🧵 It feels inappropriate to argue on such matters on a Day of Remembrance, but since such a day became a stage for distorting truth and the essence of the #Holocaust, it seems necessary to do so.
In his speech Biden drew a parallel, comparing #Nazis murdering 6000000 #Jews during the Holocaust to #Hamas' 1200 Israeli victims during the Oct 7 attack. That was a x5000 stretch of truth and logic, without counting the 35000+ victims of #Israeli horrible thirty-eyes-for-an-eye retaliation,
innocents in Gaza as "antisemitism" is a lame and shameful tactic, antithetical to the essence of the Holocaust, and it is bound to fail. Especially when Jews themselves have repeatedly demonstrated on streets and campuses, and inside Israel, loud and clear: "Not in our name. Stop the war".
One thing Biden had right though: We have a moral duty "to bear witness to the perils of indifference, the complicity of silence in the face of evil that we know was happening". Was, and IS happening,
with him about Israel's war, BUT NOT about Jews, is very telling. Democrats are not supposed to be drinking such kool-aid willingly, even when finding themselves between a rock and a hard place in the coming elections.
Yes, Biden is better than the alternative, a fascist clown dragged and humiliated in courts daily. But that doesn't make his Middle East policy any better, nor does it save innocents from starvation and death. Rushing to characterize every movement against the murdering of
most of whom children and civilians, nor the annihilation of vital for survival, cultural, educational and other infrastructure. Showing anger against student protesting the #Gaza genocide, and inventing "violence" and "hate" by the protesters on campuses was performative, but very poor rhetoric; a straw-man fallacy, something surely expected from someone like Trump but maybe not from this POTUS. Turning a blind eye to the fact that most extreme right-wing anti-Semites have the same view
@65dBnoise Also ommitting the fact that the nazis were inspired by the Founding Fathers. If something deserves comparison to the Nazis is the US, not Palestine.
@happymilk
We can't compare so different historical periods IMO, but Biden's comparing of Nazis to Hamas (as if the huge number of Palestinian civilian casualties, and the Israeli atrocities did not exist), though unfortunate and false, provides the ground to do so in this case. Using Jews as a shield for Israeli war crimes goes directly against Jewish interests and safety, IMO, and creates the antisemitism they say they want to avoid.
@65dBnoise It is important to understand the relationship between the US and Nazi Germany. Maybe the time and number of victims were different, but that's really a superficial difference.
Hitler did compare Jews and Slaves to Indigenous Americans. If the toll of the Shoah was larger, it was only because Eastern Europe was more densely populated than the Turtle Island at their respective times.
This means that the US has no moral authority to lecture people about the Shoah.
@happymilk
💯 the US has no moral authority to lecture anyone indeed (Indigenous North Americans, Central and South Americans, Vietnamese, etc have all been victims of morally unjustified US war acts/interventions).
But morality is a tool useful only to/on those who truly share the same values or who are forced to give an account for them to someone, and in any case, not a good analytical one.
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