how do you spend your days.

[yourmammasdream]

I am, lately, horrified by what I don't know, and what I know now that I never did before. I am passionate, because despite my having said it before, I am aware now of why Holocaust education needs to be revised in the coming years. How, for G-d's sake, can we teach it without talking about Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Darfur? How many names do I not

Comments

[sheyvah]

My experience is that people only talk about genocide when they want to make themselves feel better. So we can talk about the Holocaust because then Americans can feel good about WWII and so Europeans can feel good when they do things that are anti-Israel. We know about Rwanda because of how embarassing it was to the UN. The problem with Darfur is that there's nothing really that anyone can do since Sudan is a huge oil provider to certain parties with veto power at the UN (*cough*RussiaandChina*cough*) and America is already overextended.

As for the other ones, we can just ignore them because they happen in unimportant countries, like Burma. We can ignore North Korea because their problems are the fault of their government, we already have economic sanctions on them, and there's no way anyone could actually enter to help the people there.

By the way, a comment from my cousin about the Darfur rally in DC. "Everywhere I looked, everyone was Jewish."

[sheyvah]

How does talking about the Holocaust make Europeans feel good when they do something anti-Israel. Did you mean pro-Israel?

My experience in studying genocide is significantly different than yours. In studying the Armenian Genocide, for example, I learned that what is most wanted by the Armenian diaspora is recognition that a genocide took place and a return to their country. Armenia, as it stands now, is not historical Armenia, or it's a small rather insignificant piece of it. Historical Armenia is actually in present day Turkey.

Re: sorry

[sheyvah]

already responded to the other one. :)

[sheyvah]

I do mean anti-Israel. By talking about the Holocaust, Europeans can downplay their own anti-Semitic histories and also claim that all the anti-Jewish things they did during the Holocaust were all because of the Germans. Furthermore, by projecting Holocaust imagery on Israel, Europe back-justifies discrimination of and violence against Jews. It is no surprise to me that periods of tension in Israel correspond to increased violence against Jews, vandalism of Jewish sites, and use of slurs against Jews in continental Europe. It should also be mentioned that the on continental country with strong ties to Israel is German itself. It's like that brothers Grimm story where the wanderer uses magic to beat up a random Jew and steal his money; it's okay because the Jew wasn't a good person anyway.

As for the Armenian Genocide, everything I know about it I learned either in Israel or in one class on the Middle East at school. So, I don't think that that's a prime example of the success of genocide awareness.