Fascinating reaction; at least to me.

I have been thinking about this for sometime.

Just as an aside, the right now uses the word NAZI as much as it uses the term communist. 

I think the right wingers get sick and tired of being called NAZI's. This has been going on for decades of course and sometimes there are right wing 'get-togethers' and the media finds out there were actual NAZIs at the rallies. 

White supremacists are the same thing to me and there are plenty of those folks around today.

Saving the term from being applied to anything other than the machine that created the Holocaust is probably prudent.

In this country, freedom of speech kind of trumps any chance to outlaw the word; although Carlin's seven words are usually banned on TV--although basic cable takes every opportunity to use some of these words.

I think though, that in light of your argument I aint gonna use that word any more.

Fascism is a different animal, at least to me since the definition relates to the idea that

certain forces in this country desire a government by the corporation, for the corporation and of the corporation.

At any rate, your argument struck my heart.

No kidding.

Many years ago, my father, who had to hide in a damp pit for roughly 600 days during World War II, told me that there were only two lessons to be learned from that war. The first was that the Jewish people, who have suffered so much, must do whatever it takes to be strong so that they never again find themselves at the mercy of others.

The second was that the Jews, who have suffered from racial discrimination and inhumane conduct, must be more careful than any other people to avoid the slightest hint of racism and persecution in their own conduct.

 

Peter is correct in highlighting this excerpt from the essay that I first read when you did apparently too Michael, and I was equally moved by it as I assume you were. It  resonates for so many reasons, but principally because it is the way that I have tried to live every single day of my life, and hopefully it will characterize the way my kids and G-d willing their kids live their lives too.

I've written quite a bit about my family's experience in the Holocaust, and it's fascinating (even involving a movie starring Daniel Craig--his character married Dad's sole surviving Belorussian first cousin in the forests where they hid--but far more tragic.  But still I was the kid in Hebrew school back in 1967 who challenged the notion that "G-d was on our side" and that's why we won the war.  I never brought into that claptrap, and my Mom will tell you, and then some, that it was I as a child who asked the Rabbi how a loving G-d could permit atrocities on such a mass scale.

And so as kid I began what has been a never-ending struggle between my obligation to "Never Forget" and never, ever depend on others to ensure the security and survival of the remnants of the Jewish People, and my growing political consciousness and need to challenge the discrimination and hatred against all peoples.   And that's what led me in college to pursue a career with organized labor on behalf American working people.  I was dazzled by the history of, inter alia, the garment industry struggles involving Jewish and other immigrant workers in New York City.   Irving Howe's World of Our Fathers was a bible to me, as I grew intimate through the written word with folks like Ben Gold, the communist president of the United Fur Workers Union, and read biographies and wrote papers on Meyer London, the first socialist congressman from New York City.  My last senior paper in college highlighted London's various campaigns for Congress and the political balancing act he had to play when the Socialist platform was not in tune with the concerns of his Jewish electorate.

I like to think I know and practice--not perfectly but earnestly--my obligation as a surviving Jew--a Jew who was randomly spared from the Shoah by the decision of my grandmother to come to this country in 1905.  The Ellis Island manifest from her ship hangs on my Dad's wall.  I like to think that when my time comes I'll be able to say that I at least tried to live my life with the duality highlighted above as my guiding principle.

But please do recognize what the duality of this message means in fact.   Of course it is not just the first point to not forget, as perhaps you might tell me.  But lest anyone misconstrue the message, the second obligation is an obligation that perhaps we as a people may or may or not conform to, but it remains an obligation to oneself or to ourselves.

The duality Jews may impose on themselves does not provide additional standing in the political realm for others to challenge the conduct of individual Jews, or the conduct of the Jewish People, or even the conduct of the State of Israel.    We are embarrassed by those among us, at least I am, who so often use the Koran against this or that Islamic group.   What we as a people may choose to impose on ourselves, in practice or just in prose, is not a political tool for everyone and anyone--it is instead a reflection of the continuing evolution of Jewish thought and practice over the millenia.

This is not to say that there is no basis for others to challenge Jews or Israel, as the semantical pirates may see fit to posit at this point.   But Israel, as any other nation, should be challenged on the merits and in accord with international standards.  It is hardly inconsistent with any obligation of the Jewish People to others, as so elegantly articulated in this piece, to also argue that it is not any non-Jew's right to tell Israel, given this dual obligation, that Israel has an obligation that is unlike the obligations of any other nation. 

Among the Jewish People, we need to get our shit together when it comes to Israel.  I agree with that--more so than I have ever been able to write on here.  I never get there, just as one would not expect an African American to engage in a civil rights discussion under various circumstances, including those defined by the simple use of certain words, or terms, or anything else that is dog-whistlish.

I criticize Israel and I think that the bonehead decision, the stupid decision, by Israeli MKs to attempt to outlaw the use of the term Nazi, is incompatible with Jewish values.  But that's for me to say. 

Jewish laws and Jewish values are not a political tool to use against individual Jews or against Israel.  

An American might also criticize such a law, of course, but I submit that it really should not be so hard to accept that the criticism should be on the merits and in deference to global international norms.    In short, for example, please don't tell me what I should do as a Jew based upon what you understand from an article or two on some political blog what Hillel was all about.  That is absurd, it is rude, and it has no place.

Still, I oppose actual restrictions on speech, and I understand the tension involved in monitoring this site accordingly.  But I don't think anything I've written would require any such restrictions.  I just don't understand how the lexicon in connection with the Jewish People and Israel has to include veiled and unveiled allusions to Jewish power, or Jewish control, or Jewish stifling, or Jewish money, Jewish loyalty or in the most recent case, Jewish tribalism by people whom I innately respect.   You see Michael, I'm an American, as American as anyone here, and yet I'm a Jew.  My pleas on this forum are those of an American and not as a Jew.