It seems that a lot of people would like the Jews to just let themselves be killed
Jews are criticized for contradictory things. They are excoriated for supposedly not realizing they were targets during WWII and not escaping or fighting back. Although the truth is quite different, this is a persistent accusation. But they are also criticized when they fight back in normal (or even relatively restrained) fashion, as Israel does.
Many people seem to think that now they should just absorb being massacred on an enormous scale:
This has a historical precedent about which most people are unaware: Gandhi agreed that the Jews should allow themselves to be massacred, although his reasoning for the recommendation was completely different. Gandhi, you ask? Surely not Gandhi! So let me refresh your memory by suggesting you read this post of mine from 2005.
Gandhi, of course, made the same suggestion to the British. Surrender and all will be well. Of course the cost would be less.
Yet for some inscrutable reason there was a lot of resistance among the sundry and diverse groups of peoples in India to the Gandian wisdom of non-resistance to those who intended to murder them after the British gave up the Indian subcontinent.
And of course Gandi could have gone quietly into the night and not forced someone to assissinate him.
Truly a Gandian mystery.
Somehow it doesn’t strike me as a plan to let happen what your evil would be conquer wants.
India has had to fight off Islam with millions killed, guess India should have submitted centuries ago maybe a few might have lived.
Since I prefer written material, here is Brendan O’Neill:
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/10/16/why-wont-the-jews-just-let-themselves-be-killed/
Kate:
It’s the old “Heads I win, Tails you loose” con. The “mark” has to want to be fooled.
In the this case they already hate the Jews so only arguments supporting that hate are acceptable.
}}} I had a sort of pacifist ideal; I just wanted us to “all get along.”
The problem with this idea is really amazingly simple, I don’t grasp how few manage to Get It, right from the start.
A basic question:
Why is there more hate than love?
Why is there more war than peace?
OK, *TWO* questions, but they’re pretty interlocked.
ONE answer — it takes ONE to want the former, it takes TWO to want the latter.
It takes two people to love. It only takes one to want to hate.
Both sides have to want peace. Only one side needs to want war.
And it’s really that simple. Hatred and war are EASIER.
So the answer to your question (as well as that idiotic “coexist” bumper sticker) is that it only takes one of those involved to fuck it all up.
And Islam is the ultimate fuckup in this.
When you look at all the ongoing small-scale battles and “threatening conflicts” going on in the world at any given time in the last 20-40 years, Islam is on one of those sides in about 90% of the cases. Yeah, there’s a few — Notably Russia-Ukraine at the moment, and China-Taiwan. But Islam is somehow always in a fight with someone else.
If all the world’s creeds and nations got a schoolchild’s report card, Islam’s would be marked “Does not play well with others”, among other things.
:-/
}}} I was a post-WWII child, and it seemed clear to me that Hitler could not have been deterred by any human forces known to me–whether it be the power of love or that of the international courts–and those who thought otherwise seemed hopelessly, naively, and dangerously foolis
The sad part, here, is, you were wrong. Early on, he could easily have been deterred, but for the voices of stupidity, pacifism, and appeasement (sound familiar?), he would have been stopped, and more than likely removed in a coup by the military.
When Hitler “annexed” the Sudetenland, the military leaders were opposed to it. They knew they were not ready for war. And a stern, staunch, and determined opposition to the action would have almost certainly made Hitler withdraw, and possibly led to his ousting in some form of coup.
And the threat of WWII becomes… at least a lot more iffy. I suspect it was going to happen in some form, but it might have been a bunch of smaller conflicts, akin to Russia-Ukraine rather than a “world war”.
P.S., you discuss the notion of Gandhi vs. Hitler.
As you realize, Gandhi’s pacifism only worked because the Brits were an essentially decent people, readily capable of shame.
The Nazis clearly had no such problems, or the very notion of the Holocaust would have been tossed out when first suggested.
I mentioned Game Theory in an earlier thread. Game Theory has tested pacifism against “wolfish” creeds, and it always loses, and gets wiped out, completely. Islam is clearly one of those wolfish creeds, as is National Socialism.
And the first rule of ANY creed has to be that it has the capability to survive in the face of internal and external threat. Pacifism fails utterly and completely in that regard. You must be willing to fight for your ideals, if violence is threatened. And this is true even to the compromise of deeply held ideals. You ideals matter not, if they are wiped from the face of the earth, and trodden under by the marching feet of another ideal. You can, perhaps, stand before God and hold your head high, but, in the end, your ideals will have no future affect on any part of humanity. And I, personally, don’t think God wants that of you, when it comes to your ideals, if they are decent and would be approved of by God in the first place.
Yes, you are supposed to turn the other cheek, but only if it is having an effect on your opponent, and making them reconsider their own violence. When you’re faced with a mad dog in human form, you do the same thing as for a frothing, rabid beast. You put it down.
P.S., there is, actually, an SF alt-history short story, I forget the title, about Gandhi in an India subjugated by Germany rather than Britain. Gandhi is imprisoned, his compatriots, too, and they slowly fade into history as any hint of protest is stomped on by jackboots. It may be in a short story collection-series “There Will Be War”. No guarantees. Might ask about that as a plot in some SF fan thread somewhere.
I have always maintained that Gandhi could only have succeeded with the British. The French or Germans would have disappeared him
Winston Churchill spoke of the motivation of those people who would like the Jews to just let themselves be killed; “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”
Allowing oneself to be killed is the ultimate “turning of the other cheek”. Although there is something to be said for it, doing your duty to defend yourself and others is a higher calling.
What do you you all make of Daniel Greenfield’s assertion that 1 in 10 American Jews support Hamas?: https://www.danielgreenfield.org/
If false, I’m relieved.
If true, are they really Jews?
OBloodyHell:
I believe your Gandhi vs. Nazis story is Harry Turtledove’s novelette “The Last Article”, originally published in the January 1988 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and reprinted a number of times; the Internet Speculative Fiction Database gives the publication history:
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?49295
You can read the story for free at the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v074n01_1988-01_LennyS-aMouse/page/n89/mode/2up
Wikipedia plot summary:
Germany’s success in World War II has led to their invasion of the British Raj in 1947, resulting in the British Indian Army being decisively defeated. Rather than struggling for independence from the Crown, Gandhi and his friend Jawaharlal Nehru find themselves in the position of resisting Nazi occupation using the techniques that were successfully employed against the British. Although Nehru has a general concept of the inherently immoral nature of Nazi ideology, Gandhi thinks they still can be persuaded, not heeding the warning from an Austrian Jew named Simon Wiesenthal, who was able to flee occupied Poland to India.
The Nazis, however, led by Field Marshal Walther Model, are completely unmoved by Gandhi’s strategy. They view themselves as a master race and have no moral qualms about killing those who resist non-violently (or even those who do not resist at all, if they are of a certain race). In the end the movement collapses as it proves unable to deal with the savagery of Nazism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Article
In re “turning the other cheek” — a maxim usually taken out of its 1st century context (not unlike “an eye for an eye”) — today’s post at Hoyt’s blog had a similar discussion, which elicited this comment:
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2023/10/31/thoughts-on-the-gaza-situation-by-frank-hood/#comment-945351
Pacifists are dicks.