Tactless

Comments

4 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?