Tactless

Comments

12 responses to “Tactless”

1. 

   Holms

   Apr 7, 2026 7:17 AM

   I respectfully disagree with the entre framing of this piece.

   Marking the 81st anniversary of Buchenwald’s liberation with a rally of people who hate Jews.

   Pro-Palestine should not be construed as anti-jew in much the same way that pro-woman does not mean anti-trans. If you want to construe it as opposition to something, I submit pro-Palestine is actually anti-zionism – as in, anti-‘the political movement with the goal of making Israel the ancestral home of jewish people despite the lane being occupied by other people’.

   Further, I think their choice of location is highly apt given Israel is committing war crime after war crime in its efforts to grind down the Palestinians. In particular, the parallels between Nazis versus jews are almost one to one Israel versus Gaza Palestinian. Yes, Nazis went further as they herded jews into big boxes and murdered them in daily batches, but Gaza is easily comparable to a concentration camp, with Israel taking deliberate steps to immiserate the entire population of two million in a huge slow grind.

   Yes, there are people within the pro-Palestine camp who are there because they hate jews, but saying the movement is necessarily anti-jew on that basis is the same as saying the pro-woman gender critical movement is necessarily anti-trans because some of its members do hate trans people.

   Or to put it more crisply, the group said it aimed to make the Jews shut up about their damn death camps and their damn six million murdered Jews.

   I think the intent is almost the exact opposite of that – they accept the holocaust as a real and terrible thing, and want to draw attention to the fact that Israel has now stepped into the role of Nazi Germany almost completely.
2. 

   Athel Cornish-Bowden

   Apr 7, 2026 7:59 AM

   I agree with Holms.
3. 

   Omar

   Apr 7, 2026 8:04 AM

   Holms: “I think the intent is almost the exact opposite of that – they accept the holocaust as a real and terrible thing, and want to draw attention to the fact that Israel has now stepped into the role of Nazi Germany almost completely.”

   Agreed. I don’t believe that it was intentional, but that’s the way it turned out. It looks as if the ME war will still be raging in 1,000 years’ time.

   If I did as Moses did; if I climbed to a high point here in Canberra, and heard a voice inside my head proclaim that everything I saw rightfully belonged to me and my extended family, one day would be, and on descending I told all and sundry about it, I would be duly carted off to the nearest mental hospital (which, conveniently, is only a few kilometres away from where I live.)

   Yet that is the founding myth on which the state of Israel is based.
4. 

   Ophelia Benson

   Apr 7, 2026 8:27 AM

   Fair points. But are you sure they all they accept the Holocaust as a real and terrible thing?
5. 

   Papito

   Apr 7, 2026 8:33 AM

   Has it ever struck you as odd that Jews seem to be good at so many things – highest rate of Nobel prizes, highest rate of educational attainment, etc. – but they’re so incompetent at genocide there keep being more of the people they genocided?

   https://nolabels.org/the-latest/what-gazas-population-tells-us-about-the-genocide-charge/
6. 

   Ophelia Benson

   Apr 7, 2026 9:54 AM

   A real puzzler.
7. 

   Athel Cornish-Bowden

   Apr 7, 2026 10:09 AM

   The hatred between Arabs and Israelis that we hear so much about is less universal than many people imagine. In 2013 I went as an invited speaker to a meeting in Beer Sheva. At that time I was working in a research institute with significant numbers of Moroccans and Tunisians but no Israelis. Everyone who cared knew that I was off to a meeting in Israel, but I never heard of even the slightest disapproval of my doing that. More striking was checking in at the airport. It so happened that there was a flight to Constantine (Algeria) due to leave at about the same time as my flight to Tel Aviv, and passengers for the two flights were jumbled up together in the same queue. There were a few people like me who were neither Arab nor Jewish, but most of the passengers were one or the other. There was not the slightest sign of any hostility between the two groups, and about as much friendly chatting as one expects in such queues.
8. 

   Omar

   Apr 7, 2026 12:46 PM

   Athel Cornish-Bowden: So all the disputes, particularly over Jewish settlements of Palestinian land, must be neo-Nazi propaganda. Or something.

   The Palestinians had the misfortune to have their land absorbed into the Turkish Ottoman Empire pre-WW1, which then went on to be the losing side in that war. But with 20/20 hindsight, I reckon it would have been better post-WW2 to give the Jews the entire German state of Bavaria, where Nazism first got going (in the beer halls of Munich) than the originally Arab land they presently have.

   The Dome of the Rock, Wailing Wall and other Jewish holy relics could have been jackhammered out, shipped off to Bavaria, and set up there at far less human cost than under the way it has all panned out.

   See Deuteronomy 34 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Israel
9. 

   Freemage

   Apr 7, 2026 4:02 PM

   Athel Cornish-Bowden: I agree that the hatred between Muslims and Jews is not universal, and that many Muslims in African nations separated considerably from the heart of the conflict in Gaza really don’t give a damn, it’s equally undeniable that as one gets closer to that heart, the more ubiquitous hate becomes on both sides, and the more intense that hatred grows. Still, even Israel itself has a progressive minority, and they have been, thus far, the primary check on Netanyahu’s clear desire to ethnically cleanse all of Gaza and probably the West Bank. His government has been quite open with their long-term plans.

   Furthermore, even if one somehow believes that the current Israeli government is not genocidal in intent, it’s absolutely the case that that same government is committing war crimes and atrocities against humanity every day at this point.
10. 

    Athel Cornish-Bowden

    Apr 8, 2026 1:02 AM

    Omar: So Donald J. Trump is the greatest President the USA has ever had?

    What, you may ask, does that have to do with anything Omar wrote? Just as much as his comment addressed to me has to do with anything I wrote: nothing whatever.
11. 

    Omar

    Apr 8, 2026 7:11 AM

    A C-B: You did say: “There was not the slightest sign of any hostility between the two groups, and about as much friendly chatting as one expects in such queues.” A conclusion some might draw from that: “So all the disputes, particularly over Jewish settlements of Palestinian land, must be neo-Nazi propaganda. Or something.”

    No big deal, IMHO. Good night and good luck.
12. 

    Holms

    Apr 8, 2026 9:42 AM

    Ophelia:

    Fair points. But are you sure they all they accept the Holocaust as a real and terrible thing?

    No, I’m sure there are some holocaust deniers in the mix. Similarly, there are some pro-women activists who think trans women or trans people are deserving of harm. Lily Cade comes to mind, and just as her vile comments should not be construed to indict the entire movement, so too with the genuine anti-semitism in the pro-Palestine movement. In my experience (anecdata!), the good heavily outweighs the bad in the group.

    ___

    Papito:

    Has it ever struck you as odd that Jews seem to be good at so many things – highest rate of Nobel prizes, highest rate of educational attainment, etc. – but they’re so incompetent at genocide there keep being more of the people they genocided?

    Not at all. This is only an oddity if we first assume ‘genocide’ necessarily and always refers to an attempt to wipe out an entire population. Recall that it also includes immiserating a population such that they feel compelled to leave and never return. The UN’s working definition of the term gives five criteria:

    [1]… any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

    (a) Killing members of the group;

    (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

    (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part [also known as genocide by attrition [2]];

    (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

    (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

    [1] wiki

    [2] wiki

    Israel’s treatment of Gazans meets a, b, c, and d.

    ___

    Omar:

    I think you are mistaking part of Athel’s intended meaning. I take from his comments the arab and jewish people are generally amicable, as they all just want to have an unruffled life; but this is not applicable to governments.