This is a truly excellent essay! I am baffled at how so many good people don’t see this —that Zionism is the flip side of Nazism. There are no “chosen people”, because we are all chosen by virtue of our shared humanity. The minute you proclaim yourself chosen, you proclaim other human beings unchosen, and therefore inferior. This mindset is obsolete and dangerous and it must go. But how do we move beyond it? How do we help others to do so?
Israel's usurpation of concentration camp victimhood is cynical and monstrous. Buchenwald and Dachau were the camps for political prisoners and Soviet military. They were not camps for Jews. Thousands of communists and USSR citizens were murdered and tortured to death in Buchenwald and Dachau. They all had to wear a sign of a red triangle.
Yet today it is Israel and Zionists that brand the Red Triangle as "terrorist" and persecute people for using it to signify their resistance to modern fascism.
Zionists and Israel have usurped Hitler's extermination of dissent - while exterminating the dissent and antifascist resistance themselves, including direct massacres and assassinations!
I saw probably those same images but I was taught that Hitler slaughtered, well, pretty much anyone he didn't consider to be a member of the perfect Aryan race. He didn't just murder Jewish people. The Zionists want you to forget about all the diverse people who were murdered. LGBTQ people had to wear pink triangles. I learned the right lessons because the subject was taught objectively and very well. Never again means never again to ANYONE! 🇵🇸🇱🇧✊
Wow, this is a really amazing article, and should be required reading for every single North American and European politician and journalist.
However, I think that it is an exaggeration to say that: "The world still buys ‘never again to us’, and does not require Israel to learn a universal lesson from the history of Jewish persecution." This is true of North American and Europe, but it is not true of South America, Africa, or Asia. Those countries have not been indoctrinated into the ideology of Zionism in the way that we have, even here in the UK, and see the situation far more objectively. And, of course, the activist community and many ordinary people who for whatever reason haven't been taken in by the Zionist narrative, simply think that what Israel is doing is completely terrible and don't understand why politicians are incapable of taking a firmer stance.
I have no idea what it will take for us to wake up politicians and the establishment media to the reality of how perverse and unacceptable their tolerance and support for Israeli war crimes truly is.
Of course, my statement above that "...it is not true of South America, Africa, or Asia." is also an exaggeration/over-generalisation. For example: there are many Hindu nationalists in India who are wildly supportive of Israel because they hate Muslims. Also, Argentina's current right wing president Javier Milei is wildly supportive of Israel and doesn't support the idea of a Palestinians state. There are also many supporters of Israel in South Africa (so I am told by South Africans) even though its government has done more than any other to try to hold Israel to account. Needless to say, it is a somewhat complex picture.
Avigail deconstructs Israel’s appropriation and exclusive ownership of the concept of genocide. I have always been struck by Isreali efforts to characterise the Holocaust as something perpetrated exclusively against Jewish people. Never any acknowledgment that the Nazis also slaughtered over 1 million people for being gay, disabled etc. Israel and its supporters never refer to other episodes of Genocide and its telling that they are all either engaged in settler colonialism or were in the past. Well said Avigail 👍💚
It's truly baffling to see how "Israelis" have managed to ignore the actual reasons why the Holocaust happened (including why it also targeted other marginalized groups, as you mention) all the while always using it as an illegitimate cover-up for their crimes.
I am not exactly sure what you mean by the real reasons the holocaust happened. It is either way a fact, that Israel has been weaponising it to justify settler-colonialism and genocide against the Palestinian people.
I should’ve specified what I meant by “the real reasons”, which include desire for power and control and imperialism/colonialism (as opposed to the narrative that Jewish people are “special” and have a specific persecution status that makes them free of blame)
Excellent essay and it hits upon many crucial points, thank you for writing it.
In Serbia we watched the holocaust photos too, in elementary school. Our history classes were often traumatic. World War II was a huge subject and we kept going back to it because we were so proud of our role in defeating the global threat.
There were a number of concentration camps in Yugoslavia, Jasenovac probably being the most famous. They held Jewish people but also Roma people, anyone caught resisting the occupation, sometimes entire classes of schoolchildren taken in retribution for some Partizan attack on the German troops.
The lesson we had learned was definitely ‘never again for anyone’. Though a few decades later we started having genocides of our own, so I would say we didn’t all learn it quite well enough.
I think the world is in full agreement with you and sick of Israel’s crap. But we have come to see to what degree the old colonial powers still hold all the strings. Nobody knows how to stand up to the US. It’s a serious problem and I worry how we will get out of it.
Thank you so much Lidija! so interesting to hear about your experience growing up in Serbia. I couldn’t agree more with what you are saying. The colonial powers are still in charge, now more through economics, and no one seems to be able to stand up to the US. Huge problem indeed. I worry too. Thank you for taking the time to read my essay and for your very kind feedback. In solidarity, Avigail 🙏🏼
It seems there's a long game and a short game here. The long game being to learn how to learn from history, as a collective. It's natural we make mistakes, but it's so crucial to be ultra clear like this about what the universal lesson is so we can give at least our children a world without ww4. And in the meantime, there's an emergency situation on the rampage that requires immediate intervention. I love how your article encompasses both timeframes without any either/or. Brilliant writing
Thank you so much Cian. Your feedback is so generous. My sense is that we have learned nothing in the last few thousands of years. If you look at ancient Persian, Greek or Roman history for example, you see the same patterns you see today. Leaders are narcissistic, they chase their own glory, people collude, even if it is bad for everyone, and there is always greed and desire to conquer and dominate others. There are always territorial disputes, and where there is no colonial expansion, there are always wars. There is a ‘pecking’ order and always people setting themselves above other people and trying to take more for themselves at other people’s expense. Actual torture and causing suffering to others has always been there. We are taught about the ‘great’ Roman empire and its great achievements. But I would like to hear more about the experiences of the people that Rome conquered and dominated. We learn little, or nothing about the histories of indigenous people, but they fought too among themselves. Archeologists have been finding mass graves of people who were clearly murdered in horrible ways (they can do forensic analysis on bones) from 12,000 years ago.
This is obviously just a rough sketch. But yes, you really got what I was trying to say. We need to address what is in front of us, with a view to develop as a species to the potential we have. Right now we are just stagnant. We confuse having advanced technology with enlightenment and progress. Our technology is mostly used to support the same base instincts that humans had ten thousand years ago, and recurring patterns. We have not come out of survivalism yet, and do not focus on what we need to focus on, which is the fundamental need of every human being to develop to their full potential. The problem with what I call survivalism is also that it is selective. We live now and always have lived by the idea of the ‘survival of the entitled’. We made little improvements around the edges, e.g. we are better at taking care of people with learning disabilities but in essence we are the same. If we allow neoliberalism to go where it would like to go, then big corporations and their helpers in governments would love to bring slavery back in a heartbeat. Equality, rights for everyone, regulations and legislation against corruption or exploitation are always battling against those who try to work around them. It’s always an uphill battle for things that should be the obvious but that is not because of the ‘bad guys’ alone. It is because we have societal patterns that among other things compel humanity to keep giving power to the wrong people.
As Edward O. Wilson said: “Modern humanity is distinguished by Palaeolithic emotions, Medieval institutions … and god-like technology. We’re a mixed up, and in many ways archaic species in transition. We are a chimera of evolution.” 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼
The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history, as they say.
What we're coming from is so huge if we want to consider becoming a nonviolent species. We don't fully know what happened to the neanderthals but one of the main theories is we exterminated them. I was always proud of my peaceful Irish heritage and then found out the folk who built our amazing ancient monuments that we celebrate were probably all killed by my ancestors. And this has its own cruel beauty to it too; that none of us can claim purity. We never left the jungle. We have palaeolithic emotions and I question... Is that a bad thing? Bad for me if I'm Palestinian right now. It's rich for my cosy ass to say war is just a part of nature and sip another mochiatto (though I did have a prophetic-feeling dream the other night in which I was forced to bow to a blue and white flag or be killed so who knows).
I also think there's a lot to be said for us to quit trying to NOT have palaeolithic emotions. Quit trying to rise above nature. Quit thinking we're better than the other guys. Quit thinking that we as the conscientious bullshit-detectors aren't just enacting our own role in a collective emergence the way a pack of dogs will always tend towards harmonising into a preprogrammed hierarchy regardless of the individual dogs. Quit thinking critical thinking alone is gonna get us out of the jungle when we're still held in causalities we can't even comprehend. Instead we maybe wanna learn our precognitive place in the jungle... whatever that might look like in practice.
But do we have to entirely restructure our DNA to become a non-warring species? Is there a key that can transform us as a collective? Talking long game, do you foresee our becoming a species that learns how to learn as a possibility?
Very good! I have repeatedly witnessed this outrageous self-importance and Jewish supremacy in my conversations with Zionists, and also from reading their outrageous and crazy blogs and posts. Their self-love, utter hypocrisy and racial hate is both shocking, exasperating and infuriating!!! I was not a Jew, nor an Israeli, but I was effectively a fundamentalist Christian Zionist - that changed from OCTOBER 9, though!
Fucking brilliant! I've always hated the fact that the Zionists never mention that LGBTQ people were tortured and killed. That disabled people were tortured and killed. POC were tortured and killed. Atheists. Not the right Christian. Not pure enough German. Hitler wanted the perfect Aryan race.
This is a truly excellent essay! I am baffled at how so many good people don’t see this —that Zionism is the flip side of Nazism. There are no “chosen people”, because we are all chosen by virtue of our shared humanity. The minute you proclaim yourself chosen, you proclaim other human beings unchosen, and therefore inferior. This mindset is obsolete and dangerous and it must go. But how do we move beyond it? How do we help others to do so?
Thank you Mary! Good question. Whatever it is we need to do to remind people we are all the same, and we are all one, we have to do it fast. 🙏🏼
Love is the answer💕 Kindness matters🤗
You're doing SOMETHING now✊🇵🇸🇱🇧✊
Israel's usurpation of concentration camp victimhood is cynical and monstrous. Buchenwald and Dachau were the camps for political prisoners and Soviet military. They were not camps for Jews. Thousands of communists and USSR citizens were murdered and tortured to death in Buchenwald and Dachau. They all had to wear a sign of a red triangle.
Yet today it is Israel and Zionists that brand the Red Triangle as "terrorist" and persecute people for using it to signify their resistance to modern fascism.
Zionists and Israel have usurped Hitler's extermination of dissent - while exterminating the dissent and antifascist resistance themselves, including direct massacres and assassinations!
Everything you say is true, Lena.
🎯🎯🎯
Someone whose name I don’t remember has called this exposure of children to horrifying Holocaust imagery “the pornography of evil”.
Haven’t heard this before, but it is an apt description.
I saw probably those same images but I was taught that Hitler slaughtered, well, pretty much anyone he didn't consider to be a member of the perfect Aryan race. He didn't just murder Jewish people. The Zionists want you to forget about all the diverse people who were murdered. LGBTQ people had to wear pink triangles. I learned the right lessons because the subject was taught objectively and very well. Never again means never again to ANYONE! 🇵🇸🇱🇧✊
Wow, this is a really amazing article, and should be required reading for every single North American and European politician and journalist.
However, I think that it is an exaggeration to say that: "The world still buys ‘never again to us’, and does not require Israel to learn a universal lesson from the history of Jewish persecution." This is true of North American and Europe, but it is not true of South America, Africa, or Asia. Those countries have not been indoctrinated into the ideology of Zionism in the way that we have, even here in the UK, and see the situation far more objectively. And, of course, the activist community and many ordinary people who for whatever reason haven't been taken in by the Zionist narrative, simply think that what Israel is doing is completely terrible and don't understand why politicians are incapable of taking a firmer stance.
I have no idea what it will take for us to wake up politicians and the establishment media to the reality of how perverse and unacceptable their tolerance and support for Israeli war crimes truly is.
I've sent my proofreading comments by email.
Thanks Adam, you are right. I should qualify that statement better, and I will as soon as I can.
Of course, my statement above that "...it is not true of South America, Africa, or Asia." is also an exaggeration/over-generalisation. For example: there are many Hindu nationalists in India who are wildly supportive of Israel because they hate Muslims. Also, Argentina's current right wing president Javier Milei is wildly supportive of Israel and doesn't support the idea of a Palestinians state. There are also many supporters of Israel in South Africa (so I am told by South Africans) even though its government has done more than any other to try to hold Israel to account. Needless to say, it is a somewhat complex picture.
Avigail deconstructs Israel’s appropriation and exclusive ownership of the concept of genocide. I have always been struck by Isreali efforts to characterise the Holocaust as something perpetrated exclusively against Jewish people. Never any acknowledgment that the Nazis also slaughtered over 1 million people for being gay, disabled etc. Israel and its supporters never refer to other episodes of Genocide and its telling that they are all either engaged in settler colonialism or were in the past. Well said Avigail 👍💚
It's truly baffling to see how "Israelis" have managed to ignore the actual reasons why the Holocaust happened (including why it also targeted other marginalized groups, as you mention) all the while always using it as an illegitimate cover-up for their crimes.
I am not exactly sure what you mean by the real reasons the holocaust happened. It is either way a fact, that Israel has been weaponising it to justify settler-colonialism and genocide against the Palestinian people.
I should’ve specified what I meant by “the real reasons”, which include desire for power and control and imperialism/colonialism (as opposed to the narrative that Jewish people are “special” and have a specific persecution status that makes them free of blame)
Excellent essay and it hits upon many crucial points, thank you for writing it.
In Serbia we watched the holocaust photos too, in elementary school. Our history classes were often traumatic. World War II was a huge subject and we kept going back to it because we were so proud of our role in defeating the global threat.
There were a number of concentration camps in Yugoslavia, Jasenovac probably being the most famous. They held Jewish people but also Roma people, anyone caught resisting the occupation, sometimes entire classes of schoolchildren taken in retribution for some Partizan attack on the German troops.
The lesson we had learned was definitely ‘never again for anyone’. Though a few decades later we started having genocides of our own, so I would say we didn’t all learn it quite well enough.
I think the world is in full agreement with you and sick of Israel’s crap. But we have come to see to what degree the old colonial powers still hold all the strings. Nobody knows how to stand up to the US. It’s a serious problem and I worry how we will get out of it.
Thank you so much Lidija! so interesting to hear about your experience growing up in Serbia. I couldn’t agree more with what you are saying. The colonial powers are still in charge, now more through economics, and no one seems to be able to stand up to the US. Huge problem indeed. I worry too. Thank you for taking the time to read my essay and for your very kind feedback. In solidarity, Avigail 🙏🏼
Well not even through economics really. It’s times like this we realize why the US has a military base, like, literally everywhere.
I hope we get out of these dark times together and build something new. ⭐️
Thank you Avigail, that was both informative and inspiring.
Thank you so much.
It seems there's a long game and a short game here. The long game being to learn how to learn from history, as a collective. It's natural we make mistakes, but it's so crucial to be ultra clear like this about what the universal lesson is so we can give at least our children a world without ww4. And in the meantime, there's an emergency situation on the rampage that requires immediate intervention. I love how your article encompasses both timeframes without any either/or. Brilliant writing
Thank you so much Cian. Your feedback is so generous. My sense is that we have learned nothing in the last few thousands of years. If you look at ancient Persian, Greek or Roman history for example, you see the same patterns you see today. Leaders are narcissistic, they chase their own glory, people collude, even if it is bad for everyone, and there is always greed and desire to conquer and dominate others. There are always territorial disputes, and where there is no colonial expansion, there are always wars. There is a ‘pecking’ order and always people setting themselves above other people and trying to take more for themselves at other people’s expense. Actual torture and causing suffering to others has always been there. We are taught about the ‘great’ Roman empire and its great achievements. But I would like to hear more about the experiences of the people that Rome conquered and dominated. We learn little, or nothing about the histories of indigenous people, but they fought too among themselves. Archeologists have been finding mass graves of people who were clearly murdered in horrible ways (they can do forensic analysis on bones) from 12,000 years ago.
This is obviously just a rough sketch. But yes, you really got what I was trying to say. We need to address what is in front of us, with a view to develop as a species to the potential we have. Right now we are just stagnant. We confuse having advanced technology with enlightenment and progress. Our technology is mostly used to support the same base instincts that humans had ten thousand years ago, and recurring patterns. We have not come out of survivalism yet, and do not focus on what we need to focus on, which is the fundamental need of every human being to develop to their full potential. The problem with what I call survivalism is also that it is selective. We live now and always have lived by the idea of the ‘survival of the entitled’. We made little improvements around the edges, e.g. we are better at taking care of people with learning disabilities but in essence we are the same. If we allow neoliberalism to go where it would like to go, then big corporations and their helpers in governments would love to bring slavery back in a heartbeat. Equality, rights for everyone, regulations and legislation against corruption or exploitation are always battling against those who try to work around them. It’s always an uphill battle for things that should be the obvious but that is not because of the ‘bad guys’ alone. It is because we have societal patterns that among other things compel humanity to keep giving power to the wrong people.
As Edward O. Wilson said: “Modern humanity is distinguished by Palaeolithic emotions, Medieval institutions … and god-like technology. We’re a mixed up, and in many ways archaic species in transition. We are a chimera of evolution.” 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼
The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history, as they say.
What we're coming from is so huge if we want to consider becoming a nonviolent species. We don't fully know what happened to the neanderthals but one of the main theories is we exterminated them. I was always proud of my peaceful Irish heritage and then found out the folk who built our amazing ancient monuments that we celebrate were probably all killed by my ancestors. And this has its own cruel beauty to it too; that none of us can claim purity. We never left the jungle. We have palaeolithic emotions and I question... Is that a bad thing? Bad for me if I'm Palestinian right now. It's rich for my cosy ass to say war is just a part of nature and sip another mochiatto (though I did have a prophetic-feeling dream the other night in which I was forced to bow to a blue and white flag or be killed so who knows).
I also think there's a lot to be said for us to quit trying to NOT have palaeolithic emotions. Quit trying to rise above nature. Quit thinking we're better than the other guys. Quit thinking that we as the conscientious bullshit-detectors aren't just enacting our own role in a collective emergence the way a pack of dogs will always tend towards harmonising into a preprogrammed hierarchy regardless of the individual dogs. Quit thinking critical thinking alone is gonna get us out of the jungle when we're still held in causalities we can't even comprehend. Instead we maybe wanna learn our precognitive place in the jungle... whatever that might look like in practice.
But do we have to entirely restructure our DNA to become a non-warring species? Is there a key that can transform us as a collective? Talking long game, do you foresee our becoming a species that learns how to learn as a possibility?
Another great article. And yes, 'Lee' was a wonderful accomplishment! (We saw it at our local independent cinema in Penrith.)
Glad you saw it. I still can’t shake it.
Very good! I have repeatedly witnessed this outrageous self-importance and Jewish supremacy in my conversations with Zionists, and also from reading their outrageous and crazy blogs and posts. Their self-love, utter hypocrisy and racial hate is both shocking, exasperating and infuriating!!! I was not a Jew, nor an Israeli, but I was effectively a fundamentalist Christian Zionist - that changed from OCTOBER 9, though!
Good for you! It takes courage and insight to change beliefs.
Thanks for speaking out about this, Avigail!
Fucking brilliant! I've always hated the fact that the Zionists never mention that LGBTQ people were tortured and killed. That disabled people were tortured and killed. POC were tortured and killed. Atheists. Not the right Christian. Not pure enough German. Hitler wanted the perfect Aryan race.
Trade unionists too
And anarchists
Yep.
This just inspired me to write "Wisdom From My Jewish Friends"
https://kdgreenparty.substack.com/p/wisdom-from-my-jewish-friends