Dear Friends,
If there is one thing you learn being a child of Holocaust survivors, it is that no matter how much you try to put yourself in their shoes, you just can’t. It is with that knowledge and awareness that I write this letter to you, those survivors that are condemning Israel over its actions towards the Palestinian people. Despite the shock your comments and sentiments have caused to so many of us, (CLICK HERE TO READ STATEMENT) out of the respect I have for what you went through I have chosen to write this letter as more of a plea for you to come to your senses than a criticism of your actions. I will make it a given that your intentions are pure, even if I and many more like me believe they are misguided.
No one who survived the horrors of Nazi Germany needs a lesson from me or from anyone else of my generation as to the actions committed during what is one of the blackest mark in the history of humankind. Having spoken often to my parents, my father of blessed memory and my mother who is, thank God still alive and well, I have as good of an understanding as I can in my position, as to what took place. I know that Hitler hated the Jews from the start. Targeted them, scapegoated them, dehumanized them, and ultimately murdered them in massive and devastating numbers. He made the elimination of the Jewish race more than just an emotional cause, he made it a government sanctioned law. Even before the mass murdering started, he left no doubt that he wanted Jews to be no part of society, not only in Germany but everywhere his Nazi party occupied. As is so clearly stated in the definition of Genocide, once he managed to rally the support of a desperate German nation behind him, Hitler specifically targeted the Jews in a deliberate and systematic attempt to exterminate the Jewish people. I will spend the next paragraph outlining the similarities between what Nazi Germany did to the Jews and what Israel is doing to the Palestinians.
It will be a very short paragraph. THERE ARE NO SIMILARITIES!
As I previously stated, this is more than a letter to all of you. This is a plea. I am practically begging you to come to your collective senses. Israel has not been perfect in its treatment of Palestinians, but it’s not only done more for them than many other nations do for a minority population, it’s done more for them than any Muslim nation in the world has done.
Please read the Hamas charter. It calls for the elimination of Jews from Israel and the murder of Jews worldwide. With that in mind I ask you this question. Had there been a Jewish army in 1943 or 1944 would it have been wrong for that army to bomb Berlin, even if in targeting official government locations it would have killed German women and children?
I appreciate and agree that dead women and children dying in war is always a tragedy. I just urge you to realize that the deaths are not always the fault of the ones dropping the bombs.
In the name of God and all that is good and decent I ask all of you to stop this madness. The last line of your statement may be the most important one in that it references the phrase “Never Again”. I agree that “Never Again” means NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE, but it also means that sometimes actions, often harsh and painful actions, need to be taken to back up that phrase.
Sincerely,
David Groen
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August 25th, 2014 at 1:34 pm
No similarities?
I could perfectly understand a discussion of the several differences, but I don’t think anybody really fails to see any similarities at all.
August 25th, 2014 at 3:38 pm
If it was genocide that Israel was perpetrating Gaza wouldn’t exist.
On the reckoning of some, all war is equivalent. It is not. The Allies were not fighting the same war the Nazis were.
And the death of Palestinian child is not the same to the vast swathe of Israelis that the death of an Israeli child is to the Palestinian Arabs.
There is simply no equivalency in policy, nor in operation.
August 25th, 2014 at 3:40 pm
I don’t often get involved in comments to my posts but that last line was just brilliant Shir. “There is simply no equivalency in policy, nor in operation.”
August 28th, 2014 at 4:16 pm
dont this idiots realize that if Israel would fall, all these bleeding heart liberal jews would be put back intto the ovens again