Reply #6: Some of it most definately would be... [View All]

...and some of it is card-playing. Just as the Holocaust has left scars on Israel which explain (but don't justify) the heavy-handed and out of proportion responses to attacks, the same scars have been left on individuals. And it's understandable given that the Holocaust took Jews both within European countries occupied by the Nazis and Jews around the world by surprise. With the long history of persecution against European Jews (especially Eastern European), the warning signs were misinterpreted by many as another pogrom that would be weathered out. And by the time Jewish groups elsewhere in the world realised what was happening, it was too late, and they were put in the terrible position of trying to convince the Allies that the reports coming out of Europe were true and weren't more of the Evil Hun propaganda that the British carried out during WWI. So, because very few spotted the warning signs of the Holocaust, since then there's a tendency to try to spot the warning signs of another one. Those warning signs then appear just about everywhere, and if someone disagrees that something is Antisemitic, then that just cements the belief that just like the lead up to the Holocaust, no-one's listening and the disagreement becomes yet another warning sign. Even in this forum in the past, there's been claims that something (sometimes they are actually Antisemitic incidents or statements and sometimes they're not) means that Europe or the US is just like it was in late 1930's Germany. When it comes to claims like that, I do think there's a bit of card playing involved - either that or ignorance of the situation for Jews in late 1930's Germany. But when it comes to the trauma inflicted by the Holocaust, it'll probably be many generations before those scars are healed...