Enough Already!

Igniting a public uproar, some Jewish settlers said Tuesday they will soon start wearing orange stars on their shirts in a provocative campaign comparing the government's Gaza withdrawal plan to the Nazi Holocaust.

Is anyone else sick of seeing the holocaust card being played all the time? The holocaust was evil and disgusting, no one with a functioning cerebral cortex denies that. However, much more often than not, its name is invoked for the sake of crass and selfish political gain. It's certainly not unique to the Jews; every ethnic or religious minority has learned to play the victimization card.

It is a hopeful sign that some courageous people are speaking out:

"The plan to wear orange stars perverts the historical facts and damages the memory of the Shoah," said Yad Vashem's director Avner Shalev, using the Hebrew word for the Holocaust. He urged the settlers to refrain from using the stars.

However, there's something really disgusting about using the deaths of several millions of innocent people (the exact number is irrelevant) for political gain. The holocaust may have once been a symbol for human rights, but no longer. I was under the impression that "never again" meant that the world should never again allow the mass murder of any innocents, regardless of their background. That phrase has been altered in recent years. "Never again...to the Jews."

Memory of the holocaust is pervasive. Museums exist all over, even in countries that had nothing to do with the slaughter and have barely any Jewish minority to speak of. You can't go to a bookstore without encountering entire shelves and sections dedicated to holocaust studies. Some high schools even have memorials on their property, ensuring that we start 'em off young.

So for all the political capital that the holocaust movement has collected, where are the stances against the murder of non-Jews? Who is standing up against Turkey, who continues to deny the Armenian genocide? Who will comment on the number of Greeks that were also ethnically cleansed as Kemal Ataturk carved out an ethnically pure state? Though I've heard a lot about the suffering of Jews in Russia, who will speak about the millions of Christians that Soviet leaders killed, with the twin weapons of starvation and force? How about the 30 million people Mao killed during the "Great Leap Forward?" How about the African genocides of the last twenty years?

I once had a fight with my uncle about this. I was trying to make the above-outlined point and he called me a racist and an anti-Semite for it? A racist? Because I care about mankind and not just one particular ethno-religious group? Because I'm concerned that memory of the holocaust has become so emotionally charged that the other genocides of the past century have been forgotten? One can't even invoke the memory of over 50 million forgotten and ignored dead without being labeled a racist and an anti-Semite (and my uncle isn't even Jewish!).

From the soil the blood of millions of innocents cry out to us. It's a shame that some are too preoccupied (either they're feeling guilty about acts they're in no way responsible for, or they're lining their pockets and exerting undeserved influence) to listen.