From: utzoo!dciem!mmt
Newsgroups: net.followup
Title: Re: Jewish experience of the Holocaust
Article-I.D.: dciem.227
Posted: Thu May  5 17:24:16 1983
Received: Thu May  5 17:43:56 1983
References: watmath.5015

===========================
......... but mostly it was lunacy.  As the lunacy of one man, we can
do little to stop it.  Though the numbers and atrocity may be orders
of magnitude above other killings, it may be argued that we should be
as or more concerned with killings where the killers are sane and also
think they are justified.
===========================

The Holocaust was surely more than the lunacy of one man. To call Hitler a
lunatic is far too simple, and to assume that one man could cause the Holocaust
is ridiculous. Antisemitism had a long, and in many "Christian's" eyes
"honorable", history in Europe before the little corporal came along.
There had been many massacres in ghettos, especially in Eastern Europe.
Only in Arab countries were Jews welcomed (well, possibly in the Orient
as well, but that's outside the region under consideration). Hitler merely
agreed with and used a pretty virulent tradition. A Hitler could easily
have come to England or France, if they had been subject to the economic
horrors imposed on Germany after WWI, and I don't think we have any right
to feel superior to the Germans. Jews have always been a particularly
Christian scapegoat for anything that is wrong with society.

As I have privately discussed with Dave Sherman, I think it was most
unfortunate that Zionism chose the region of Palestine/Israel as a refuge
for Judaism, since it violently antagonized the one group that had
consistently been at least neutral toward Jews. Why should the Arabs
have felt toward the Zionists any differently than the Native Americans
felt toward the conquering, land-grabbing Europeans in North America?
The difference is that the Europeans won in North America because of
at first technological superority and later numerical superiority.
Will that happen in the Middle East? I doubt that the Arabs will return
quickly to their former goodwill.

Perhaps Zionists should rely on the shame that West Europeans and North
Americans feel over the Holocaust, and hope that the antisemitism that
is clearly latent in France (and other places) dies away before Jews
begin another diaspora.
		Martin Taylor (Once English, but never Jewish)