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Comment by lr4444lr | Hacker News Reader

The anti-Jewish implications in this comment and some of the follow-ups (that the article is at fault for something because it focuses too much on Jews, that Jews somehow uniquely manipulate government through lobbying, that Jews don't accept any debate about the exact "6 million" number in the dominant narrative) is palpable.

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People made a number of legitimate points about how some victims of the holocaust and WWII are much less remembered than others. Why do you immediately characterise this as anti-Jewish?

that Jews somehow uniquely manipulate government through lobbying, that Jews don't accept any debate about the exact "6 million" number in the dominant narrative

No one said anything like that.

> Instead the article doesn't even mention them in passing.

There's something implied there. For me, it's not mentioned simply because that's not the topic of the article. But what he seems to imply is that it was purposely omitted from the article - thus conspiracy/manipulation.

That's only a conjecture. It's easy to read something into what someone else wrote.

I interpreted it only as a complain that a vital piece of information isn't even mentioned, and more as an implication of quality issue than conspiracy.

Read the comment from the person with the Greek relative.

Indeed, the term lobbying was used twice and has bad connotations (as well as being inaccurate).

Since when was it anti-$ETHNIC_GROUP to talk about an $ETHNIC_GROUP's lobby? Do you accuse people of being "inaccurate" if they mention the China lobby?

Please stop taking this thread (or any HN thread) further into flamewar hell. We've asked you before not to do this.

In that case, just ban me. I've also asked before. As long as I can still post here, I will occasionally debate with people when they take contentious positions I disagree with (esp when they make accusations).

I'm not flaming, and you know it. Nonetheless, if you think I'm a problem, just ban me and the problem will be solved. I don't want to be in a place where politics is totally OK to discuss until it's not for arbitrary reasons I can't guess or predict.

Your immediate reaction to a non-jewish person having the temerity to talk about how their community suffered from Nazi forces during WW2 was to label them "anti-jewish". That's messed up. The fact that they mentioned "lobbying" doesn't excuse you.

There seems to be a strong undercurrent of anti-gentilism from several commenters on this story. The response from admins has been very strange.

I'm not sure I see evidence for anti-gentilism. I'll give the benefit of the doubt and say over-sensitivity, or paranoia. But accusations of anti-semitism are being thrown around far too freely. Discussions of non-jewish victims is not anti-jewish, and it should not be shutdown by trying to shame or accuse people.

There's actually an Israeli documentary about how American Jewish lobby organizations make comparing genocides a competition (of course insisting that the Holocaust was the worst, no matter what) and that their leaders and members often do this to compensate for lack of religiosity. So, yes, the Jewish lobbying efforts are unique, and uniquely successful. There's nothing wrong about it per se, but if it happens at the cost of remembering other Nazi victims, or victims of other genocides, things are definitely headed in the wrong direction.

There were also "Israelis" who think Isreal's is an abomination because it is a Jewish state in existence without the Messiah. What is the existence of a documentary supposed to prove other than that in any group of people, there is a variety of opinion? The bias comes in how you cite, weight, and construe elements of this plurality. Not whether they exist.

Funny how you just focus on the existence of the documentary, and not on the contents of it which I paraphrased. I'm not talking about some fringe Extremist Haredi group, I'm talking about a mainstream Israeli film author closely following and critically introspecting the work of the ADL and their then-CEO.

You haven't even given the title. What am I supposed to do, hunt down every reference you fail to cite to dispute a point no one is making - i.e. that countervailing narratives exist within groups on opinions they are assumed to have consensus about? Sorry, no. Burden of evidence for a documentary you vaguely allude is on you, and I'm happy for others to watch it and draw their own conclusions, because I've got to get to work.

The ADL is not a Holocaust remembrance group! They're a group chartered to combat anti-Semitism. You know some other groups that doesn't spend a lot of time talking about the Romani exterminated by the Third Reich? Partners In Health, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the NRA.

But once again the subtext: if a Jewish organization mentions the Holocaust, they have a special responsibility not borne by other organizations to ensure they don't take too much credit for their suffering, in which the majority of their population were swept from the continent of Europe.

I don't understand why your interlocutor has dignified this comment, because it's not responsive to their point. Since this (still unnamed) documentary has not, in your estimation, suggested that the ADL suppresses the non-Jewish victims of the Third Reich --- how could it? They certainly do not. --- you're simply perpetuating the anti-Semitic subtext that commenter was complaining about: that any recognition of the magnitude of the suffering endured by Jewish people during the Holocaust must in some zero-sum way take away from the suffering of others, and thus it's once again the acquisitiveness of Jewish people distorting global politics.

That commenter is right to have none of this.

> that Jews don't accept any debate about the exact "6 million" number in the dominant narrative

It's not just "the Jews", any educated westerner would balk at the very idea that the number can be questioned. It doesn't sit particularly well with me, since I find it hard to believe things I can't doubt, though the immensity of the evil of the Nazi regime is itself pretty obvious.

The value of efforts like these is that we can have a scientific record proving how many were killed and where, so that we can have an iron-clad defence to show people who could otherwise be swayed by holocaust denier tracts. Rather than turn away, say sorry, and comfort the few victims that come forward, we have to face head-on the actions of our ancestors, collect and document their deeds scientifically and build a proven historical record. Treating a historical subject, any subject, as taboo, leads to history being written by propaganda, and no matter how intentional that propaganda is, it makes us ultimately no better than the Nazis themselves.

I agree, making the topic taboo fuels the denialists. I beg you to reconsider the notion that the numbers killed in the holocaust is a closed topic. Even the article quoted elsewhere on this forum (which appears to me to exploit Wiesenthal's actual view by quoting it out of context) if you read through notes that no less a holocaust denialist fighter than Deborah Lipstadt is even open to discussion on this topic when it comes to authoritative and informed discussion about making these estimations.

My point is just that Holocaust denialism and anti-Jewish bigotry makes its wedge into discourse as classic F.U.D. People make a few unsourced, innocuous sounding comments, put in some well-known weasel words, wait to be challenged, and cry "cover up/bias".

My original post has been downvoted. I consider the topic well and truly closed until at least another 50 years have passed. I feel mostly safe bringing it up in an anonymous setting where only my fake internet points will suffer, but I would absolutely never bring it up in real life.

For the record, I upvoted you. Your intentions clearly weren't negative.

Antisemitism is very deeply rooted in many Christian dominant cultures to the point where most of the tropes are so deeply ingrained most are blind and unaware of their implicit prejudice. One of the best books on the history of modern antisemitism is "The Devil and the Jews" by Joshua Trachtenberg.

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