Slashdot Mirror
Holocaust Dropped From Some UK Schools
dteichman2 writes "It appears that some UK schools are ignoring the Holocaust. A government-backed study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, found that some teachers are reluctant to teach history lessons on the Holocaust for fear of offending Muslim students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial. Additionally, similar problems are being encountered with lessons on the Crusades because these lessons contradict teachings from local mosques."
I guess if your "beliefs" include Holocaust denial, then you're excactly the person who needs a history lesson.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
We already have schools ignoring real science to avoid offending radical Christians.
Why does accommodating religion nearly always harm society?
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
And I thought American schools were bad for "teaching the controversy" of Intelligent Design.
What happened to "lest we forget"???
You know, there's verifiable evidence of the Holocaust. Photos. Movies. Graveyards. Camps. Survivors.
This is a dark day for the human race.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
...is the Daily Mail. The most hate-filled right-wing rag we have here (it's referred to locally as the Daily Hatemail).
This is the sort of "journalism*" wiling to blame paedophilia for rising house prices, and frankly I would never believe a single thing they say, nor anything their readers say unless it was backed up by at least 3 independent sources.
And even then, I'd still take it with a metric ton of salt
*Any good editor would call it an opinion piece, and any good editor would bin it and sack the writer responsible.
cmd-q.co.uk - some sort of stupid fucking internet bullshit
So we don't want to talk about the killing for 6 million (mainly Jews but of course we have gypsies, POWs, political prisoners, etc) because we will offend some radical Muslims. So by NOT talking about it we have offended the Jewish people, the Jewish faith, and anyone who thinks not talking about the mass murder is a bad idea.
I am sure I can see the reasoning though (being serious now): If we piss of the Jews they will complain vs. if we piss off the Muslims the radicals will riot, burn things, etc.
The day we stop discussing facts/history because somebody may be offended is the day we are all screwed.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. But, they must first be taught that history.
Bearded Dragon
TFA comes from the Daily Mail -- anyone who's from (or has been to) the UK will know what a filthy right-wing propagandist rag this so-called newspaper is. No over-hyped alarmist knee-jerk fabrication is too low for these people and their neo-nazi readership.
Corollary to Godwin's Law: As political correctness increases the chances of ignoring the holocaust approach one.
I am a muslim, and no part of our beliefs denies Holocaust! The author of the summary is either mistaken, or deliberately being malicious. In both cases, he is plain wrong about muslims' beliefs including Holocaust denial.
Beliefs of a few people in a group are NOT representative of the entire group.
Sorry. History occurred one way. It's not a relative thing. You can argue the ifs and why, but at some point you have to look at the pure documented evidence and make a judgment. The mountain of evidence on the Holocaust can't not be washed away just because people think that people ought to decide for themselves if something occured or didn't. It did occur, and any belief otherwise can not be justified by the facts.
I honestly don't know which is worse; teaching "Intelligent Design" as science, or ignoring the Holocaust as history.
On the one hand, you're denying the validity of the very scientific method itself, which can't possibly be a benefit to the future of your society. On the other, though, you're denying the atrocities societies are capable of, even in our "enlightened" era. If you don't know it happened and don't know it can happen, that has to make it more likely for it to happen again.
I suppose, upon further review, that if I had to choose, I'd rather skip the Holocaust than teach ID. The Holocaust could probably be replaced with the Khmer Rouge, Stalin's purges, and Darfur to accomplish the same goals of warning. You lose a bit of connection, since all those examples are "somewhere else" in a way that Germany in the early 20th century isn't, but they're still perfectly good examples of what can happen.
Moreover, ID is certainly more widespread in this country than Holocaust denial is in the UK, so it's certainly a more immediate threat.
Still and all, the fact that I even have to think about this is ridiculous.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
That said, I am always amazed when I watch the History channel and see how much was left out of or glossed over in the US history textbooks, especially regarding the Revolution. I'm sure that its to give kids the idea that America is great, noble, etc. etc. but I don't think that ignoring our own history (especially the mistakes we've made) does anyone any good.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
I read something insightful on Slashdot recently that suggested whenever you read something so inflammatory that you just have to comment, then you're only hearing half the story. When you click the link in the summary, please bear in mind that the Daily Mail, or The Daily Heil as its often referred to, is the most rabid of Britain's unpleasant right wing press with a history of making up and exaggerating facts in order to appease the xenophobic, homophobic, narrow-minded, bigoted, evil little people that make up their core audience.
Plus the story is dated the 2nd of April so I'm not sure what the submitter was trying to achieve other than to provoke the flamefest that will inevitably ensue.
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
The single, best argument to the contrary I have ever heard is that not one defendant at the Nuremburg trials stated, in defense, that the holocaust never happened....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
From the looks of it they are really talking about 1 school, out of the thousands in the UK that has decided not to teach, what are, optional subjects. From next year teaching the holocaust will apparently become compulsory. I wasn't taught about the crusades at school either but I don't think that had anything to do with offending the 2 muslims in the class and was more about their being other things to teach.
I wasn't aware that holocaust denial was a part of the Muslim religion, especially since their holy books etc were written long before it actually happened and I'm not sure exactly what teaching about the Crusades goes on inside mosques but if this teaching is correct then teaching it in schools as well will just re-enforce the lessons and lead to better exam grades for Muslims.
There is no such 'belief' about holocaust denial in Islam. I grew up as a muslim (Don't believe in religion per se at the moment) but the holocaust denial is a reaction to Israel and the resulting growing anti semitism in the muslim world. Linking it with the faith is a tad unfair
I'm not sure which is worse, having evangelical Christians in the United States trying to discredit evolution as a valid scientific theory, or denying the holocaust because it will offend certain Muslims. The purpose of public school teachers should be to teach the facts to the best of their ability, it should not be about bending and twisting historical events, or science. If a child's parents do not want their child to learn about these things then send them to a private school(and no I don't believe in government backed school vouchers, I don't want _my_ tax dollars to fund your fundamentalists). It's time for public school educators to stop shirking their responsibility of teaching and start trying to break down the ignorance and dogma that has filled some of these students heads.
Did their clue bag get cut? Are they friends with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or David Duke or something? By avoiding teaching about one of the worst examples of intolerance and hatred in human history, they contribute to the problem. And let's face it, there are a lot of reports of Muslims in the UK becoming increasingly radicalized, because they are learning hatred and distorted history in the mosques. The Brits are cutting their own throats.
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
This is one of the reasons why I changed my mind on the Danish cartoons that enraged the muslim world so much.
Fear cannot be allowed to dictate what we say or teach.
If you say what you think and someone threatens your life for saying it, they have broken the law in most civilized countries. Send them to jail.
In this case it's not even a matter of belief. It's a matter of fact. The Holocaust happened and denying it is in itself illegal in some countries. Rewriting history is a very serious thing, even though it's being done on a daily basis. History is there for us to learn from so we do not repeat it. We better learn our lessons or we're bound to make the same mistakes over and over.
Badgers, we don't need no stinking badgers! - UHF
Holocaust denial is generally an antisemitic point of view. The Muslims, Jews, and Christians all believe in the same deity... apparently, but that doesn't stop them from hating one another. Other famous holocaust deniers are good friends of the KKK. It is AFAIK a religious belief. Anal sex or anal intercourse is a form of human sexual behavior. While there are many sexual acts involving the anus, anal cavity, sphincter valve and/or rectum, the term "anal sex" is often used to mean the insertion of the penis into the rectum. It is a form of sexual intercourse considered to be particularly risky, for a number of reasons related to the vulnerability of the tissues and the septic nature of the anus. Such relations have been documented in a wide range of cultures, from earliest times; they have also been controversial and sometimes condemned since antiquity. Anal sex is encountered among people of all sexual identities and orientations. While it is reported to occur more frequently among male couples, about 10% of heterosexual couples are said to practice it regularly. There are many arguments for or against it, but the simple fact that it happened is the strongest argument for it. There is no reason to believe that it wouldn't happen. Genocide is one of humankind's hobbies... if you will. There was Pol Pot, Husein, Chechin?, and other examples like what the Europeans in general did to the new world. The Japanese have their history, as do many other countries on this planet. There are several really good examples in the South American continent.
In fact, I think if you read the book, the Jews may have been promises the 'promised land' but they committed genocide in the process of claiming it. Not to get on a rant, but genocide does seem to be rather common. There is no reason to think that the Germans weren't trying a bit of it on their own.
uhh dude you're a friggin idiot. my jewish grandmother wished i married a jew. she got over it. but she never wished we could kill all the single non-jew women because they weren't jewish. how do you equate the two, you stupid moron?
> ...it's their right to believe what they choose.
No. Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, not their own reality. You get to to have your own ideas about what facts mean but you don't get your own facts. 2+2=4 no matter how hard you believe otherwise.
Reality is that which doesn't change no matter how hard you wish it otherwise. The Holocost is objective reality. The fact the whole Middle East was on the Axis side is also objective reality. The fact they LOST WWII is objective reality. And in the end that last fact is the heart of the matter. Because if all three of the facts I just stated are reality their own worldview can't exist, so they collectively went into denial. Because it all comes down to their objection of the Western powers setting up Israel. Here in Reality winning WWII gave the victors the right to remake the defeated enemies territories including, granting Israel to the surviving Jews, splitting up Germany, tearing apart Japanese society and remaking it in our own image, etc.
The difference is we didn't occupy the Middle East and force their backwards asses into the 20th Century, mostly because before oil was discovered nobody cared enough. That was a mistake, but hindsight is always better than foresight. What is happening now with appeasing the crazies is obviously stupid to anyone outside government and the far left. If we won't stand up and defend the teaching of objective REALITY how is the West supposed to muster the courage to defend it's BELIEFS?
Democrat delenda est
I think you're inferring emotion, based upon your own preconceptions. Moderation is a numerical system. Things are not "violently" moderated. They might be "quickly" or "repeatedy" moderated. Can you show me an example of a post that mentions the holocaust or holocaust denial and which was not either completely offtopic, or an emotional appeal instead of a logical argument?
Now don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of discussion of the holocaust. My grandfather did not like to talk about the war, but he made a point of telling all of us kids that the deniers were full of crap because he saw the furnaces full of bones and the camps. For the most part, however, the topic is not pertinent to subjects being discussed on Slashdot and an impartial audience probably should mod them down, regardless of nationality.
The problem, here - and I know it's hard to investigate beyond the first couple of lines of summary - is that Britain's schools have had, since the times of Thatcher (who, while claiming to be pro-freedom, was really everything but), something called the "National Curriculum".
It's often considered a big list for special interest groups to lobby over to get their pet subject included. This topic must then be taught by all state schools (not private/home schools, thank goodness).
The problem is that when you force people to sit and learn something (or, from the teacher's POV, you force them to teach something), especially while you're banging the drum about the glorious freedoms and rights of your nation, you will make them resent you.
You see, the Holocaust was awful, but it was not the the only awful thing to happen in human history. If you say "OK, we're going to make the Holocaust compulsory for all kids to learn" but not, say, any number of other massacres/mistreatments in the name of race, power, politics or just plain bloodymindedness, you are implying, somehow, that the Holocaust was worse.
The concerned party then asks, "Why are you implying that the Holocaust was worse than [insert long list here]?" But there is no answer - how do you quantify "horrificness"? You can rank by number of deaths, but then Stalin's purges beat the Holocaust; you can rank by racism, but blacks have suffered in the past three centuries in greater numbers under slavery (and I wouldn't recommend considering slavery as "better" than death). You can rank by the extent to which government records (census data etc.) was used in massive quantities for the first time to oppress a group, but the amount of data that could be used against you was paltry compared to what is collected on every citizen today.
So, let the fair history teachers combine various examples to give a sufficient overview to schoolchildren. A teacher with a strong agenda/bias isn't going to teach better because the government forces him to cover particular topics - he's just going to rebel, as above.
Faith, obedience to God (or whatever the leader says that God meant, truth be told) and adherence to the group's internal norms are the only virtues. They hate a free, tolerant society for the very values and qualities that we love it for. But we can't very well shoot them all, because, well, that isn't very nice. But what do we do with them? They will continually try to co-opt, undermine, and degrade the freedom we care about.
And it isn't just freedom that suffers--intellectual integrity goes out the window as we try to accomodate them. Evolution is the foundation of modern biology, but how many teachers have to tiptoe around it, along with the age of the Earth and who knows how many other subjects, because they might "offend" a subset of the religious among them? And now we're editing one of the most central facts of the 20th century out of existence because of yet more religious fundamentalists. Fantastic.
For comparison, there are plenty of equally devistating topics that have never even been included in school curriculums, genocides all over the world, including in the US by the US army. If mearly dropping a topic out of history class is reason for such an uproar, then how much more stuff is out there to cry about because it was never included in the first place? And how long would history class have to be to include it all?
There is much more to consider than which side you are on concerning this one event.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
> If there's a strong anti-Semitic view in the mosques of England, I suppose there's nothing we can do about that.
Yes there is. No the government should not pass more useless asshattery like 'hate crimes' laws. No the government should not establish a commission to regulate the contents of religious teachings. Yes the rest of society can and should hold those mosques that teach evil and stupid things up to public inspection and yes even ridicule. They get away with what they do because everyone is afraid to even object, and that is BEFORE the worries that the 'Religion of Peace(tm)' will KILL you for offending their insensibilities. Yes we can and MUST expose the terrorist supporting portion of Islam within Western societies, put protesters outside their door, regular dosings of media exposes and long well researched and 100% factual newpaper and magazine articles, etc.
The second thing we can do is FORCE them to integrate into our society instead of this politically correct multiculturalism that teaches that anything that isn't Western is superior so we have no right to object, even when leftist loons are forced to defend 7th Century misogeny like honor killings, forced weddings and female genital mutilation. Step one, force imigrants to know the dominate language and customs before granting Citizenship. That gets em out of their media and cultural ghetto.
Democrat delenda est
Reform Jews have no problem with intermarriage. We just insist you raise the kids Jewish, which isn't that hard of a step (and it doesn't mean they have to end UP Jewish, but raisin' em so ain't asking much).
Let's be real. The "history" we learn is nothing more than the history we like to learn. That's always been so, and UK teachers just adapt to new circumstances with new pupils that won't like the old history. There are many facts that are either ignored or twisted to fit the needs of the political whim of the moment.
The Nazis were defeated mainly by the USSR, not by the USA, even if that's not what you learn. The Japanese _were_ defeated by the USA, but the way of doing it, killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of civilians in an atomic inferno is presented as rather the right thing to do, or, at the very least, as a great technical achievement. The holocaust is much remembered, and special laws passed to forbid the denial of the fact, but other much bigger killings go as footnotes in history books. Japanese don't teach about "comfort" women. The paper of England in the slave trade is usually hushed in the classrooms. Spain is indignant when Ben-Laden speaks about it being part of Al-Andalus, because in its history books, it's defined as a re-conquering, even if the people that re-conquered it had nothing to do with the people that lost it in the first place. France prefers not to speak too much about torture in Alger. Israelis will tell you that it's all right if they took the land from Palestinian people after WW2, because it "belonged" to them, somehow. I doubt they would return the land to some previous inhabitants of it, if the situation ever came up.
And so on. There is not such thing as "objective" history, and those teachers are just recognizing it. After all, we must remember that George Orwell, who came up with the idea of automatic history rewriting, was British.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
>>Doesn't have to be a large majority. Just a vocal minority that causes the problems.
Yes, and all the members of Jeffry Dahmer's first-grade class grew up to be law-abiding, upstanding citizens, except for one. Yet there were still many dead victims. What's your point? This line about the "minority" of violent muslims doesn't mean a damned thing, so long as that minority has 1) influence and 2) the ability to project power, which I argue it does.
>>There are a lot of peace-loving muslims around the world.
So simply going by the numbers, if only a percentage or two of Muslims worldwide are violent that means there are A LOT, tens of millions(!), of hate-filled Muslims worldwide, ready to erupt into violence. And they do, although you may have to dig deep into the news to find the stories. You see, all but one of the 21 "hot" wars in the world involve Islam as one of the parties. Bet you didn't know that.
You see, the problem is a culture fueled by religious extremism and fanaticism. The Koran is an instruction manual for waging war and spreading influence. (No, that's not slanderous or "flamebait" -- go read the damned book and see for yourself. Sura after Sura specifies precisely how violence should be applied to spread Islam. You are either in the House Of Islam, or the House of War. There is no other option. And, you should know, all those Suras which are oft-quoted and preach peace with the Infidel, are "overridden" by later Suras which specify violence.
And, before you go quoting sections of the Christian bible (Old Testament) which proscribe stonings or other violent actions, be aware it's not a fair comparison. You see, there are no Christians ACTUALLY PERFORMING THESE ACTS. Christianity went through The Reformation, wherein it shrugged off many of these proclamations as archaic and incompatible with modernity. Islam has had no such event.
I posted this a few days ago, may as well repost it ..
The usual pro-confederacy arguments are that they were fighting for states' rights and not for slavery. These are both patently false.
The southern states were the ones arguing for federal supremacy over states. They wanted the federal government to enforce slavery laws in free states. They argued that a slave owner should retain ownership of those slaves while traveling in free states, and that slaves who escaped to free states should be returned to their owners. Hardly a states rights position!
The war of 1812 was a disaster, economically, for the New England states which depended so heavily on trade. They spent three years getting up the nerve to send a delegation to Washington to bring up the subject of secession, but the war ended before they could do anything. The southern states were the most vocal in condemning secession as treason. How interesting that when their ox was being gored, they acted immediately, not even trying to negotiate with the federal government. So much for honor!
As for economics, which is the usual neo-confedrate blame for northern aggression, it was slavery which put the south at a disadvantage, in that it made labor so cheap that industrialization was too expensive. It really hurt the small farmers who had to do their own labor. I have never understood why poor whites, then or now, backed the slavery system which kept them in poverty. No self-employed man can compete with slaves. The expense of overseers doesn't come close to compensating for the cheap maintenance (crowded crappy housing, no elders to take care of) of slaves.
It was a war for the rich white southerners. Nobody else would have benefited from secession.
Infuriate left and right
Tyranny isn't the worst enemy of a democracy. Cynicism is.
And it won't be for years, and probably never will, because whether people want to openly admit it or not... Arabs are considered animals and there blood is not as valuable as Jewish or Western blood.
The Gypsies were persecuted with as much fervor as the Jews. According to Wikipedia, 500k to 1m died. While it's not as large a gross number, proportionately, it's just as high if not higher. Interestingly, the Roma were the original Aryans who had traveled rather than staying in Germany. So the Nazis, in a rare show of coherency, only allowed part-gypsies to be exterminated but allowed full-blood Roma regular status. Later, it was argued that no one could have not become corrupted and the Roma were uniformly exterminated.
If they weren't victimized as systematically, why so much official propaganda and policies on the subject? See Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porajmos
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
How about all fricking three? Of course if they teach about the "israeli colonial oppression" they better damn well have a documentary on Sderot and how the cease-fires are anything but on the paleoswinian side and how israel is mysteriously the only on ever to "break" the cease fire.
http://www.mhall119.com
I'm not really sure how you can say that objectively, I'm a non-republican/non-democrat who regularly watches fox news just because I find the way that they present things somewhat genius, it's kind of like watching Goebbels in action. A good example of their 'slant' is in how they reported the story about the kid who planned on bringing bombs to Falwell's funeral. What I saw on Fox news was that a college student has been arrested after he was caught with bombs in his car, that he intended to bring to Falwell's funeral. With that and other coverage of Falwell's passing it implied that the guy was some left-wing nut who wanted to bomb his funeral, when in actuality the kid was a student of Falwell's university and intended to bring the bombs to 'keep protestors from disturbing the funeral', which makes him a right-wing nut who is obviously totally out of touch with reality. Stuff like that, which an omission of a couple words completely changes the story, puts an incredible slant and spin on the story and honestly borders on outright disinformation.
Honestly, I think if you paid a little closer attention to what they report, how they report it and what they don't report I think you would find their slant pretty incredible, and as I said, their tactics somewhat genius.
Ah yes gratious guests.
These are Palestenian REFUGEES. And where are they refugees from?
There own homes
50 years ago those people were kicked out of there homes and forced to leave. They have no identity, no home. They aren't citizens of Lebanon.
To put this in perspective how would you feel if someone kicked you out of your home with all of your neighbors and you had no place to go but a neighboring country. You and your neighbors and family members have no home no identity no citezenship and have to live in slum camps for 50 years.
You may not rob a bank, or blow up a building, but your grandson might.
I am Lebanese, and while I understand that you might not be as educated about these issues as I am, or for that matter even care, but I want you to realize that this is a SERIOUS problem, and it is only getting worse with ignorance and neglect. I'm not trying to start a flamewar, but I believe that ALL people deserve basic human rights.
...Something about history... Doomed to repeat...I don't know.
Finding other idiots on
You can criticize the west as much as you want... But things are much better in the west than in many non-western countries. And, no, these countries aren't fighting each other since centuries because of the U.S. (this coming from a non-american, non-native english speaker).
For a start, don't even dare to call me "racist": I won't criticize a single race in my post (nor would I ever criticize a single race). This is not a rant about a particular race. It is, however, a rant against a particular view of one monotheist religion. The west shall never bow before a religion that considers women to be inferior beings. The west shall never bow before a religion that considers gay people inferior beings (if you think that it's bad to be gay in the U.S. then cite me one San Fransisco like city in a country populated with a majority of extremist muslims). The west shall never bow before extremists that claim that it is righteous to kill non-believers.
Muslims living in the west better adapt to western principles for western principles will never allow islam's principles to rule the west.
One of the biggest problems the muslims faces is that their religion is quite recent compared to the two other major monoteist religions. There's only one historical reality and it is clear that Jerusalem's history doesn't belong to the muslims. Heck, the historical reality of what happened in Jerusalem predates islam by more than one millenium and a half. They know that very well and it pisses them off in a way you can't imagine.
Once you realize that you understand why the muslims have always hated the jews so much.
The time where we tolerate intolerance is coming to a halt. The recently elected french president made it clear in its campaign that if you want to come live in France you'd better learn and adapt to the western civilization. Barbarism has no place here. Jews hatred has no place here. Turkey is now in wild turmoil due to islamists taking over power. France is now against Turkey joining Europe. People in the western world simply do not want to be ruled by extremists muslims. And they never will. The americas will never turn to a majority of muslims. Russia neither. China neither. Europe and the UK are now waking up.
Recently in germany a judge tried to free some man who beated his wife for "it was normal in his religion". Major fiasco. Overruled. In the UK the parliament will vote law to make teaching of history mandatory wether it displeases some people's little fantasical beliefs or not.
So if islam's views are incompatible with the west muslims living in the west better adapt their islam... For it's not the west that is going to adapt. There's no place for extremists here. Note that apparently there's no much place in Turkey neither, nor in Lebanon (where the regular is fighting extremists as I type this).
No I'm not a woman, no I'm not gay and, no, I'm not a jew. But, yes, members of my family died fighting nazis exterminating jews and gypsies and, yes, if it comes to that, I'll fight to protect women's right, gay people's right, gypsies's right and jews' right.
There's no future for religious extremists. And they know it, which pisses them off even more.
There's nothing like a rabid racist lunatic trying to justify himself in this manner.
The mass murder of the large bulk of European Jewry, which happened during the lifetime of many people still living, is of tantamount importance if you take the teaching of history to be an exercise in educating us as to deeds done and how they can be avoided.
For instance, blaming everything on Zionists was precisely the kind of monstrous ideology that allowed the Nazis to kill so many Jews. By recreating a group of individuals into some sort of dark shadow cult out to take over the world, the Nazis were able to more easily demonize Jews. It's sad that there are still evil little monsters like yourself so happy to ape the discredited notions of Nazi anti-semitism. You do, through your hate, make it clear that teaching about the Holocaust is still of the utmost importance.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I know I'm making a mistake attempting to have a rational discussion of this on the internet, but here goes.
The most prominent primary target of the Nazi's killing spree was indeed the Jewish people, and their story of systematic, legitimized oppression, and how the general German populace went along with it by degrees is the most harrowing. It teaches us that when you start institutionally marginalizing a people or class of persons, even if only slightly at first, you go down a road which may lead to something truly horrific.
That having been said, the current state of holocaust education effectively denies the deaths of the millions of non-Jews by focusing exclusively on the deaths of the Jews. It invalidates their suffering. You yourself implicitly said it was unimportant. And thus, people grow up thinking that genocide is some kind of rare thing which confines itself to one people at a time, and not only is this not correct, but the message is injured. Think I'm wrong? Ask an average American high school kid about Darfur, or the Armenians, or the purges in the Soviet Union, or Cambodia.
I would rather teach kids that if they start letting intolerance into their hearts, not only is it going to be the people of x super-vilified minority who go against the wall, it's going to be your little sister with a bum leg, your evangelical uncle, the sad beggars in downtown, those two boys holding hands, anyone who voices a dissident opinion, and everyone you know who's not white, brown, yellow, or whatever the uber-race is supposed to be.
There is a difference between Judaism and Zionism. If you don't realize this, you're part of the problem.
There are legitimate complaints about the very concept of Zionism (the argument that Jews should immigrate to the Middle East to form a homeland, even if it means displacing the locals).
There is a legitimate argument to be made that Zionism has, quite contrary to its intent, encouraged a new round of antisemitism and made the world less safe for the Jewish people, not more safe.
There are legitimate complaints to be made about how the Israeli government is currently running its foreign policy.
By treating anyone who has any problem with the concept of Zionism or the policies of the state of Israel as being inherently anti-semitic, you're part of the problem, just like those who deny the Holocaust are part of the problem from the other side.
GIVE US THE CUTTLEFISH!
That should not be assumed here. If I don't know all the facts of a political story for sure, and read it in a newspaper with a known reputation for right-wing bias and pandering to its readership to sell papers, I'm quite entitled to be sceptical. Is the message false? who knows but instead of trying to figure it out you assault the messenger. Example: If Hitler said 3+5 is 8, you would say its WRONG because HITLER said it. No, I wouldn't, because I know for a fact that 3 + 5 = 8. Your suggestion that I would is a blatant misrepresentation of my position.
Please read this comment of mine, which you'll note was posted almost 90 minutes before your comment. Salient points emphasised (here) in bold:- I wouldn't dismiss this issue altogether simply because it came from the Daily Mail; if their slant on it could be taken at face value I would consider it cause for serious concern. Unfortunately, the Mail in itself is not trustworthy; I prefer to read these things via a less potentially biased source before passing judgement. Next, you say We need a serious look at Logical Thinking in this country. Its a major reason why we are splitting apart in the country that people like Sean Hannity uses Logical Fallacies all the time. If that was supposed to be an attack on me, it's irrelevant, because I don't come from "this" country (i.e. the U.S., where Hannity apparently lives and works).
And, as I made clear, my message was *not* an "ad hominem" attack against the facts. It's a valid questioning as to whether the facts as presented are accurate. Since you misinterpreted it as such, it may be true that *you* need to look at logical thinking in *your* country- starting with yourself. As to the Daily mail, they may do all the things you state and that just means you have to get more to get to the truth but it does not mean its false or even their SLANT on it is false either. No, but since I don't know whether it is or isn't true and/or unbiased, it means I do have a right to be sceptical.
This isn't denying that 3 + 5 = 8. At best we know that the right-hand side is 8, but we aren't sure what the two numbers on the left are. Am I going to take the word of someone with a vested interest in 3s and 5s? Am I heck! They might be 4 + 4, or 6 + 1, or whatever... I am rather conservative myself but its more harmful to lie using logical mindtricks than to just face the truths. And- as demonstrated by my explanation and the linked comment above- I did no such thing.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Fixed with a reminder: Allowing someone to practice their beliefs is good.
That's not always true. Consider Koran 4:34, for instance:
"Men are meant to be righteous and kind guardians of women because God has favored some more than others and because they [men] spend out of their wealth. In their turn righteous women are meant to be devoted and to guard what God has willed to be guarded even though out of sight of the husband. As for those women on whose part you fear ill-will and nasty conduct, admonish them first, next separate them in beds and last beat them. But if they obey you, then seek nothing against them. Behold, God is most high and great."
Should we allow a muslim man to practice his belief that men are allowed to beat women who do not obey?
What is more important: protecting others' freedom of religion, or protecting women's right to life?
By the way, many millions of Muslim women, in addition to being humiliated by being forced to veil themselves, are beaten by their husbands. It is all completely justified by the Koran. Sad is the plight of the Muslim woman who lives at the mercy of a cruel and misogynistic religion.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
A new round of antisemitism? What fucking planet do you live on? Would you care to point out a gap between the "old" antisemitism and the "new" antisemitism? Antizionism is, much of the time, merely antisemitism attempting to be respectable. The "antizionist" propaganda coming from the left wingers is identical to that of the skinheads and neo-nazis, and pretty much looks exactly the same as what was produced by Goebbels.
A new round of antisemitism?
The difference being the people involved. The old antisemitics largely had no evidence other than racism. Antizionists on the other hand have friends and family, or themselves, who have been kicked out of their homes and regulated to ghetto life in the West Bank, Golan Heights, or the Gaza Strip. Some of them aren't even Muslims, but Christians- it's amazing the zionist racism that has gone on in Bethleham of all places.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
It's a whole network being told to steer the straight and narrow and not let their own personal biases muddle the story vs. the titular *head* of a network, their primary and most respected spokesman/reporter, who gets 30 minutes each evening to spread his own personal view of the world.
Oh, that's bloody hilarious! Forcing your network to try and sell the American public on things like the Iraq War is "steering the straight and narrow and not letting their own personal biases muddle the story", while a journalist who gets 30 minutes a day, who was *forced out* for getting a single story wrong, is the "titular head of the network", controlling all of its content.
Get me some of whatever you're smoking. It must be good stuff.
GIVE US THE CUTTLEFISH!
Actually, I'd like to invite you to a challenge.
On Monday evening a Qassam missile fell in Sderot, killing a woman. Please, find me one single headline, in any non-Israeli newspaper, that mentioned this.
What part of Murdoch's statement that they tried to shape the agenda on the war on Iraq, supported Bush's policies, and criticized it in cases where wasn't carried out the way they wanted, wasn't clear to you? After all, this is the *publicly admitted statements* of the *network's chair* that we're talking about, versus a single reporter (that you seem to be obsessed with, granting him silly powers to boot) who was fired when he got a story critical of Bush wrong (and yes, that case *was* "fake but accurate"; here's a nice summary of the available evidence; it's been hotly fought back and forth between both sides for years, so you'll find ample references from all sides)
GIVE US THE CUTTLEFISH!
on various forms of ad hominen fallacies.
All of the various forms of ad hominem fallacies are fallacies of distraction. So if the Daily Mail says "Muslim girls should not be allowed to wear head scarves," it would be a distraction to reply, "Well, that's just a hate mongering, right wing rag." Because the hate mongering, right wing nature of the Daily Mail has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue of whether muslim girls should, or should not wear the hejab.
On the other hand, if we are evaluating the credibilty of a factual assertion made by the Daily Mail, the character of that source is in fact relevant. If the source has a demonstrable bias, or as in this case a stated intention to present information in a biased manner, then this is highly relevant to the question.
So, to sum up:
(1) It is invalid thinking to dismiss a conclusion based on the character of some person holding it, but
(2) It is prefectly valid to question facts or evidence cited by a source with a known bias.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Well, Palestine was used as a geographic name for what's now Israel (and some of the surrounding area) for most of the 20th Century prior to Israel's creation. I would agree that its use as a cultural or ethnic title is rather new, but people living in the area under the British Mandate of Palestine prior to 1948 had some legitimate cause to call themselves Palestinians and to be less than thrilled that all these Jews were coming to the area following WWII. Note I'm not defending how many decided to express their displeasure (violence) just saying I can understand why they didn't want this population influx. (This is ignoring any antisemitism on top of that, an attitude I would obviously disagree with.)
I also want to point out that the original UN partition plan split both the Jewish the Arab states into two parts (almost three). See the map and more info on the partion plan at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_UN_Partition_Pl
While I completely agree that sitting back down at the negotiating table would have been the better choice than launching a war, and it's entirely possible the Arab nations would have launched a war no matter what, Arabs did have good cause to be unhappy with the UN's decision. With the exception of keeping Jerusalem as a UN-controlled city, which I think would have been a fantastic decision, the original UN plan seems rather shortsighted in its devision of territory.
There is something to that which I think we can both agree on. However, I would argue that Israel hasn't been completely without wrongdoing - I think nothing will get accomplished until A) the Arabs concede Israel does want peace (as you said) and B) the Israel concedes that Palestinians do have legitimate issues with how the creation of Israel was handled 60 years ago and how it has conducted itself since (which it sounds like you might disagree with).
I am not trying to say which side is 'worse' or excuse the suicide bombing (or any violent act). All I'm saying is that each side, from their point of view has solid reasons for saying the other side "started it first" and that neither of those points of view are completely without merit.
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.
-Trillian
Herzl actually never made any assertions that Jews had to establish a homeland in the middle east. When he first discussed the idea of a Jewish homeland, in a pamphlet (if recollection serves, it was "The Jewish Sate"), he was thinking about South America (thought it was Argentina, but I could be wrong), and that the land should be purchased, legitimately, so that no assertions of thievery could be made.
The problem is that in the early part of the 20th century, a number of movements (some linked with socialism) adopted Herzl's zionism as the cause for the re-establishment of the biblical Jewish homeland in what was then called Palestine. There's a bunch of Jewish theological commentaries and arguments about the notion of returning to the holy land, and some traditions in burial and at passover time to symbolically create the link to the biblical homeland. Different Jewish sects see the call to return to the biblical homeland differently, and have different traditions for it. These differences are the sources of endless, bitter controversy among the worldwide Jewish community
What gets lost on the enemies of zionism as we know it today (and you sum it up pretty well, even though you distort it a little bit with the "displacement" assertion), is that the Jewish people are, and have almost always been, a people of the diaspora -- without a religious home. The people that come to Israel (planeloads every day), come because they are shunned and persecuted where they lived elsewhere in the world, for the most part. Sure, there are spiritual zionists that come not to flee persecution but to fulfill the spiritual mission of returning to the holy land, but for the most part, these spiritual zionists do not come to stay in Israel for the rest of their lives. Some do come to stay, though.
As to "displacement"... when Great Britain ceded Palestine to become the Jewish state of Israel, the Arab and Palestinian inhabitants were pretty much glad to be rid of the British, and there have always been Jewish communities in Palestine, so Israel wasn't seen so much as a threat. It was cautious, and even skeptical, optimism on their part that allowed the state to be created. The Jewish government in Israel didn't do a very good job of making good on their promise to include Palestinian tribes and ethnic groups as they took the reins of power. The "displacement" that is at the core of many Palestinian complaints came as a result of the 6 day war, when Palestinians in Israel and what are now the occupied territories deserted their lands and fled as they saw Nasser's armies (and Syria's and Jordan's) poised to sweep though Israel. The Israeli army occupied all the lands that Syria and Jordan and Egypt had been using to threaten Israel.
Honestly, I understand the Israeli perspective -- that is, if the people who threaten you either flee their lands when you attack or host foreign armies to threaten you, they lose their land. That's it. No give-backs. If a people does not have the courage to stay and fight for their land, then the land must not mean much to them. At the same time, I think that Palestinians got a really sucky deal from Israel from the time it was created. Sure, the rhetoric at the time was "we can all live together peacefully", but the practice of Israeli rule really gave Palestinians the short shrift -- they didn't get the same level of access to government services & contracting opportunities, the courts were stacked against them, water rights were not honored, and the Israeli army defended the taking of land by Israeli settlers when they should not have.
Personally, as a Jew, I hope one day to visit Israel before I die. At the same time, I've met a lot of Arabs and Muslims and Druse who have a mixed story to tell of their time in Israel and of being second-class citizens, not very much unlike black folks here in the states, and I have great sympathy for that. I've never been a fan of the occupation, but I also see the unilateral pullout from Gaza as having been a disaster. The war
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
Calling people names will never do anything to advance your argument. Furthermore, your view of history is clearly unbalanced. There is evidence that Palestinian Arabs were driven from their homes (and also evidence that many left of their own accord). Your statement "They left of their own accord because they couldn't stand the thought of living in a Jewish state" implies that 100% of the Palestinian population left for racist reasons rather than, for example, to ensure the security of their families. That sort of blanket statement does nothing to improve the quality of a debate.
Don't you hate meta-sigs?
Does the Mossad break down their doors if they do?
You know, from what I've heard, if you are a non-Jewish semite living in Israel, yes you can expect Mossad to break down your doors for pretty much anything at all.
I've known many Israelis who talk in a way that I'd have expected from some fanatical blonde, blue-eyed member of a certain self-declared 'master race' from Germany of the 1930s/40s. Seriously.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.