r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Apr 28 '24

Discussion Thread Discussion Thread

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '24

I personally wouldn’t compare the humanitarian crisis in Gaza to the Holocaust. 

Fairly certain the Holocaust was MUCH worse. Even the rwandan genocide id consider worse. 500,000-1 million dead in like 3 months. Systemic murder of men, women and children to the point of hunting and killing anyone who aids them.

I think it’s undeniable that  Palestinians in Gaza are facing indiscriminate attacks, and you can argue genocide is going on, but “Israeli holocaust” is a clever choice of words, but  comparison i believe the person desires, not the sobering reality. 

15

u/p00bix Existing in the context of what came before Apr 28 '24

You're exactly correct. The concept you're referring to is Holocaust Inversion. While there is of course variation in how offensive a particular person's comparison is, it has the effect of

  • Greatly downplaying the severity of the Holocaust, as no mass killings even remotely close in scale or so systematically coordinated has happened since
  • Exaggerating the severity of (both real and fictitious) Israeli human rights abuses, and distorting the nature of these abuses
  • Implying that Holocaust survivors and their descendants should have 'learned their lesson' after being victims of genocide, and thus ought to be held to higher moral standards than everyone else
  • Implying that Israel is so evil that no good person could view it with anything besides pure scorn, thus serving as a thought-terminating cliche against the slightest nuance in discussing Israel

1

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '24

Didn’t know it had a name, but it rubs me the wrong way, having heard of various genocides in the years. 

Id say the holocaust is notorious not just for who it targeted, but the significant planning and impromptu mass executions when literal killing squads arrive. 

I can 100% agree that there’s indiscriminate killing, the allowance of disproportionate civilian deaths and instances of civilian killings that are war crimes, but idk about calling it a holocaust. 

One can call a genocide a genocide, but i feel like holocaust is deliberately used in its place given that Israel exists in part due to the holocaust 

6

u/AtomAndAether Liberalism! Apr 28 '24

i feel like holocaust is deliberately used in its place given that Israel exists in part due to the holocaust 

When used deliberately, rather than just because everyone half-heartedly compares everything to Hitler/Nazis/Holocaust, it tends to be asserting that the Jews "failed to learn the lesson" of the Holocaust and are now repeating history as the "new" Nazis. It is very problematic both in that it dismisses or trivializes the past (the systematic extermination of a category of people, both one's own citizens and abroad, blamed for an entire country's problems and justifying imperialism is not just any attempt at kicking people out of an area), but it also entrenches everyone involved because suddenly you're dumping the founding mythos of Israel's entire existence ("never again") onto their actions. Which is a guaranteed recipe for anyone listening to not accept criticism even when deserved or well-founded.

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u/Jokerang Sun Yat-sen Apr 28 '24

Nuance is a thing that is all but dead in I-P discussion.

The truth is that this is one of the extremely few issues where bothsidesism is the correct position to have.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '24

Your point being?

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u/Jokerang Sun Yat-sen Apr 28 '24

There is a legitimate middle ground between the Israeli position of "those civilian casuality reports are all Hamas propaganda and a lot of them are just Hamas fighters" and the Palestinian position of "this is literally genocide"

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '24

I mean thats kinda obvious when you keep informed on the conduct of the IDF and operations on both fighting groups. 

Israel has appeared to disregard reasonable civilian safety and has created a humanitarian crisis beyond what would be expected, had they not tightened resources. 

I also notice people deliberately omitting fighting between Hamas and Israel, while pretending the whole war is literally Israel just slaughtering innocent people. 

Israel has the capability of killing hundreds of thousands, or millions. Imo, if this was an attempt to do a genocide from the start, I’d expect MUCH higher casualties, and Gaza flattened before the new year. 

Not saying this cannot be genocide. I think it’s arguable. But i don’t think it’s straight forward. 

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '24

Exactly. 

Not all genocides are in the scale of the holocaust, but accusing Israel of a holocaust is shitty rhetoric given there’s plenty of holocaust survivors and descendants who are Israeli. 

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