Hamas attacks Israel
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@bachophile said in Hamas attacks Israel:
the one problem which facilitates the cheapening of the term is the fact that the holocaust is getting so farther and farther back in history such that many young people simply are disconnected to it ( a recurring theme in this aging forum is that historical events once so present in our psyche are but wisps of memory for young people. Pearl Harbor seems to be forgotten and the impact of 9/11 will be in another generation. Matter of time that movies like Schindler’s list or the pianist describing world war 2 will not be made anymore)There is truth in what you say. The passage of time may have dulled humanity’s memory of atrocity. Events that once burned themselves into the collective consciousness — the Holocaust, Pearl Harbor, even 9/11 — are receding into abstraction. A generation is growing up for whom Schindler’s List or The Pianist are historical curiosities rather than moral imperatives.
In my own community, the Holocaust was not an abstraction. One of the Chicago suburbs near where I live had, at one time, more survivors than anywhere outside Israel. For decades, I read a great deal of Holocaust literature — more than fifty books on the subject. I wanted to understand how such barbarism could happen on such a scale, how ordinary prejudice could metastasize into organized cruelty, and what any of us might have done, faced with a society bent on such a moral collapse.
For many years, I accepted Israel’s founding narrative without much question.
As for the current wave of young people who support the Palestinian cause, ignorance of the Holocaust may play a part, but it is hardly the whole story. Much more decisive is the unfiltered content that social media delivers.
Bari Weiss and Sam Harris insist that these young people are “misinformed.” That, in itself, betrays a failure to grasp what the students have seen.They have watched Holocaust survivors — and the children of survivors — denounce Israeli actions using that most charged of words: genocide. They have seen the President of the United States assure the world that he had seen photographs of forty murdered infants — a claim later revealed to be false. They have watched official Israeli accounts twist and mutate until no one could take them seriously – e.g. the massacre of the Palestinian ambulance teams but many others.
They have seen, as I have, a video of an Israeli soldier boasting of killing nine infants and several videos of IDF troops saying that the killing of Palestinians is no more than killing an animal. They have seen medics and family members gunned down as they tried to reach the wounded. They have seen Israeli school children openly discuss killing Palestinians, soldiers desecrating churches, and men and children spitting on priests in the streets of Jerusalem. There are videos of settlers stealing homes, destroying crops, killing innocents.
These images do not vanish with official denials. They are imprinted.
I am merely a messenger of what is shown on a particular platform. The totality of all of this — testimony from doctors, journalists, and humanitarian workers — is not inconsequential. Israeli television itself has broadcast politicians speaking in openly eliminationist terms. Perhaps such language is understandable in the aftermath of the October 7th horror, but in the court of world opinion, it works against the narrative that Israel has sought before the world stage.
And then comes the repression — the silencing of voices that report from Gaza, the spectacle of a U.S. President flanked by an Israeli flag, the untouchable billions in aid while other programs are slashed. The influence of AIPAC is not speculation; it is essential for political survival – as admitted by politicians and former Presidents.
Meanwhile, the other “emotionally charged” word, "antisemitism", is flung about so casually that it risks losing much of its meaning, importance and power. That this accusation is now often leveled by Jews against other Jews — writers, historians, and humanists who refuse to grant Israel moral immunity — only underscores some of the intellectual bankruptcy of the tactic.
I remain a supporter of Israel. I admire its people though I think some of the IDF have gone Mai Lai - some in the Israeli government could hold their own with some figures from the 1930s, and settlers in the West Bank, with their biblical pretensions, have become Israel’s worst ambassadors. They do not represent the spirit of a people who once built a refuge from persecution; they represent the betrayal of that very ideal.
Israel will survive and likely thrive again. But it has suffered a moral injury that will take a couple of generations to heal. Those who equate any criticism of Israel with antisemitism — Weiss, Harris, etc. — do not enhance Israel’s moral standing; they erode it. In trying to silence its critics, they feed the very resentment they wish to extinguish.
Finally, I admire that many within the Jewish/Israeli community do speak out – and criticize, condemn and protest what they see – and note that a heritage of persecution does not exempt a people from self-examination and critique.
@kluurs i get it. no one here is blind to the horrors and we do have our own fair share of tik tok idiots who want to self glorify, but speaking from first hand knowledge, the overwhelming majority of Israelis, including soldiers who are after all, representative of the population as there is mandatory conscription (more or less but thats another topic) are normative people thrown into an impossible situation. yes many non combatants killed. but intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group?
(I could not find any documented sources to a soldier boasting of killing 9 infants....the only thing i found maybe applicable is this news item" https://wisconsinwatch.org/2024/02/israel-gaza-killing-babies-university-of-wisconsin-madison-chabad-fact-brief/ which was of course disinformation)
be that as it may, there is incredible anger here at the flippant use of the word genocide. like by this incredibly misguided young lady with a gazillion followers.
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I asked ChatGPT
why is murdering someone named geno so much worse than murdering anybody else?
It didn't pick up on the pun, but somehow it's still a meme related to a nintendo game. This entire answer might be a hallucination for all I know.
That line — “murdering someone named Geno is worse than murdering anyone else” — isn’t meant literally. It’s a meme or pop-culture reference, not a moral argument.
It originates from the Super Mario RPG fandom (and later Super Smash Bros. communities). Geno is a beloved, mysterious puppet character possessed by a celestial spirit — a cult-favorite figure who never reappeared much in later games. Over time, fans began treating Geno with exaggerated reverence, saying things like:
“Hurting Geno is a war crime.”
“Killing Geno is unforgivable.”
“Murdering Geno is worse than murdering anyone else.”These hyperbolic jokes express frustration that Nintendo kept excluding Geno from future games, while poking fun at obsessive fan devotion. So, when someone says that line, they’re playing off the absurd intensity of Geno fans, not making an actual moral statement.
Would you like me to show where that meme first started spreading (e.g., which forums or videos popularized it)?
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These guys started it. Incidentally, after they'd done for Geno they went on to Come on Eileen.
Link to video -
Hamas and Israel have agreed to start the peace plan.
Heads will explode if he gets the Nobel.
"The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell." Simone Weil
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Hamas and Israel have agreed to start the peace plan.
Heads will explode if he gets the Nobel.
@Mik said in Hamas attacks Israel:
Heads will explode if he gets the Nobel.
Bombs too, ironically enough.
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Hamas and Israel have agreed to start the peace plan.
Heads will explode if he gets the Nobel.
