Using the Killing of George Floyd to Universalize—and Minimize—the Holocaust

The Holocaust museum in Maitland, Florida recently unveiled a new exhibit that consists of photographs of people responding to the death of George Floyd, a black man gratuitously killed by a white police officer in May. Ruthie Blum comments:

Floyd’s case is . . . utterly irrelevant to the Holocaust. And a center dedicated to commemorating the slaughter of six million Jews during World War II has no business devoting wall space to it. But the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center (HMREC) boasts of the “inspiring and powerful” pictures of the location of and witnesses to Floyd’s killing.

“The mission of the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida is to use the history and lessons of the Holocaust to build just and caring communities free of anti-Semitism and all forms of prejudice and bigotry,” [the museum’s executive director, Lisa Bachman], told the UK-based Jewish News on Wednesday. . . . She is either missing the point of Holocaust education or, worse, intends to shift its focus. Contrary to this ever-growing attitude among liberal Jews and closet Jew-haters, anti-Semitism is not merely one among many “forms of prejudice and bigotry.” It is particular and must be treated as such.

[J]uxtaposing the wrongful death of a lone criminal, whose killer was indicted for murder, with the purposeful and brutal extermination of millions of innocent men, women, and children by a well-oiled governmental machine violates all standards of ethics. . . . A site created to remind visitors why they must “never forget” the starvation, rape, torture, and gassing of Europe’s Jews should not be using a pictorial rendition of an individual American’s fateful run-in with a bad cop as an “educational” tool. Shame on the heads of the Holocaust center for thinking otherwise.

Read more at Jerusalem Post

More about: Anti-Semitism, Black Lives Matter, Holocaust

 

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF