Descriptions of crucifix violation by Jews are always depicted in the Hebrew chronicles as a reaction to the evil destruction of their Torah scrolls by the crusaders. During the First and Second Crusades, crusaders attacked the most holy object of the Jews, so the Jews in response are depicted as attacking the main symbol of Christianity and the crusading movement. In the First Crusade, the tearing of sacred Torah scrolls was part of almost every attack.^95^ There are nine descriptions of Torah desecration in the four chronicles.^96^
The Hebrew chroniclers first emphasized the holiness and beauty of the Torah, how it was honored by a particular Jewish community, and how terrible it was that the uncircumcised contaminated it. According to Eliezer bar Nathan, the crusaders trampled the Torah scrolls in the mud in Worms: “The enemies and oppressors set upon the Jews who were in their homes, pillaging, and murdering men, women, and children, young and old. They destroyed the houses and pulled down the stairways, looting and plundering; and they took the holy Torah, trampled it in the mud of the streets, and tore it and desecrated it amidst ridicule and laughter.”^97^
The Mainz Anonymous depicts the grief of the Jewish women who saw the Torah as it was torn in the Mainz synagogue in 1098: “There was also a Torah scroll in the room; the errant ones came into the room, found it, and tore it to shreds. When the holy and pure women, daughters of kings, saw that the Torah had been torn, they called in a loud voice to their husbands: ‘Look, see, the Holy Torah—it is being torn by the enemy!’ And they all said, men and women together: ‘Alas, the Holy Torah, the perfection of beauty, the delight of our eyes, to which we used to bow in the synagogue, kissing and honoring it. How has it now fallen into the hands of the impure uncircumcised ones?’”^98^
Furthermore, according to Solomon bar Simson, the Torah scrolls were trampled underfoot in Trier: “At that time the people of the community of Trier took their Torah scrolls and placed them in a sturdy building. When the enemy became aware of this, they went there while it was still day and broke the roof above; they took all the mantles and the silver adorning the rollers of the Torah, and threw the Torah Scrolls on the ground, and tore them and trod upon them with their feet.”^99^
When referring to Jewish neocolonists, you mean. Surely nobody is going to get in trouble for referring to anticolonial Jews as ‘Kapos’ or whatnot, which I have seen much too often.
Most other prisoners of the early camps were soon set free again—not because of outside intervention, but because the authorities felt that a brief period of shock and awe was normally enough to force opponents into compliance. As a result, there was a rapid turnover in 1933, with the places of released prisoners quickly filled with new ones.
The duration of detention was unpredictable. Prisoners who expected to regain their freedom after a few days were mostly disappointed, but it was rare for them to remain inside for a year or more. Longer spells were served in the bigger, more permanent camps, but even in a large camp like Oranienburg, around two‐thirds of all prisoners stayed for less than three months.^244^
The result was a constant stream of former prisoners back into German society, and it was these men and women who would become the most important sources of private knowledge about the early camps.
This crap Wow… and going through my post history, it doesn’t look like I made that thread overviewing the Fascist atrocities against Poles. I did discussaspectsof the occupation, but nothing exactly matching what I had in mind. It looks like I was sidetracked, especially by the assault on Gaza, so I consequently forgot about my idea.
I’m not even Polish, but it’s almost upsetting how somebody can trivialize or gloss over the Fascist destruction of Poland while needlessly exaggerating the Soviets’ violence to extreme proportions… the Fascists repeatedly committed reprisals, attempted to erase Polish culture, subjected young Poles to child labour, and committed other atrocities, yet these people are going to overlook all of that…? Why…? Because anticommunism is more important?
Protestors self‐immolate because they’re desperate and don’t know what else to try. It is always a last resort, not one of the first. Most of the world is begging for the neocolonists to stop exterminating the innocent and they’re still doing it anyway. If the oppressors simply yielded to our demands the first umpteen thousand g‐ddamn times that we asked, nobody would have tried this. As far as I’m concerned, they can take the blame.
The livestreamer in D.C. said he wished to end his complicity in the Gaza war. That war began when Hamas terrorists burned Israelis alive, and the livestreamer showed no appreciation of the irony that it would end, for him, with his own voluntary experience of the same fate. His willingness to suffer this way certainly demonstrated his “determination and sincerity,” to use Nhat Hanh’s phrase. It also showed his numbness to the suffering of others: His cinders should inspire action, but the much larger piles of cinders of whole families in the Kfar Aza kibbutz somehow should not.
…wow. Have you ever heard of the Nakba? The apartheid? What happened after the Oslo accords? How unpopular the ‘Palestinian Authority’ is? Why the hell do you think that Palestinian militants broke into the neocolony…? Because they had nothing better to do?
Jews have been likening Zionism’s neocolony to the Third Reich as early as 1948. I collected quotes from Orthodox Jews, Shoah survivors, and even a few ‘moderate’ Zionists making their own comparisons after my Sephardic friend encouraged me to write an article formally comparing the two entities.
A case in point is Golda Meir (Meyerson), who was in fact one of the more hawkish leaders of the Yishuv. On May 6, 1948, following a visit to Arab Haifa only a few days after its conquest and the flight and expulsion of the city’s Arab population, Meir reported to the Jewish Agency Executive that “there were houses where the coffee and pita bread were left on the table, and I could not avoid [thinking] that this, indeed, had been the picture in many Jewish towns [i.e., in Europe during World War II].”^42^
Within Mapam—a left‐[leaning] Zionist party that was part of the state’s first government headed by David Ben Gurion—the expulsion of Palestinians was the subject of intense debate. For example, Eliezer Pra’i (later Peri), editor of the Mapam daily al‐Hamishmar, wrote: “Among the best of our comrades the thought has crept in that perhaps it is possible politically to achieve our ingathering in the Land of Israel by Hitlerite‐Nazi means.”^43^
Following the atrocities committed during Operation Hiram by the [neocolonial] army (IDF) who conquered the central‐upper Galilee pocket, the [neocolonial régime] established a three‐person investigation committee. At a cabinet meeting on November 17, 1948, convinced that the army and defense establishment were being evasive, Mapam representative Aharon Cisling stated: “I couldn’t sleep all night. […] This is something that determines the character of the nation. […] Jews too have committed Nazi acts.”^44^
(Emphasis added.)
That is only small sample of the comparisons that I collected—not a single one of which came from a gentile.
Of course, there are limits to the analogy, and one could argue that such analogies are never necessary, but whatever the case I find it troubling to dismiss them as ‘antisemitic’ seeing as how many well adjusted, well educated Jewish adults have made and continue to make their own comparisons between the Reich and the Zionist occupation (which most certainly isn’t a ‘democracy’).
Somehow I doubt that the millions of us in the lower classes who suffered from his régime would be that restrained.
In any case, it isn’t a question of one individual’s prescription. It is more a question of historic inevitability and necessity. I can’t say anything for sure, but should the lower classes directly confront Donald Trump and Mike Pence one day, I have a feeling that we’ll be just as forgiving as lower‐class Italians were of Benito Mussolini. Only a guess, though.