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> the Holocaust was not a lesson taught to Jews so they'll learn empathy. It was something horrible and traumatic that was done to them.

Well of course I am not suggesting that it was a lesson to teach empathy. My comment was merely that people who suffer traumas tend to have empathy for other people suffering similar traumas. I don’t think this is a particularly controversial observation.

> Two - comparing the Holocaust to what happens in Gaza means you're not aware of what the Holocaust was. Maybe you know highlights such as gas chambers etc, but not what it really was (through no fault of your own I'm sure).

Well I suppose you might be right. I’ve seen a number of the major films and documentaries and read Viktor Frankl, Eli Weisel and Anne Frank and visited Auschwitz, and I’ll be the first to admit this is merely a very basic overview of the atrocities rather than any form of academic investigation. But from this overview it seems like there are common threads of severe oppression based on immutable racial characteristics, no?

On your final paragraph, I probably would ask the same question!

The question we're discussing is about the attitudes of people of "the Jewish state", by which they clearly mean Israel. Almost half of the world's Jewish People are Americans, not Israelis. I think you'll get interesting answers about Palestine from Jewish Americans (I've sure learned a whole lot these past few months), but a casual reading of your comment suggests that those people have a responsibility to account for Israeli policy, and they don't. This is an extraordinarily common complaint about the Israeli/Palestine debate --- that charges of "antisemitism" are weaponized against those who criticize Israel --- and it seems that there may be a kernel of truth on both sides of that complaint.

I wrote a much more strident and knee-jerk response to this at first (I'm sorry about that, and I should have read through the whole comment instead of snagging at the first sentence), but that first sentence is quite a snag! It seemed to upset other people who replied, and I can't really blame them too much for that.

For what it's worth, I'm jewish and there are many jews who would disagree with my answer to the question you're responding to - just keep in mind how much diversity in thought exists. Though, the sentiment of your answer I do tend to agree with.

One more small point - people here mention how long ago the Holocaust was and far removed from memory. That's not really true. If you look at Pew 2013 poll of American Jews [0] they found:

> About three-quarters (73%) of American Jews say remembering the Holocaust is an essential part of being Jewish

that's above any other option.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/08/13/70-years-...

>This is a question you need to ask Jewish people, not HN.

Please don't tell people to harass random jews wherever they live about political stuff they aren't involved in. Thanks.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This is something literally I and other jews I know have had to put up with for the last several months. The strongest plausible interpretation is the one I've lived through, which is that people decide to politically test their jewish friends and acquintances.

Please don't let people on hacker news say things like what questions should be asked of jewish people not in israel etc.

I certainly don't mean to deny your experience and I understand how it would be frustrating. In fact I know someone who has personally described something similar. But I do think you most likely misread the GP (probably precisely because you've been having these experiences; that would make sense).

They weren't recommending randomly accosting anybody. If the comment had been limited to its first 10 words, I could imagine understanding it that way, but the more important part was what they said right after that: "not HN. The response you'll get here obviously won't answer this question" — in other words, a question like that can't be answered by people who have no experience with it. It doesn't follow that one should indiscriminately harass everyone who does. I know some people are jumping to that, but it's not the strongest plausible interpretation of the GP.

If you had begun your reply with "Unfortunately some people are using this line of thinking to" instead of "Please don't tell people to", it would have been fine; and still more so if you had added some of the information that you included in your reply to me.