Former White House aide Sarah Hurwitz, who served as a senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama, warned this week that Holocaust education was “confusing” young people into sympathizing with “weak, skinny Palestinians” instead of “powerful Israelis.”
She continued:
"You have TikTok just smashing our young people’s brains all day long with video of carnage in Gaza, and this is why so many of us can’t have a sane conversation with younger Jews, because anything that we try to say to them, they’re hearing it through this wall of carnage. So I want to give data and information and facts and arguments, and they’re just seeing in their minds carnage, and I sound obscene."
And you know, I think, unfortunately, the very smart bet that we made on Holocaust education to serve as anti-Semitism education, in this new media environment, I think that is beginning to break down a little bit because, you know, Holocaust education is absolutely essential, but I think it may be confusing some of our young people about anti-Semitism, because they learn about big, strong Nazis hurting weak, emaciated Jews and then they think, “Oh, anti-Semitism is like anti-black racism, right? Powerful white people against powerless black people.” So, when on TikTok all day long they see powerful Israelis hurting weak, skinny Palestinians, it’s not surprising that they think, “Oh I know, the lesson of the Holocaust is you fight Israel. You fight the big powerful people hurting the weak people.”
98 Comments
grte@lemmy.ca · 283 pts · 266d
Yes, that's the lesson of the Holocaust. If in your mind the lesson of the Holocaust is that Israel gets one free genocide, you are fucking psychotic.
Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works · 79 pts · 266d
The fact that those words came out of her mouth and she didn't immediately stop and go "Oh, fuck, I'm the bad guy here" is completely insane. How cooked does your brain have to be for you to even be able to say something like that in the first place?
morrowind@lemmy.ml · 23 pts · 266d
It's pretty clear she's gotten past this contradiction long ago.
So the answer is fried into a crisp
xenomor@lemmy.world · 25 pts · 266d
I’m sure these ghouls don’t think the hall pass is limited to just one genocide.
xyzzy@lemmy.today · 21 pts · 266d
Draegur@lemmy.zip · 16 pts · 266d
Oh yeah that makes sense--you see, if a crime is done to you, you're ALLOWED to do it to others yourself forever! It's EXACTLY like how people who were victims of trafficking and molestation when they were children get a free pass to rape all the kids they could ever want to for the rest of their lives, right? /s
Draegur@lemmy.zip · 16 pts · 266d
PRECISELY!
Israel, of all factions, should know better than anyone:
INFLICTING
A
HOLOCAUST
IS,
um, *checks notes*
BAD,
ACTUALLY.
diverging@piefed.social · 11 pts · 266d
No, you're still not getting it. She's saying that Jews that are the master race, so they get to do as many genocides as they want.
falseWhite@lemmy.world · 159 pts · 266d
wheezy@lemmy.ml · 25 pts · 266d
Like, this is fundamentally the basic plot of one most famous and watched movies of all time.
Star Wars: weak impoverished kid has his family slaughtered by the unstoppable Empire. Finds power in his faith and a "terrorist" resistance group to overcome their impossible power.
And yes. I know star wars was written as the Rebels representing the VeitCong. Almost like imperialism and genocide are on the wrong side of history.
Linktank@lemmy.today · 137 pts · 266d
What the fuck is wrong with this person?
phutatorius@lemmy.zip · 49 pts · 266d
The worst kind of Zionism.
wheezy@lemmy.ml · 16 pts · 266d
They're a Nazi. Only difference is the flag and which group is considered superior. Literally everything else is the same.
DaMummy@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 266d
She's a moral, religious person. That's what.
monkeyman69@lemmynsfw.com · 41 pts · 266d
You got an extra space in the word amoral.
lilas105@ttrpg.network · 8 pts · 266d
These are the people who make sure we never outlaw routine neonatal circumcision.
Draegur@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 266d
Call it what it really is:
Ritualistic child mutilation.
Ethalis@jlai.lu · 88 pts · 266d
You know, I can somewhat understand how some people that have been exposed to Israeli propaganda can think Israel isn't in the wrong. I don't excuse it, mind you, because all the evidence is right here to disprove it if they bothered to check, but ultimately it just shows how effective propaganda can be in the information age.
What I can't wrap my mind around is how a seemingly smart person can say they saw all the evidence, talk about the "carnage" going on and how "powerful people are hurting the weak", and still come to the conclusion that the real victims are those same powerful people responsible for the carnage. I really can't understand what must happen in someone's brain to be like that
jeansburger@piefed.world · 38 pts · 266d
I don't know what other jew's Jewish education looked like and what they took away from it, but clearly I somehow got a completely different message from all of it.
When I was told "Never again" it meant never again for anybody. Like we should be the first ones to decry against any genocide anywhere because it was done against us.
So seeing what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians is so grotesque to me. They don't speak for me and yet they do these horrible things supposedly in my name.
The irony was that I did buy most of the Hasbara up until I went on Birthright (this is a fully paid trip that diaspora Jews can go to Israel to build the connection with it). When I was there my own tour guide (the person paid to propagandize us) said that they want the fighting to stop, they want to stop everyone from having their children to die pointlessly. Literally after that the spell broke. It became so easy to see the Hasbara and how it is causing problems.
Like you want the fighting to end then make it so. Stop terrorizing the Palestinians and stop the apartheid, let them reside on the land they have lived in for centuries and coexist. You only make them your enemy by grinding them beneath your boot. The land Israel is made from doesn't belong to one people, it has a rich history where all of them have descended from. Israel isn't just for the Jewish people, Muslims, Christians, and others also have claims to that land (fucking hell it's the same deity for the first three and you're all kinda just blending shit together anyways).
I feel like I didn't have some magical education that taught me differently, I guess I just took what they meant at their word and applied the concepts to the modern world (like we were fucking taught to do). For a people who pride themselves on being educated it feels like people memorized a lot of stuff and didn't actually process it or question it (again like you're fucking supposed to).
Sorry for the rant but seeing people who are fairly left leaning (US standards) become bloodthirsty ghouls the moment Palestinians are brought up like a fucking light switch has been really bothering me. I feel like I'm somehow in the wrong because everyone else has gone literally insane.
Ethalis@jlai.lu · 17 pts · 266d
My father was an Arab muslim, and was involved in the fight for Palestinian rights for as a long as I can remember, until he died of cancer a few months before the October 7th attacks. I never really thought much about his activism and was never curious enough to ask him questions about what he was actually doing.
When he was on his death bed at the hospital and I was staying with him, we got visited by members of his town's Jewish community. They told me he was a great guy, and that throughout his years as an activist for Palestinian rights he has always strived to build bridges between Muslim and Jewish communities and always made it clear that the palestine-israel conflict shouldn't be an excuse to antisemitism or islamophobia. They also told me he took part in a humanitarian trip in Palestine with them, as a translator, and was instrumental in bridging the gap between them and their Palestinian contacts. I never knew he did all that and it really made me proud.
What sometimes still keeps me up at night is to think that, should he have lived to see the current events, he would probably have been called a raging antisemite by the assholes we see all over the media.
NABDad@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 266d
Clearly some folks took "never again" to mean, "Never again will Jews be the victims of genocide. They'll be the perpetrators instead!"
geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml · 37 pts · 266d
Hasbara starts from the position of Israel genociding Palestinians, and then explaining why it's actually okay because Israelis are the real victims. When you haven't been indoctrinated with this kind of propaganda your whole life it sounds kind of weird and Nazi like, but for Israelis it makes perfect sense.
For example have you ever considered that Palestinians toddlers are subhuman terrorists and Israelis are the Ubermensch? It's a very convincing argument.
TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today · 18 pts · 266d
Yeah, the duality of pretending to be a state who cares about stopping discrimination is clashing with decades of supporting organizations that just so happen to be run by literally Nazis.
The National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism is breaking ties with the heritage foundation over the whole Tucker Carlson Nick Fuentes interview. Like....it took Nick Fuentes to alert you that the Heritage Foundation was a bunch of neo Nazi, not all the Nazi shit you've been doing together?
Of course during the interview the leader of the NTFC said they were still primarily focused on the antisemitism in the "Left", but we're now going to shift some attention to this new development of antisemitism on the alt right.
chunkystyles@sopuli.xyz · 11 pts · 266d
It makes sense when you realize she doesn't see Palestinians as humans.
Draegur@lemmy.zip · 77 pts · 266d
We know that we're looking at: a Holocaust.
That's literally what's actually fucking happening.
Palestine is experiencing a Holocaust.
And the fascist state of Israel is inflicting it.
So yeah. Holocaust education worked.
ameancow@lemmy.world · 50 pts · 266d
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 265d
Dammit I gotta go back to my elementary education. What did I learn there?
Fuck.
ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online · 9 pts · 265d
Also zionism predates nazism.
Draegur@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 265d
ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online · 4 pts · 265d
The crusades and modern zionism have nothing to do with one another.
SGGeorwell@lemmy.world · 64 pts · 266d
No one dishonors the holocaust victims like the very lucky descendants of its survivors. This is saddest irony I can think of.
bitjunkie@lemmy.world · 54 pts · 265d
Perhaps the similarity is apparent because
ISRAEL IS COMMITTING A FUCKING HOLOCAUST
peopleproblems@lemmy.world · 48 pts · 266d
Ok. So. Is there something wrong with me that ever since I learned about the Palestinian genocide in the late 2000's my mind went immediately to "uh, what the fuck, why are we supporting this?"
I've always thought "well of course Palestinians are going to support Hamas. Hamas is actually doing something.
Is it empathy? Or is it autism that makes me more resistant to propaganda? Or is it simply that I have an above average means to change my mind in light of new information and most humans lack it?
Baggie@lemmy.zip · 18 pts · 266d
So I've heard from a few places that being neurodivergent does give you somewhat resistance from propaganda because you're already used to having to think through a bunch of shit without being able to rely on group think, etc.
But also, basic fucking empathy does kind of kick in really hard. The propaganda isn't even that good besides, it's just a bunch of idiots saying "NO THE DEAD CHILDREN WERE EVIL".
RubberElectrons@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 266d
Supposedly neuros are more sensitive to being just and fair as well.
I've been on the receiving end of some bullshit when I was young, and really don't like seeing that kinda nonsense happen to others if it's undeserved.
yeahiknow3@lemmings.world · 5 pts · 266d
This is actually backwards. Autism undermines the ability to evaluate intentions, which vitiates moral reasoning. Fascinating research into how different brain regions contribute to ethical intuition. Here are some relevant lecture slides from MIT.
And now consider,
The correct answer to the first scenario is something like 6 out of 7, and the correct answer to the second is 1 out of 7. People with ASD answer low (2 or 3 out of 7) for both, focusing exclusively on outcomes.
peopleproblems@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 265d
That's also why it's a spectrum. Some of us have compensation for that automatic intuition.
Grace had a different prediction of her action in the first one compared to the second one.
Though admittedly my first gut instinct is "grace killed her, intentional or not." But because of that "mystery or" my mind says "my understanding is incomplete, seek more information."
yeahiknow3@lemmings.world · 3 pts · 265d
That’s an interesting way to think about it.
frostedtrailblazer@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 265d
That’s wild. I feel like situation 1 would be more like a 5 or 6 since it never says Grace got permission to use the coffee machine on the tour.
yeahiknow3@lemmings.world · 3 pts · 265d
Sure, she’s just trying to get sugar for her friend. Someone put poison in it. She’s not at fault.
RubberElectrons@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 263d
This is an absolutely horrible test/explanation.
ameancow@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 266d
tflyghtz@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 266d
Fuck Netanyahu but also his psyop Hamas. All enemies of Palestinians
geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 266d
Hamas is the only party fighting for Palestinians along with other Gazan resistance factions.
tflyghtz@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 265d
Hamas is fighting for Iran, not Palestine
geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 265d
My sides.
pulsewidth@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 265d
What you have there is your basic human empathy, untainted by religious or cultural indoctrination.
Keep hold of that we need more of it.
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world · 47 pts · 266d
So her argument is that the lesson of the Holocaust was NOT that racism is wrong, that religious intolerance is wrong, that the overwhelming power of the strong used on the weak is wrong, that systemic genocide and ethnic cleansing are wrong. No, the lesson of the Holocaust is that antisemitism, AND SPECIFICALLY ONLY ANTISEMITISM, is wrong. You fucking moronic children that are angry over a powerful Jewish ethnostate systematically genociding and ethnic cleansing a weaker population due to their race and religion... you've missed the point of your Holocoaust education! Being Jewish makes their actions right, and saying otherwise is antisemitic.
Jesus fucking Christ, lady. You have managed to amplify this stupid antisemitic argument to absurd levels by claiming Holocaust education should, in fact, lead one to support carnage and genocide. A new low. You're a monster, congrats.
Omgpwnies@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 265d
But, like, Palestinians are by definition also semites, so it's now antisemitism to criticize semites committing antisemitisim....
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 265d
You're semantically correct, but that isn't the colloquial understanding of the term, nor what they mean when they say 'antisemitism'.
FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca · 42 pts · 266d
She's mad that kids are taught to sympathize with the victims of oppression?
Draegur@lemmy.zip · 18 pts · 266d
I'm no marvelhead but Captain America nailed it:
"I don't like bullies. I don't care where they're from."
9point6@lemmy.world · 34 pts · 266d
Wow what a ghoul
They're not confused, they just have a modicum of empathy
ubersolver@lemmy.world · 33 pts · 265d
MehBlah@lemmy.world · 28 pts · 266d
We are not confused and neither are those kids. You show them what happened in germany and they rightfully compare it to what is happening today.
sturmblast@lemmy.world · 25 pts · 266d
These fucking nazi assholes...
Objection@lemmy.ml · 20 pts · 265d
chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 265d
GI Robot would be having the time of his life in modern day America.
londos@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 266d
Shocking she thought this was a thoughtful take to say publicly.
sbbq@lemmy.zip · 20 pts · 266d
This woman sounds insane.
SGGeorwell@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 266d
It’s honestly one of the most horrifying statements I’ve ever read.
Dearth@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 265d
Conflating the state of Israel and criticism of the actions of the state of Israel with anti- semitism is doing the work of anti-semites.
pyria@kbin.melroy.org · 18 pts · 266d
Serinus@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 266d
No. I'm not excusing anything that did happen there, but it absolutely wasn't a genocide.
pyria@kbin.melroy.org · 5 pts · 266d
geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml · -2 pts · 266d
The Iraq invasion from the start focussed on destroying all Iraqi infrastructure and creating as many civilian casualties as possible to destabilize the country. It was 100% a genocide. But since the US has the Hague Invasion Act they will never be charged for it.
pyria@kbin.melroy.org · -1 pts · 266d
geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml · 0 pts · 266d
Yes totally not a completely pre-planned invasion with the goal to destroy and destabilize Iraq, which conveniently Israel lobbied for for many years. Well at least 9/11 wasn't an inside job and Saudi Arabian leaders were held to account.
pyria@kbin.melroy.org · 1 pts · 266d
arcterus@piefed.blahaj.zone · 17 pts · 266d
How was this person a senior speechwriter jfc. Those speeches must have been terrible if this is the sort of garbage that spews out of her mouth.
DaMummy@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 266d
It's a good thing Obama never bombed a Muslim country.
Cattail@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 266d
Good people should sympathize with Palestinians
HeadyBroccoli@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 266d
Good be do sympathize with Palestinians, those that don’t have some extremely fucked up morals.
Bonesince1997@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 266d
They get it, but they don't get it. Seems like it's breaking their brains. Probably playing us for fools.
TheObviousSolution@lemmy.ca · 14 pts · 266d
At least they are taking the masks off and revealing themselves, so there's that.
Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de · 13 pts · 266d
But that's exactly the lesson. You help the weak supressed civilians against the powerful authoritarian racist military.
Religion is not the part that mattered in the Holocaust.
webp@mander.xyz · 12 pts · 265d
(She is obscene)
TemplaerDude@sh.itjust.works · 11 pts · 265d
These morons have zero qualifications for speaking on issues like this.
ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online · 10 pts · 265d
Weak, skinny Palestinians? As opposed to the muscular athletic Nazi concentration camp inmates...
lilas105@ttrpg.network · 9 pts · 266d
United States of Israel.
arrow74@lemmy.zip · 9 pts · 266d
"They learn about big, strong Nazis"
Umm no we don't. I think they may have confused their erotica with their history book
Gates9@sh.itjust.works · 9 pts · 265d
Principled morality, what even is it?
yeahiknow3@lemmings.world · 7 pts · 266d
The video of her litany is somehow even crazier than this quote. It just gets worse and worse.
Cris_Color@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 266d
Bro what the fuck...
Hellotypewriter@retrolemmy.com · 6 pts · 266d
Israel, one of your propagandists got loose!
Horsecook@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 266d
gustofwind@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 266d
Sounds like these people need Holocaust education too
Sidyctism2@discuss.tchncs.de · 5 pts · 266d
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYO2ZsQu0H8
Starts at 9:23
WhatThaFudge@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 265d
Thank you for finding the timestamp for us! I was looking at the video and couldn't stand listening to the people speaking before her even and just wanted to see the actual quotes.
FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 266d
The fuck?
freshcow@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 266d
Come on, this has to be satire, right?
SeeMarkFly@lemmy.ml · 5 pts · 266d
Have they tried NOT KILLING?
They should try not killing and see how that goes.
MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 265d
Fuck Israel, genocidal scum!
SayJess@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 266d
Bruh her website is hilarious. Archive link
But seriously, fuck Zionism and anyone who supports the genocide.
just_another_person@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 266d
...WOW.
Mostly_Gristle@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 266d
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 266d
Reason why theyre an Ex
geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml · 6 pts · 266d
Because Obama isn't president anymore?
TheJesusaurus@sh.itjust.works · -3 pts · 266d
This lady absolutely smashed it. 1000% correct. It's pretty unfortunate she thinks she's wrong about it
ripcord@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 266d
?
TheJesusaurus@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 265d
I think people are wildly misinterpreting what I'm saying.
This dumb idiot has laid out clearly for everyone exactly everything wrong that Israel is doing, but fails to see that any of it is wrong.
Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -6 pts · 265d
Show me the equivalent suffering the various US wars caused? Where is the footage of starving Iraq children?
Show me the reports of non-combatants murdered by the US military trying to access aid drops?
Show me articles where the US blockade foreign aid to war zones?
Can't because it doesn't fucking exist.
Nastybutler@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 265d
Since Israel is a puppet state of US hegemony, the US is doing this. They enabled it and did nothing to stop it, so are complicit in this genocide
Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -3 pts · 265d
The troops aren't.
The leaders aren't the ones performing genocide. They allow it to happen.
Anyone, it a big deal apparently. Just war, I'm being told.
I'm against all war and apparently there is nothing particular different here because the US also does war stuff.
That's fun. Emotions won't fix this, maybe next genocide. Sorry, Palestine. Not sure you can handle another.
Nastybutler@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 265d
Objection@lemmy.ml · 9 pts · 265d
Don't whitewash those wars. Sure, Israel is going above and beyond in finding new and exiting war crimes to commit, but the US wars were also horrendous.
Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -1 pts · 265d
I didn't. I get it now. What they've saying. This isn't about genocide. Not really.
My mistake for thinking people actually cared about civilians deaths and wouldn't give genocides are fucking whataboutism argument.
Fucking stupid. You are literally making the argument for Israel to claim it wasn't so bad, it's just part of war.
Objection@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 265d
What part of, "Israel is going above and beyond in finding new and exiting war crimes to commit," reads to you like I'm "literally making the argument for Israel to claim it wasn’t so bad?"
What you said is like saying, "Show me when Imperial Japan did anything as bad as the Holocaust." Sure, the Holocaust was a special kind of evil that went above and beyond, but Imperial Japan did all sorts of heinous, horrific shit and there is absolutely no reason why we should make favorable comparisons about them. They were even on the same side, much like the US and Israel.
Also how tf is it "whataboutism" when you made the comparison? Completely ridiculous.
geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml · 5 pts · 265d
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/05/10/torture-at-abu-ghraib
altphoto@lemmy.today · -9 pts · 265d
Yeah, I think its not this.
The stupidest people in Gaza attacked Israel and took hostages. Ofcourse Israel attacked to get hostages back but didn't get any.
At that moment, someone rational would have chosen to locate the evil in Gaza and remove it surgically. Instead they basically carpet murdered everyone and destroyed everything. That's a Holocaust level offence.
In contrast, the people in NewYork and elsewhere did not cause a Holocaust. Its not us Jewish community and the rest of the world, its you, Israeli government and military.
This is my opinion based only on the bits and pieces that I get to read, hear and watch. I'm not Jewish but I care deeply about not causing a Holocaust by murdering millions of people regardless if they are Jews or only pray to Uncle Pedro to find their keys on Wednesdays. You just don't murder people at random.