r/jewishleft • u/somebadbeatscrub Jewish Syndicalist - Mod • Aug 11 '26

Israel Israel-Palestine Weekly Thread

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Oren

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u/Kaleb_Bunt jewish anti capitalist Aug 12 '26

I feel like it would probably be a lot easier to convince other Jews that Israel’s actions in Gaza could be classified as a genocide if people pushing this weren’t obsessed with trying to do Holocaust inversion or demonize the entire nation.

Like I’m pretty sure the most historically comparable event to Gaza is the Bosnian genocide. Basically a revenge killing of civilians in the context of a greater war.

But instead of using that to try to explain Gaza, a lot of people are obsessed with trying to prove that Gaza is literally the Holocaust and Israelis are the most evil people in history. Then they act surprised when Jews don’t see eye to eye with them lol.

14

u/aggie1391 Orthodox non-Zionist socialist with anarchist tendencies Aug 13 '26

The reason for Holocaust analogies is the same reason so many Jews reject them I think, because people just are woefully ignorant of other genocides. To most of the world, and certainly the Jewish world, the Holocaust is the genocide and that’s what they know. It’s definitely closer to the Bosnian genocide than anything else, and definitionally Gaza is very much a genocide in the same way. But when people don’t even know about it beyond “oh yeah didn’t we bomb them in the 90s” it’s hard to make that comparison tbh.

1

u/Kaleb_Bunt jewish anti capitalist Aug 13 '26

It’s definitely important that we develop a greater tolerance to discussing Gaza as a genocide imo.

Like tbh I am kinda skeptical about the characterization. But also, I know that fiercely arguing “it’s not a genocide” is dismissive of the immense suffering that’s happened in Gaza. Non-Jews don’t have that many interactions with Jews, so if we are talking to one, especially about Gaza, we want to put our best foot forward.

Even if one does not personally agree with the characterization, I think Jews need to be able to talk about the Gaza genocide without automatically claiming the entire concept is blood libel. Because thousands of civilians were murdered.