This article will probably make a lot of people incredibly angry, I may lose followers, I’m ok with that. I would like to address the recent treatment of all of the Jewish people and the media portrayal of the conflict over the Gaza Strip. Now, I’m not even remotely going to pretend I have all of the facts here, it’s a lot to keep up with. What I do know, is that no matter how you feel about the conflict, the current treatment of the Jewish people on social media is appalling. I’m not talking about what is going on in the Gaza Strip, that’s a complicated issue that goes back thousands of years, see the link of the timeline below, and has only gotten hotter as time goes on. What I am here to address is the huge current wave of anti-semitism that seems to have taken over social media.
I have one HUGE question to those who are calling Jewish people (those in the USA and abroad) Nazis (which is about the worst thing you can call them), committers of genocide and other insults that are just as bad. Really, check instagram and twitter if you don’t believe me. My question is…what do the American or European Jewish people have to do with the conflict in Israel? They aren’t there, they aren’t the ones involved in the war, and whether or not you agree with Israel or Palestine, the Jewish people in America aren’t committing any kind of crime, yet they are taking brutal bullying over the whole situation. I know several people of Jewish descent who feel unsafe in their own skin because of the protests and hashtags taking over the internet. One of them believes that the world would like to once again try to annihilate her people because of something she isn’t even remotely involved in.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but make it an educated one. If the hashtags and protests were about people of Asian descent, African American descent, Native American descent or the like, everyone would be condemning the people hosting the protests and allowing the racial slurs to escape their keyboards, there would be no tolerance for it and the people posting them would be reported immediately and be held accountable for their racist commentary. I know these protests have happened in the past, I’m not denying that. I’m not saying at all that racism towards the other people I mentioned isn’t still alive and well, and that disgusts me, I’m just saying, the fact that some of these protests are allowed to continue is baffling to me.
Now to address calling the Jewish people Nazis. Seriously, are people really this stupid? The Nazis committed systematic mass genocide sweeping across Europe, I don’t think the Jewish people living in Europe and the United States (I’m not saying that the Jewish people of Israel are either, but here, I’m just talking about those in the USA and Europe) are committing such acts. It’s as cruel as can be to compare someone of Jewish descent to the group who systematically wiped out over 6 million of their people. If you wouldn’t call a Native American a Jacksonian and you wouldn’t call an African American a Slave Driver or a member of the KKK and you wouldn’t call someone of Russian descent, Stalin or a Communist…why in the name of all that is historically sane would you call a Jewish person a Nazi?! Just as there are still members of the KKK alive and well, there are still a group of people called NeoNazis alive and well. I really cannot understand what people are thinking when they attack those who literally have nothing to do with the battle over the Gaza Strip. It’s not right or sane to call anyone a Nazi outside of speaking of the events of the Holocaust and WWII, but it’s especially cruel to call someone of Jewish descent a Nazi. All you need to do is read a book about the Holocaust or go to the museum in Washington DC to realize why this is more wrong than people seem to imagine.
One more thing I want to address is the use of the word genocide in regards to the Gaza conflict. It’s not genocide. I spent a fair amount of time in my college career studying the various genocides that have occurred throughout history (which was my major) so I don’t speak about it lightly. You will never hear me using the term outside of its intended context. My genocide studies professor defined genocide as follows “mass, systematic, killing of people by the govt. because of their group membership” (keep in mind that the man has his doctoral degree and was a professor of Genocide Studies and Russian History among other things at my university). Dictionary.com defines it as such “the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.” (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/genocide). Now, from what I’ve read, Israel is not invading the Palestinian state and systematically exterminating all of it’s people. What Hitler did to the Jewish people during the Holocaust was genocide, what happened in Rwanda was genocide, what happened to the Armenian people, was genocide. What’s happening in the Gaza strip…is war. It’s tragic and I’m not pointing fingers and saying that either side is right because I don’t have enough information for that, but they are at war, there’s no mass extinction of a particular group of people happening. They aren’t being rounded up and taken to death camps or systematically starved out. If you can give me facts to prove that the textbook definition of genocide is happening, feel free to put them in the comments below, but until then, I stand my ground.
There are several hashtags that say “hitler was right” or “down with Israel”. I fail to see how defacing American and European synagogues is going to have any effect on the conflict over Gaza…they aren’t involved, so leave them out of it. They aren’t part of the Israeli government or the American government. So before you pick up your sign and join the world wide protests or take to your keyboards and try to start a new anti-jewish hashtag, do your research, remember how many innocent people you are hurting with your words and remember that the majority of the people who see your twitter post have nothing to do with this conflict. War sucks, I know, I’ve spent a lot of my time studying it and its effects. I don’t pretend to know how bad, since I have been lucky enough to have never been in a country torn apart by it. I have loaded the area below with links, one that proves that the Nazi party is alive and functional, two about the explosion of anti-semitism recently, one about the creation of the state of Israel, one about whether or not the Gaza Strip conflict is a genocide, one that outlines the conflict time line, and a few others. Please read them. Don’t be the kind of person who spreads hate over social media. Social media can be used for good in so many ways, but lately, I hear far more about it being used to spread tragedy and hate.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/08/09/4280988/two-men-sought-in-fatal-shooting.html
http://www.athensnews.com/ohio/article-43137-blood-bucket-challenge.html
http://www.americannaziparty.com/about/
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/08/13/4287481/europes-frightening-explosion.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/03/europe-anti-semitism-rallies_n_5758580.html
http://www.answers.com/Q/Is_the_Israeli-Palestinian_Conflict_a_genocide
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/news/israel-genocide/
http://israelipalestinian.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000635
http://www.answers.com/Q/Why_was_Israel_created_after_World_War_II
Nerdy Vagabond 