<<<That the ship was turned back is a disgrace in our history>>>
That statement conveys my view. I think Michael made it clear it didn't convey his with the comments I have quoted.
I don't know Caleb Carr's story. I wonder if it's on the net. If I have time, I'll search for it later.
<<<Another is the way that the Holocaust is depicted as a separate and special genocide attempt. >>>
Yes, it is. There are a number of ways in which it is "special," and represents an extreme quantitatively and qualitatively. The industrialization of genocide is a hallmark of the Nazi-conducted Holocaust, and one of the characteristics that makes it unique.
<<<Many Armenians, for the most obvious example, feel resentful that the horror of genocide has, in their view been abducted by Jews to serve Jewish interests today rather than allowed to stand on its own as a horror for all mankind.>>>
"Jews" have "abducted" genocide? They have experienced it, certainly, more than once or twice. They have an interest in doing what they can to see that it doesn't happen to them yet again. One way of doing that is to highlight the particularities of the most recent, most massive, most efficient, most cruel genocidal program directed against them. How in the name of humanity can this be classified, contemptuously, as self-serving in the base manner your phrasing suggests?
<<<abducted by Jews rather than allowed to stand on its own as a horror for all mankind.>>>
I can't get over this clause. There is no reason that the world can not let the Holocaust of the Jews represent man's inhumanity to man. But to take the Jews to task, to accuse them of "abducting" their own attempted extermination because they remind us of the history Ike's letter (written shortly after the six day war, I have learned) raises, boggles my mind. I find it difficult to interpret other than as an attempt to avoid confronting the issue of antisemitism and facing our government's historical failures to oppose it before it was too late; and even when, for one small boatload of the doomed, it wasn't.
The Armenians have struggled to bring their story to sharper historical attention, and the example set by the Jews should be, and in fact has been, acknowledged as having been useful to them. Let all victims of genocide collect their accounts and set them before the face of the world, I say, such "bad-things-happen" attitudes as Michael's notwithstanding. And where it is demonstrated that particular nations have been enablers or defenders of genocidal activity, let that be brought out, even though the citizens of those states may find this of no interest to them.
<<<been abducted by Jews to serve Jewish interests today>>>
By "Jews" do you mean Israel? By "Jewish interests" do you mean Zionist? Or do you simply mean the interests of "Jews"?
If you mean Israel's interests, security interests, are you implying that these should be pursued without mentioning the historically relevant experience of recent genocide during which they had no haven to which to escape? (The latest, only, in a bloody series?) I consider that odd.
And what is this word "abducted"? Abduction implies illicit use, doesn't it? Does the word "Holocaust" not accurately describe the experience of the European Jews? Did not the Jews originate this use of the word "Holocaust" as a commemorative name for their own genocidal horror? Is not Ike's "litany," as someone here impatiently termed it, an accurate depiction of a pattern of specific selection of Jews for persecution? Doesn't this history make your phrase <<<There is random bigotry, of which antisemitism is a part, >>> an act of evasion and denial? Why would you want to pretend that Ike's "litany"
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is merely a listing of incidents of "random" bigotry? Random, Edwarda?
It is not "random." And I suspect those Jews who feel uncomfortable at the insistence of the adoption (I might be provocative and use the noun "abduction," but shall control myself) to refer to every occurrence of genocide, of the noun "Holocaust" they chose, and capitalized, to commemorate their own specific historical nightmare, are reacting specifically to the very implication contained in this thought you have expressed.
There are many nouns in the dictionary, Edwarda-- and, alongside that fact, is this one: It is absolutely clear that there are those who would trivialize the Holocaust of the Jews. And that one way to do that would be to call it an incident of "random" bigotry.
One reaction to the sense one's history is being "randomized," so to speak, made generic, having its essential unrandom, organized, industrialized, un-ad hoc, nature denied, might be to wish other groups would find their own nouns honorifically to capitalize. I could understand that.
I think you telling us that your lover is an antisemite, for which I'm sorry, and I understand that it's an uncomfortable situation; though you seem in another way to imply you feel he has good reason to be. Maybe I misunderstood. You mention his "work experiences," and then "exploitation of victim status" that "gets to him." I can't make this concrete in my mind. I have never personally experienced this with Jews in professional or personal life, though I am familiar with and annoyed by the phenomenon of exploiting victim status. This I have observed as a social phenomenon, and have experienced in personal life and professional life. Never specifically with a Jew, that I can remember, though.
Regarding Israel's treatment of the Palestinians-- I am not a defender of Israeli realpolitik in all its sometimes unpleasant detail. But I am astonished at those critics of Israel who would deny to the Israeli people the right to remind the world of the historical backdrop against which their self-protective policies have been arrived at.
Israel, in most ways a state like any other, has had a policy of discouraging public discourse about the Armenian genocide. This is disgraceful. The motivation for it is the realpolitik desire to maintain close relations with the Turks. It was wrong, and it is a good sign that this policy is weakening. (The suppression of this discussion had nothing to do with ownership of the term Holocaust, of course. It was more sordidly based.)
The figure in the carpet in this whole discussion, and in my opinion the reason denial and resentment prevails so generally, is that the demonization of the Jews is embedded in the founding texts of Christianity. This is a fact that embarrasses even the Pope.
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