The comparison in a recent New Yorker article was viewed as controversial in Germany, where government authorities strongly support Israel as a form of remorse and responsibility after Adolf Hitler’s Germany murdered up to 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.
Gessen, who was born Jewish in the Soviet Union, is critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
In Gessen’s article, titled “In the Shadow of the Holocaust,” the author explores German Holocaust memory, arguing that Germany today stifles free and open debate on Israel.
Gessen also is critical of Israel’s relationship with Palestinians, writing that Gaza is “like a Jewish ghetto in an Eastern European country occupied by Nazi Germany.”
“The ghetto is being liquidated,” the article added.
(Here’s a non-paywall link to the article.) It is profound.
I don’t believe they were promoting gatekeeping ideas. We’re allowed to think as we choose. But many have said similar things here (maybe not nearly as eloquently, but still …) and it hasn’t made a difference. Biden continues to fully support Israel and the killing hasn’t stopped.
The ideas had to written by a Jewish person, someone who knows in their DNA what it’s like to live as a Jew, to be treated as less-than far too often, to know family who were murdered, and to have realized the promise of a real home after a 2000 year diaspora.
So, your second paragraph is interesting because I/my family have lived that experience; as an autistic person and as someone whose grandfather fled their country as a refugee due to a communist uprising
Autistic people were actually the very first group of people to be holocausted by the nazis, several years before Jewish people
Does that give me more right or credibility to share these ideas? should it?
I don’t think it’s made a difference in this case either, if we’re comparing it to other individuals who have made this point and the effects on foreign policy