Today's discussion questions

[sabotabby]

It's another one of those long days at school and I won't be around, so here are two discussion questions for you. Fight talk amongst yourselves.

1. What do we think of this news story? There's a lot in there, so let's pick it to pieces.

2. Speaking of genocide, the Toronto District School Board has a new history course dealing with the subject. It officially recognizes three genocides: Armenia, the Holocaust, and Rwanda. What's missing, and why do you think they chose to exclude the genocide that happened in the country where the course will be taught.

Have a happy Friday!

Comments

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

I've been to Yad Vashem. I toured the sculpture garden at sunset, and it's very pretty. Some of the pieces are hair-raising. It has a wonderful view, too, overlooking a valley and a huge settlement in East Jerusalem that glows a lovely pink as the sun falls below the hills.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

This is tough subject.
The Holocaust, like every Genocide, is unique in it's own right. What makes the Holocaust "extra special" is the sheer magnitude of it and the ideology behind it. At least that's what I glean from reading about from various sources.
The Holocaust also has the best advertisement as the "most evil thing to ever happen to man kind".
I think it's mainly because Israel came into being because of it and there is still this fear that we'll be destroyed if we don't remember that we were nearly eradicated.

The Holocaust has been co-opted into Zionist discourse and that annoys me. There was Judaism before Zionism, though many would like to ignore that.

Bush saying what he's saying is just him being an Israeli ally, I don't think there's anything too meaningful in the fact that he was at Ya V'Shem. Every international hot-shot goes there for a little catharsis and the knowledge that the bad guys were beaten and that Good will Triumph.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

Does he have any idea of what "bombing" meant in the forties? Does he really want to have killed everyone in the camp, inmates and all, except for a few random survivors? Maybe this is what liberation means to him.

[troubleinchina.livejournal.com]

Well, see, if we talked about the genocide in Canada, we'd make the students feel bad or something.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

My eyes!

Sorry, I didn't get far. My president's thoughts are the same ones I had when I was 12.

Gah!

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

1. Bush was visibly moved as he toured the site, said Yad Vashem's chairman, Avner Shalev.
"Twice, I saw tears well up in his eyes," Shalev said.

DUDE, THAT STRAW? THAT STRAW RIGHT THERE? YOU ARE GRASPING FOR IT. STOP THAT.

called Rice over to discuss why the American government had decided against bombing the site, Shalev said.

Dear God, imagine THAT conversation.

"Well, why didn't we bomb it and save the people?"
"Mr President sir...."
"If we bombed it, we could've saved the people!"
"Sir, Mr President...."
"Think of all those people that would have been saved! If we'd just bombed it!"

Yeah, the Nazis would've just had to, you know, shoot everyone QUICKLY rather than torture them slowly and horribly! Which, you know, plus for not being tortured slowly and horribly. OTOH, I really fucking doubt the fucking Großdeutsches Reich would have thrown up its collective hands, exclaimed "Dearie me!" and let all the people it was dedicated to, you know, LIQUIDATING, just go home or something.

"I was most impressed that people in the face of horror and evil would not forsake their God. In the face of unspeakable crimes against humanity, brave souls — young and old — stood strong for what they believe,"

OH FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING.... //fumes and sputters incoherently CHRIST hasn't he ever read Primo Lev -- oh. wait. nevermind.

a sobering reminder that evil exists, and a call that when evil exists we must resist it," he said

LIFE: ((beats satire like a redheaded stepchild))
SATIRE: ((gives up, goes home to eat bonbons and watch Oprah))
IRONY-METER: ((blows up))

a meticulously crafted wooden box adorned with a Star of David and a seven-branched menorah, containing a collection of 99 of the artist's illustrations of biblical scenes

....well, I'm glad I read about that at least. I like that.

//is too boggled and furious to write any further, luckily for the rest of the commentators

[sadie-sabot.livejournal.com]

the_red_shoes kinda covered it.

But, um, yeah, this bombing to stop the killing thing has a little too much traction in our foreign policy at this point.

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

Undoubtedly, most notable in its absence is the total wiping out of the Neanderthals by the Homo sapiens some 30,000 years ago. After that, I would mention some of the notable biological species extinct due to human activity. Beyond that, what Chomsky says.
I'm assuming that most of us have studied about the Holocaust in school. But what is it that we really learned? In my opinion, there are some very important lessons on individual and mass-psychology to be learned that are rarely being explicitly mentioned. Political conclusions are rarely being drawn either. I think that there is a whole lot you can learn from "just" three genocides (which, I'm suspecting, is not going to be learned).

[holy-chao.livejournal.com]

Bush was crying? Obviously he is unfit for the presidency.

[laughingimp.livejournal.com]

Question: does it offend the Jewish folks here that President Bush showed up wearing a yarmulke?

[auralarua.livejournal.com]

"IBM and the Holocaust is a book written by Edwin Black published in 2001 which chronicles the alliance between International Business Machines Corporation and Nazi Germany.
The book quotes extensively from numerous IBM and government memos and letters that describe how IBM in New York, IBM's Geneva office and Dehomag, its German subsidiary, were intimately involved in supporting Nazi oppression. The book also includes IBM's internal reports that admit that these machines made the Nazis much more efficient in their efforts. Several C-SPAN broadcasts and a 2003 documentary film "The Corporation" showed close-ups of several documents including IBM code sheets for concentration camps taken from the files of the National Archives. Prisoner Code 8 was Jew, Code 11 was Gypsy. Camp Code 001 was Auschwitz, Code 002 was Buchenwald. Status Code 5 was executed by order, code 6 was gas chamber."
What about this? I don't know *anything* about foreign business policy but shouldn't IBM's involvement have been taken seriously? PRETTY EFFED UP IMO.

[auralarua.livejournal.com]

I want to know more about 2.

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

2. But I'm sure there are towns and streets named after the agents of the local genocide. Whatever would we do is we taught children what they really did? (This is definitely the case in the US - General Phil Sheridan was the architect of the expulsion and decimation of the Indian in the western plains, but he has a major street named after him in Denver, and a town in Wyoming.) Besides, what happens in kids' minds when they figure out that genocide isn't something that happens "over there"?

Of course, I wish everyone had a good idea of how their ancestors participated in genocides and ethnic cleansings - I suspect it would help a lot of people to understand the world better. I think I find the "it couldn't happen here" attitude very disturbing, especially as it has happened here.

My ancestor, Jeremiah Moulton, was in command of troops that massacred an entire Indian village (over 200 people). When he was a child (1692), he was taken captive and his parents and seven other of my ancestors were killed by Indians (who were probably clients of the French (from Canada) and may have been accompanied by French soldiers). A good number of the survivors of the York massacre abandoned the town and moved to Salem, Massachusetts, where some of the girls, whom I presume were suffering from what we'd call PTSD today, accused some of their neighbors of witchcraft.

Nothing happens in isolation. Genocide is committed by people who think they are doing what is right - or at least, just doing their jobs. Teaching that to children would be too subversive, I fear.

[threeliesforone.livejournal.com]

oh, but sabotabby! they're talking about genocide in the twentieth & twenty first centuries! if anything ever happened to the first nations in canada it happened a very looooooong time ago! it doesn't count!

eye roll.

[seaya.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised no one has posted about Prescott Bush's indictment for supporting the enemy.

See here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00.html

[gillen.livejournal.com]

1. If we had we might not have come to the point where a US President was in a stolen Palestinian town getting all verklempt over photos of dead Europeans.