What a ridiculous statement. That is not what I said. I simply stated that when this particular subject comes up, the duplicity arises from those two camps without fail or hesitation; your post being a great case in point.
And while I am thrilled to tears with the moving experience you must have had at the Holocaust Museum, it is not germane to either the point I was trying to make or the subject of the thread.
It is completely germane. To understand Israelis and Jewish people you must understand what was done to them.
First of all, I only spent the first three years of my life in Cuba. I have no particular attachment to it, nor if I did, would that preclude my interest in other parts of the world.
Once again personal experience rears its ugly head again. I have a coworker that rents a room from me he is first generation Cuban American. He has seen first hand his relatives that escaped Castro's totolitarian dictatorship. The Cuban people have been oppressed for generations now. Europeans seem to love Castro and ignore the attrocities he is responsible for. Much like they ignored Hitler under pacifists like Neville Chamberlain.
As it is America and Israel that cause the most problems in the world, everything about them affects the entire world, which includes me. So please do not presume to tell me what should or should not concern me.
Are you serious? Israel and America cause the most problems in the world. Tell me which country does more to help it's enemies when natural disasters occurs. Tell me what other country donates more to charity and treating aids in Africa than America. Tell me what other country in the Middle East other than Israel is a self ruled democracy with freedom for women and other religions. Tell me what Europe has done lately to fight totalitarian dictators.
As it stands, it is Israel which is in the process of taking things away, both from the Palestinians and the American taxpayers, without whom it would not be able to accomplish all of the acts against international law that it has been perpetrating over the years.
Your view of history is somewhat skewed, and that is not unusual for Americans. All of Europe suffered under Hitler and the Nazis, not just the Jews. The Jews just have better PR and more of an interest in dragging out their past suffering on a daily basis for all the world to see. The rest of Europe rebuilt itself after the war and progressed. Only Israel's very existence depends upon its constant wailing and moaning about what happened so many years ago.
Ever heard of the Marshall Plan? Europe rebuilt itself indeed but not without significant help from America. We forgave huge amounts of debt after both world wars. When was the last time the same graciousness was extended toward us. I suggest you read some of Churchill's speeches after the war. France helped America win independence and America helped liberate France during WW II. France and England and much of Europe are on the verge of a muslim takeover of their government and cultures. Sharia law is slowly being accepted into European culture.
Without even considering military deaths, the civilian death toll in Europe that was not Jewish was tremendous as well. But you do not wax eloquently on their plucky bravery and ingenuity for rebuilding their countries and not relying on American aid or needing big lobbies to twist the arms of foreign governments to keep them progressing.
Of course it was great but they were fighting a war for their own land. America was fighting for freedom and her allies. We were attacked without provocation at Pearl Harbor and the war would have been longer and far more brutal without our help both militarily and financially. There is no way to know but the war could have been lost entirely. European ambivalence was one of the things that empowered Hitler. England and France both were content to ignore Hitler. There ambivalence early on caused millions of deaths that could likely have been avoided.
According to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
Austria: 58,700 civilian deaths (not including Jewish deaths)
Belgium: 49,600
Bulgaria: 3,000
Czechoslovakia: 43,000
Denmark: 1000
Estonia: 50,000
Finland: 2000
France: 267,000
Germany: Between 840,000 and 2.8 million
Greece: 700,500
Hungary: 80,000
Italy: 145,100
Latvia: 147,000
Lithuania: 212.000
Luxembourg: 1,300
Malta: 1,500
Netherlands: 176,000
Norway: 5,800
Poland: 2.38 million - 2.58 million
Roumania: 64,000
Soviet Union: Between 12 and 14 million
Sweden: 2000
United Kingdom: 67,100
Yugoslavia: 514,000
In the entire war, the official tally is that 5,752,400 Jews died during the period of World War II, while between 34.5 and 47 million non-Jews died. Explain to me again why we only care about those plucky Jews?
They didn't die fighting a war. They were slaughtered for being Jewish. Hitler wanted to wipe them from the face of the earth. After the war was over they were put on boats and no country would accept them. That is one of the reasons they were given their own homeland. They were then attacked by the Arabs almost from the beginning. They had to fight to keep their homeland and still do to this day.
You will also note that for your claim of "millions" of American deaths, that throughout the entire war (most of which America fought in Asia anyway), America suffered casualties of only 418,500 in their entirety. A bit of an exaggeration there, wouldn't you say?
And they did not die to protect the Jews, but rather because the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour. I can guarantee you that if the Japanese had never attacked America, we would not even be having this conversation right now, because America did not even want to become involved in what it considered to be a "foreign" war. They only agreed to become involved when the Japanese involved them. JUst because it all worked out for them in the end does not add any altruism to their motives. Americans have always acted only in self-interest. Or in the interest of Israel, of course.
And please do not feed me the Zionist propaganda about how the Jews turned a "desert wasteland" into a "paradise". They had to dislodge a great many Arabs to get that so called "wasteland", and a great deal more of it is wasteland now, since Israel decided to turn many Arabs' farms into a great big apartheid wall or into settlements.
I have been to farms that were created in the middle of the desert. This was not done by the Arabs it was done by the Israelis.
I am so happy for you that you have Israeli friends. Hoorah for you. But again, this has nothing to do with the point that I was trying to make. For the record, I have known Israeli people and I cannot say that the feeling I have for them could be described as love. I visited one of the illegal settlement outposts in my more progressive thinking days when I was at university and I must say that the people whom I encountered were hateful, angry, bile-filled bitter people in whom I could not sense one drop of "love".
I am unhappy that I have had to go so far off topic here, but there needed to be some clarification into what was being bandied about by you people who believe that hyperbole and exaggeration is acceptable debating procedure. It is not.
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