Everything sounds better in French. There are no harsh guttural sounds, syllables. To say, je t'aime in French sounds ever more romantic and sigh worthy than I love you, its translation. However, all those sighs and soft sounds do not change a thing. The French are manifestly anti - semitic, growing fast even now. The French police were the ones who committed the infamous roundup of citizen Jews in Paris.
No, the Resistance, however romantically it is now portrayed really did not do much of anything until an announcement that all men between certain ages had to report for 'volunteer' work in Germany. It was then that men figured, in for a penny, in for a pound. Fight here, hide, be snatched off the street, out of a house, or indeed.' volunteer". A bit of goose and gander here, but never the same.
That is the exact point that Whoopi Goldberg - Whoopi Goldberg! - crossed and trivialized. She did or rather said, buying into the terrible universalization or intersectionality of the Holocaust. This is when Holocaust deniers or minimizers, as far as Jews are concerned, are opting out of its racial core and attacks, opting out of its 'specialization' re the annihilation of Jews. Compared to the deaths of others, such as Gypsies racially persecuted. Jehovah's Witnesses were imprisoned, opponents, homosexuals, as enemies of the state, not in a racial category. Jewish American soldiers were imprisoned in concentration camps because they were Jewish, contravening the Geneva Conventions.
Sorry, Whoopi, I always liked you, admired the way you spoke up, your talent, but now?! You have blown it. You have drunk the Kool-Aid of anti semites. After millennia of anti-Jewish attitudes, murders, institutional pogroms, demonization, of denial of rights, with antisemitism immortalized in literature, we even are to be robbed of the rather dubious honor as the main target of the most planned, successful, if one can use that term, annihilation of Jews, in the history of mankind. No others ever faced such an organized plan worldwide in intention. Not Armenians, not Tutsis, not Rohingya, not Uighurs. It continued in a mad frenzy even as the war was lost. Trains, soldiers, resources, needed by the armed forces were diverted to the frantic do as much killing as possible campaign of the Nazis, along with the oh so valiant efforts of local collaborators.
No, at least allow the Jews this so not welcome 'prize'. Do not diminish the Holocaust in its concentration on the Jews. Whoopi claims it was or took place simply because "we eat each other". No, sorry, and to use today's terms, Jewish Lives Matter. “Jews, it seems, are even denied their own suffering on its own terms. It is important to note that antisemitism was central to both Nazi ideology and Nazi war aims. Attempts to deny or minimize this fact are as despicable as they are ahistorical.”
Apologies do not matter, do not do a damn thing, for people hear and quote and believe as they wish, not as is. The ignorance, the hate, the violence, the same damned accusations continue unabated. We were accused of causing the Black Plague, cholera, of blood libel. Of causing COVID. Fagin, the Merchant of Venice, even today we are so 'privileged' to be the target of "implied bias". A best-selling novel by a well-educated Black author, fitting the definition of entitled, privileged person, other than being Black, uses the tired old stereotype of the 'Jewish lawyer'. The ethnicity, the religion of other characters basically ignored, the tired trope of a rather unpleasant Jewish lawyer. I am so tired of this. So very existentially tired - and afraid. Yes, afraid, for my survival and that of my people, in the "Goldeneh Medinah" the Golden Land, which held the hopes and dreams of thousands of persecuted, murdered Jews. That promise is tarnished. Our contributions denied. The hate? I refer you back to the title.
Within this past week alone is a summary of anti Semitism in this magnificent, challenged country of ours. Orlando - multiple swastikas, and mini parades. Chicago - two yeshivas, two Jewish bakeries, and a synagogue vandalized and graffitied. DC - Union Station there were swastikas and graffiti as well as on two nearby synagogues. NYC - Jews are being routinely targeted for street attacks. The authorities? Oh, they are so, so, busy trying to figure out if these were hate crimes.
DUH!!!!!
Why the over 6 month delay of confirmation of Deborah Lipstadt, a well-known author and scholar, respected, the target of notorious Holocaust deniers, and Jewish! as "the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism (has been) critical in urging foreign governments to protect their Jewish communities, establish national coordinators to address antisemitism, and develop and implement policies to combat antisemitism and hate,” in a letter written by over 96 Jewish organizations to members of Congress who have so blatantly denied, delayed, this step..
Perhaps we all need to read the opinion piece of Mark Twain re Jews. Feel the plaintive tone and questions of the Merchant of Venice, pushed to his limits, drowning in his despair as he stands to lose it all - his future, his daughter, his everything.
"the Jews constitute but one quarter of one percent of the human race.... his importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. ...His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse learning are also very out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world in all ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. ...The Jew saw them all, survived them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmaties, of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert but aggressive mind." (Mark Twain)
"I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will execute, ...and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction." (William Shakespeare Merchant of Venice Act 3 Scene 1)
Read the words. Hear them in your heart. Feel them with your soul.
Enough already. Enough of no change. Enough of the self-denial and obfuscation of the anti-Semite, their supporters and adherents and those who look away.
Silence is deadly, a deadly as the actions.
Change must take place, true and positive change. Never mind the soft sounds of French syllables. The truth is harsh. the truth is on you to hear, to act, to truly change. NOW!!
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