to escape genocide and oppression by Turkey (although political Zionism began long before the Jewish holocaust, before the turn of the 20th century), the Armenians didn't try to take over the place, shove aside the Palestinians, and impose an ethno-exclusionary "Armenian state".]
The U.S. is still largely oppressing Native Americans (particularly those on reservations, the legacy of Native American genocide, who live in such poverty that their *average* life expectancy is 45 years), and the U.S. is often still oppressing blacks (just read every week about another cop beating/killing yet another black person, or look at the over-representation of poor blacks who are virtually often socially 'herded' into America's prisons, or look at the unresolved and highly disproportionate level of black poverty -- a direct legacy of slavery and American apartheid (known as "Jim Crow").
The U.S. govt has never even officially acknowledged its perpetration of the Native American genocide or the black slave holocaust, let alone the Filipino genocide, the Vietnamese holocaust (a semi-genocidal war which killed a so-far admitted *3-million* Vietnamese in a tiny country), or its role in triggering the Cambodian genocide. Turkey still denies the Armenian genocide, and I'd bet that any Armenians left in Turkey are highly discriminated against, right along with the oppression of the Turkish Kurds (both of whom probably cannot even officially give themselves or their children their own cultural names).
So, Dan, while you, a Zionist Jew, are -- *IRONICALLY*-- trying to be *flippant* and *funny* about the ethnic/racial *oppression* and *genocide* against *OTHERS*, there are some very profound issues here regarding mass human catastrophes.
I guess that not everyone walking the ivy walkways of Cambridge is an educated person, Dan.
Joseph
Communist, Allied, and German National Socialist Atrocities
18.05.2005 19:01
Recently I read that jews have finally been banned from the Russian Duma, by democratic consensus. If such an decision had been taken in Britain during Margaret Thatcher's regime, her cabinet would have lost nearly half its members, and the same goes for the odious Clinton administration. Surely it is our duty to take pre-emptive actions such as these to prevent the rise of fascism and anti-semitism and to protect innocent jewish people from defamation because after years of jewish oppression and profiteering anti-semitism is very much on the rise in post-communist Russia, Romania and many countries right across the globe.
I want to see holocaust memorials for all of the other people who suffered and who continue to suffer and I want to see and hear much less of the highly profitable "holocaust industry" which has now been featured on numerous documentaries, highlighting the plight of holocaust survivors who never received the reparations they were due, only to find that their money had been "diverted" to build luxury hotel resorts, golf courses and apartments on coast of "Israel", bringing further disgrace to the jewish people and discrediting them before the international community.
Also, one wonders quite why the doyennes of "The Holocaust" do not acknowledge more widely the plight of homosexuals, gypsies and commmunists who also suffered alongside the jewish unfortunates in the German National Socialist concentration camps. There is certainly no reason why anyone should feel guilty or ashamed for having such worthy associates, and so the lack of recognition afforded these unfortunates appears to be most conspicuous, if not, dare I say it, discriminatory.
Josephine Kuchera
I totally disassociate myself from Kuchera's talk of "jewish communists":
18.05.2005 23:55
I hasten to totally disassociate myself from all of Kuchera's talk of "jewish communists" as some monolithical evil force or as inherently evil, as Jews, or communists, at all. Many of communism's strongest proponents and adherents were *not* Jewish.
There's a reason that some arguments are called "specious" or "twisted": they take certain elements of the truth and *twist* them with strong parts of deception/demogoguery.
Contrary to Kuchera's discription, communism was certainly not ethnically/culturally comprised of only Jews. And in Europe Jews, as an ethnic group, did not oppress others.
Certain prominent communists may have been Jewish because Jews, as a class (along with other groups as an economic or racialized class), often greatly suffered under class-based societies. Socialism and communism opposes class-based societies (especially those based on unrestrained, unregulated, or so-called "free market" capitalism) where the masses in the lower class levels are progressively (and often harshly) exploited for the benefit of the ruling, corporate, and otherwise upper classes.
In theory, communism also offered a more just society (in theory free of racism and sexism, which are class-based contrivances for the purposes of economic division, subjugation and exploitation). This is partially reflected in at least more socially & economically developed Western European socialist-oriented societies, which offer more relatively economically just/balanced societies, more social safety nets, more workers' rights and protections, and greater political protections and civil liberties.
(As far as Poland was concerned, yes it was ironic that the first national victim of Hitler, and the cause of WWII starting in Sept 1939, was in the end dealt away to Stalin, instead, as part of his geopolitical sphere, largely by Roosevelt, who was, by then, due to his polio, fairly imfirmed, frail, easily fatigued, and not of his previously keen mind.)
Joseph
Disgusting
10.06.2005 13:20
Israel has always wanted peace and has made it with whoever agreed.
Such Orwellian NewSpeak that Goebells would be proud of.
This is a typical left wing analogy which is not only baseless but extremely insulting and a desecration to the memory of the 6 million.
Dan (Zionist)whoever you are, carry on standing up to these swine. The difference between them and the extreme right is that the right, evil as they are, are at least honest about their feelings to Jews.
The left only tolerate us when we are weak.
The comparison of the situation in Israel to the holocaust is vile and is indicative of the racist nature of these vile, lying Nazi supporting scum.
Jewish & Proud
Zionists had NO moral right, regardless
26.06.2005 13:54
Between three-quarter and one MILLION (some Israeli sources even put the number at 1.2 MILLION) Palestinians were driven off their land in 1947, 1948, and 1949 alone, about when Zionists declared the state of Israel (in 1948). This was often accomplished by the victims of the Jewish holocaust massacring Palestinians to scare other Palestinians into fleeing for their lives.
As an African American who has also come from a people who have suffered for centuries at the hands of European Christians, I can say that **NO** AMOUNT OF SUFFERING morally entitles one people to go off dispossess, take or be given the land and homes of a 3rd party innocent people.
And for Jews, who have lost their homes and land so many times in history -- although Jews were NOT history's only or always worse victims -- to go take the homes and land of another people is tragically ironic.
What else is ironic is that there are almost 6 million Palestinians who are now internally and externally exiled from their native land.
Incidentally, many Armenians fled to Palestine to escape the Armenian holocaust in Turkey, but the Armenians, who were welcomed, didn't go to Palestine to take Palestinian land and impose a racially exclusionary (i.e., racist) Armenian state.
Joseph
My previous comment got lost in the ether???
06.07.2005 09:26
When I posted it, I got the standard message indicating that it had been successfully submitted, but I have not, either then or later, seen it on this page. I'm wondering if there was a technical glitch or is censorship at work?
(I forgot to save a copy of my comment before posting it, and my browser doesn't save pages using https (secure http), so I can't repost it.)
P.S. I can be reached at indyuk@aarons.fastmail.XX where "XX"="fm".
Aaron Aarons