Reply #12: Holocaust studies must be very bizarre in the US... [View All]

I studied it last year, and thankfully we didn't have to read crap from Pipes. I don't really understand why anyone teaching the subject would inflict Pipes on their students when there's such a wealth of material on the subject available. The Holocaust can't be discussed without discussing the anti-Semitism that made it happen, but Daniel Pipes is a hate-monger with no credibility at all....

Pipes (and I think he does this intentionally) is an extreme example of the fall-out from the Holocaust. Because no-one saw the Holocaust coming, and because Jews were generally helpless to do anything to save themselves or others, the reaction in some circles has been to pounce on any anti-Semitism and immediately see another Holocaust coming. The Holocaust happened with little to no warning, so the thinking amongst Jews who were traumatised by it, even if they hadn't even been born when it happened, is that they won't get caught by surprise again. Pipes feeds on those fears to foster a hatred of Arabs and Muslims, and while those fears are imo understandable, they're not realistic nor particularly healthy...

Also, if Pipes thinks that any of Israel's neighbours over the past generation have dehumanised Jews in the same way that Nazi Germany in the 1930's did, he doesn't know much about exactly what the Nazis were doing in the 1930's. It's either pig ignorance or a blind hatred of Arabs that must be the explanation for it...

Violet...