{"id":13469,"date":"2012-01-01T09:54:40","date_gmt":"2012-01-01T17:54:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=13469"},"modified":"2012-01-01T13:47:28","modified_gmt":"2012-01-01T21:47:28","slug":"lets-not-politicize-the-holocaust-this-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/01\/lets-not-politicize-the-holocaust-this-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Let&#8217;s Not Politicize the Holocaust (This Time)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An article this weekend <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/middle-east\/israeli-ultra-orthodox-rally-by-the-thousands-to-defend-efforts-to-ban-mixing-of-sexes\/2011\/12\/31\/gIQALTLlSP_story.html\">from the Washington Post<\/a> details the growing internal outrage within Israel against members of their Ultra Orthodox community, centered around the Ultra Orthodox&#8217;s use of Holocaust imagery in a protest against opposition to their calls to persecute women.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, the protest didn&#8217;t just use the imagery but explicit references, with the rabbi leading the group saying &#8220;The Israeli media\u2019s incitement is reminiscent of the German media\u2019s before World War II&#8221; and referring to secular criticism as a &#8220;spiritual Holocaust.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The backlash has been significant, with Israeli leaders and Holocaust survivors alike condemning the protesters for wearing concentration camp outfits and insisting that &#8220;We must leave the Holocaust and its symbols outside the arguments in Israeli society.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Which is certainly a noble sentiment, but at the risk of stating the obvious Israeli leaders have been doing materially the same thing for years. Indeed, I cannot recall the last time a prominent Israeli government official spoke at a Holocaust commemoration event and didn&#8217;t use it to <a href=\"http:\/\/news.xinhuanet.com\/english2010\/world\/2011-05\/02\/c_13854448.htm\">shill the international community for some war<\/a> (usually against Iran).<\/p>\n<p>If internal protests that most of the world are never going to see &#8220;harm the memory&#8221; of the Holocaust by exploiting it for political gain, surely high profile international speeches by top Israeli leaders using comparable tactics must be doing exponentially more harm. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An article this weekend from the Washington Post details the growing internal outrage within Israel against members of their Ultra Orthodox community, centered around the Ultra Orthodox&#8217;s use of Holocaust imagery in a protest against opposition to their calls to persecute women. Indeed, the protest didn&#8217;t just use the imagery but explicit references, with the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_social_image_id":0,"_social_image_url":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-13469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","_social_image_id":false,"subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13469"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13472,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13469\/revisions\/13472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13469"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=13469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}