As European, I'm not proud and I feel ashamed tonight :-((((

[syringis]

In Poland a law has been signed that makes it illegal to accuse the nation of complicity in the Holocaust.

Will someday, humans learn from their mistakes ?

Editorial cartoons might be funny, sarcastic, ironic,...these aren't. They are sad, sad, sad...

[zipplewrath]

1. Is that what it did?

I thought it basically made it illegal to refer to the camps as "Polish death camps" or any equivalent claim that implies the poles ran them or were in anyway responsible for them. I wasn't aware it was made illegal to suggest or imply that ANY poles were involved or cooperated.

[syringis]

2. Alas, it is exactly what they voted in Poland

[HipChick]

3. That last drawing..

[syringis]

4. Hello HipChick

Yes, it is very hard.

[malchickiwick]

5. "The one thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history." -- Hegel

sad but true...

[Glorfindel]

6. Leon Uris wrote a very good book about this very subject, "QB VII"

published in 1970. I recommend reading it for anyone who is interested in these matters. It's quite eye-opening.

[syringis]

7. Hello Glorfindel

I heard of his books "Armaguedon" and "Exodus"

But I never read him.

Thank you for the advice

[pangaia]

13. Sorry to hear.

And just as sorry that we are right behind you on the road to---

[argyl]

39. Uris died about fifteen years ago. Ive read about everything he wrote.

Unfortunately his last book, or the last book I read of his, “A God In Ruins,” is just awful. I believe he died a couple of years after it’s printing.
It’s always a shame to me that a writer as good as Leon Uris was goes out on a sour note.
But there are many great novels of his that you can look forward to reading.

[shenmue]

26. Loved that book, and the TV movie with Sir Anthony Hopkins

[Glorfindel]

28. Wow, I didn't know about the TV movie. I'll try to find it.

Sir Anthony Hopkins is always worth watching. Thanks, shenmue.

[shenmue]

29. You're welcome

[mountain grammy]

32. Excellent book by Uris..

another was Mila 18 about the Warsaw ghetto. My family immigrated from Warsaw in 1911. Poland was not hospitable to Jews then either.

[Honeycombe8]

8. I read that. Shocking. I think a Court may strike it down, though? nt

[syringis]

18. I did not follow closely but...

Europe won't accept it I think.

I'm not sure this law doesn't break EU rules.

[MrPurple]

9. Sad to see Poland and Hungary slipping into alt-right governments

Hopefully, the US will not stay in that territory long.

[Enoki33]

17. Wonder why our wannabe dictator stopped in Poland? I better understand

the reasons for trips to Turkey- personal business and political template- but Poland continues to be elusive.

[BlueJac]

10. Unreal

keep up the fight

[syringis]

20. Hello Blue Jac

We do

It is time to restrain a bit what these apprentice sorcerers call their "freedom of speech"...

See where it brought us : Brexit and the Catalonian mess...

I might be rude but if Polland won't follow our democratic rules and want to harm freedom, so good bye. EU isn't a ressort where you pick what agrees you and let the rest.

Take all or nothing. End of story !

[Kirk Lover]

11. Yeah I read about that bullshit. Just terrible about what is going on in Poland with the

far right gaining ground. All I can say is welcome to the club of shame....you are not alone. There is hope for Poland, there is hope for America. As long as there is people like us in the world...there is hope.

[HopeAgain]

12. Is this what humans are doomed to do?

Slip in and out of progressivism into totalitarianism/fascism and bigotry? As the world becomes more technological and society more global, I'm afraid the damage to humanity will be greater each time.

[appalachiablue]

15. That's a concern I share; hope I'm wrong.

[whathehell]

14. I understand your point about the Holocaust

but I don't understand the Ann Frank in a hijab thing....There is some Islamophobia going on, but I:m not seeing Muslim girls being murdered in European concentration camps... Seems hyperbolic.

[syringis]

16. Hello Whathehell

It is yes.

What Guido Kuehn meant, is that history repeats itself.

In 1940 the Jews were the scapegoats. In 2017, Muslims are.

[whathehell]

21. Hello Syringis

I get his point now.. Thanks.

[Nevernose]

19. 60k Nazis were marching in Warsaw a couple months ago

There seems to be a worldwide swing in pro-authoritarian, anti “other” thinking.

[Sophiegirl]

22. Im so sorry.

[appalachiablue]

23. What Poland is experiencing has surfaced in the US and other nations

all over the world recently, sorry to say.

At Dachau just after liberation, my father told us of many suffering Polish prisoners he saw in Spring 1945.

Fear, ignorance and hatred of 'OTHERS' and the VULNERABLE is an evil that is ancient and universal unfortunately.

'Scapegoating' esp. in WWII as a Russian Jewish friend says. Also other age-old practices- Ostracism, Banning, Shunning, Punishing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapegoating

[syringis]

31. Hello Appalachiablue

Our politicians as well as yours have a responsibility in that.

First, they let the populists and racists to speak in the name of "freedom of speech". Spreading hate and fear is not exactly what I call " freedom of speech"...

There is a part of opportunism too. They started to have almost the same rhetoric, flattering poorly educated voters. The ones, often frustrated, you can easily convince that simplistic answers can solve complex problems. And if they are not applied, it is because of complotists.

[Skittles]

24. that little boy

in my mind I can see the real picture, it made such an impression

[syringis]

30. Hello Skittles

I had exactly the same feeling. It gave me goose bumps

[Azathoth]

25. Poland has always been a Catholic fascist state just waiting to happen n/t

[syringis]

35. Hello Azathoth

They have an epic history. Partly mythical, partly historical, with a tendency to victimization according to many historians, they had been dismembered and shared several times.

The far right party Law and Justice do no see very well the fact that some historians are trying to build an accurate time line of Poland history. They were occupied by the Germans and the Soviet during the WWII but the researches in the past 20 years have proven the involvement and the complicity of many Poland.

Officially, the law is meant to preserve the image of Poland abroad and distance themselves from any war crime, arguing that they were not masters of the game. Informally...it is up to everyone to make his own opinion.

The PIS slogan (party of Law and Justice), Poland first doesn't make much sense because Poland's population is now days, one of the most homogeneous in Europe since the end of WWII and the changes being made to the borders. Over 96% are from Poland ethnic, more than 95% Roman Catholic , more or less 75% are active practitioners.

[TNLib]

27. Facism is on the rise

Scary times

[moondust]

33. Atlantic article.

The Dark Consequences of Poland's New Holocaust Law

~
On display in the World War II museum in Gdansk is a case displaying the keys to the homes of Jewish Poles who were murdered by their Polish neighbors in the town of Jedwabne, an infamous episode during the war. The government is trying to change the museum exhibit, although it’s unclear how that particular display might be affected.
~

[struggle4progress]

34. Kielce

... On July 1, 1946, a nine-year-old non-Jewish boy, Henryk Blaszczyk, left his home in Kielce, without informing his parents. When he returned on July 3, the boy told his parents and the police, in an effort to avoid punishment for wandering off, that he had been kidnapped and hidden in the basement of the local Jewish Committee building on 7 Planty Street. The Committee building sheltered up to 180 Jews, and housed various Jewish institutions operating in Kielce at the time. The local police went to investigate the alleged crime in the building, and even though Henryk's story began to unravel (the building, for example, had no basement), a large crowd of angry Poles, including one thousand workers from the Ludwikow steel mill, gathered outside the building.

Polish soldiers and policemen entered the building and called upon the Jewish residents to surrender any weapons. After an unidentified individual fired a shot, officials and civilians fired upon the Jews inside the building, killing some of them. Outside, the angry crowd viciously beat Jews fleeing the shooting, or driven onto the street by the attackers, killing some of them. By day's end, civilians, soldiers and police had killed 42 Jews and injured 40 others. Two non-Jewish Poles died as well, killed either by Jewish residents inside the building or by fellow non-Jewish Poles for offering aid to the Jewish victims ...

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007941

... On the morning of July 4, a small group of state militia and local police approached the building to investigate the alleged kidnapping. As rumors of misdeeds spread, a version of the centuries-old “blood libel” that Jews were kidnapping Christian children for ritual sacrifice, a mob began to assemble. But it was the police and military who started the violence ... Though they were ostensibly there to protect civilians and keep the peace, officers instead opened fire and began dragging Jews into the courtyard, where the townspeople savagely attacked the Jewish residents.

That day, Jewish men and women were stoned, robbed, beaten with rifles, stabbed with bayonets, and hurled into a river that flowed nearby. Yet while other Kielce residents walked by, none did anything to stop it. It wasn’t until noon that another group of soldiers was sent in to break up the crowd and evacuate the wounded and dead. In the afternoon, a group of metal workers ran toward the building, armed with iron bars and other weapons. The residents of 7 Planty were relieved; they thought these men had come to help. Instead, the metal workers began brutally attacking and killing those still alive inside the building.

The violence went on for hours. As Miriam Guterman, one of the last remaining survivors of the pogrom, put it in the 2016 documentary film Bogdan’s Journey: "I couldn’t believe that these were humans" ...

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/kielce-post-holocaust-pogrom-poland-still-fighting-over-180967681/

... the murder of 42 Jews in Kielce, as monstrous and harrowing a crime as it was, was not the only story of murder in the post-war period in Poland. As many as one to two thousand Jews may have been murdered after the war by Poles. Kielce, however, was the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back." Kielce reflected the stark betrayal of a Jewish community that was trying to reestablish itself, at a time when it should have received compassion and sympathy from its neighbors. Those who had survived the Holocaust only to experience murder at the hands of their own countrymen could not bear this additional tragedy ...

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/education/newsletter/33/anti_jewish.asp

[syringis]

36. Hello Struggle4progress

Thank you for sharing

I have replied above (reply#25). It is very condensed but it gives a general idea of how and why of the law (I disagree)

[niyad]

37. tears and sorrow, especially at that last image. I don't understand what they thought the law

would accomplish?

[syringis]

38. Hello Niyad

I gave a very general idea on reply#25

I don't understand too.

[Mosby]

40. I think that last cartoon is misguided and offensive

Especially given that Antisemitism is out of control in Europe, reaching levels not seen since the Holocaust and it's primarily due to Muslim immigrants and the far right response.

The cartoon seems more like propaganda than some sort of statement that Muslims are the "new Jews".

People need to stop appropriating Anne Frank for their pet causes.

[syringis]

41. I don't think so

It is very symbolic : yesterday Jews were the scapegoats, today Muslims are.

What I find really misguided and offensive beyond the imaginable is this :

"Especially given that Antisemitism is out of control in Europe, due to Muslim immigrants and the far right response."

Due to Muslim immigrants ?

So, a Muslim immigrant is de facto an antisemitic or a terrorist ?

You, a Jew from the people who have been persecuted, tortured, chased, abused, stolen, deprived of their rights, for so many centuries, you dare to say such thing ? You, who know better than anyone else what being a scapegoat mean ?

You should be ashamed.

[Mosby]

42. Antisemitic incidents are up all over Europe

And it's been documented that much of it is coming from Muslim immigrants. Maybe your not aware of how bad it's gotten in places like Berlin, Paris, Malmo. Synagogues and religious schools, they now require 24 hour police protection.

__________


In 2016, Germany recorded 1,468 anti-Semitic incidents, an increase from previous years that has put Germany's Jewish community on edge, According to a recent survey by the Bielefeld University in western Germany, 62% of Jewish respondents said they experience anti-Semitism in their everyday lives, while 28% said they were victims of verbal attacks or harassment in the past year.

The survey points to increased anti-Semitism by Muslim newcomers and a strengthened right-wing nativist movement, said Andreas Zick, who led the study.

There's a lot of evidence from our studies that the Internet and young Muslim men in public are threatening (Jews),” Zick said. “Refugees coming in don't perceive that there's a strong norm against anti-Semitism.”

Such sentiments prompted a Jewish community center in Berlin to launch an initiative to combat anti-Semitism.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/12/21/anti-semitism-germany-jews-discrimination-muslims-right-wing-nationalists/962383001/


Sweden’s new wave of anti-Semitism

MALMÖ, Sweden — During anthropological fieldwork here in Sweden’s third-largest city 20 years ago, I interviewed a young Palestinian man who thought it was a shame that the “Nazis didn’t get to finish their job with the Jews” during World War II. This is of course an extreme example of one man who does not speak for his community.

Unfortunately since then, Malmö — with its significant community of Muslim immigrants — has become infamous for its growing anti-Semitism, which has prompted many Jews to leave. More recently, Trump’s decision to relocate the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem has provoked attacks on synagogues in Sweden as well as openly expressed threats to kill Jews.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2017/12/21/sweden-antisemitism/


MUSLIM ANTI-SEMITISM THREATENS FRANCE’S DEMOCRACY

http://www.newsweek.com/muslim-anti-semitism-threatens-frances-democracy-716055

I hope you read these links.


Eta as for Poland, they are basically a right wing counrty, probably due to the influence of the USSR.

Ukraine and Poland: Same Old Backward Rightwing Elements

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/nikolas-kozloff/ukraine-and-poland-same-o_b_8423704.html

[syringis]

43. I'm Belgian, living in Belgium...

I'm aware and I know what is happening.

It is true that anti-Semitism is sadly growing again. But anti-Muslim feelings too...

It is not by making a confusion between Muslims and terrorists that things will get better...

[Mosby]

44. except there is a connection and denying it doesnt help

Paris—“In the Merah household, we were brought up with hating Jews, the hatred of everything that was not Muslim.”

These were the chilling words of Abdelghani Merah at the trial of his brother, Abdelkader Merah, who was accused of conspiring with a third brother, Mohamed, to murder three soldiers, three Jewish schoolchildren, and a teacher in Toulouse, France, in 2012.

Abdelghani also revealed, at the time, that “when the medical examiner brought [his] brother’s corpse home, people came over. They cried tears of joy. They said that he had brought France to its knees. That he did well. Their only regret was that he had not killed more Jewish children.”

These appalling remarks, which suggest the environment in which Mohamed Merah was immersed and his family’s way of thinking, have sparked a debate about the extent of hatred of Jews in the French Muslim community.

For years, it has been nearly impossible to speak about French Muslim anti-Semitism.

Many refused to take notice for reasons of ideology, discomfort, or lack of courage. Many feared being accused of “playing into the hands of the far right,” and others thought it inconceivable that a French Muslim minority, itself victimized by discrimination and racism, could itself be guilty of racism and even violence. So for too long there was silence.

The Merah trial exposed a reality in France: anti-Semitic roots run deep within some elements of the French Muslim community. It is due to several factors, among them: manipulation of the Palestinian cause, failure of integration into French society, radical preachers and the funding of mosques, and satellite television stations broadcasting a steady stream of anti-Semitic discourse.

Whatever the reasons, the problem is spreading. And because France has waited too long to address the issue, Islamist extremists have cashed in. Adding to this already combustible mix is social media, through which anti-Semites broadcast anti-Zionism and conspiracy theories as a popular weapon against Jews.

A recent illustration of the impact of social media came in reaction to the Tariq Ramadan affair, in which the well-known Muslim scholar has been accused of raping and sexually harassing several women.

A court sketch, made on October 20, 2017 at the Paris courthouse, shows Abdelkader Merah during his trial for complicity in a series of shootings committed by his brother Mohamed in Toulouse and Montauban in 2012. Violence, crime, anti-Semitism and seething resentment of France: the toxic family life that shaped the notorious French jihadist Mohamed Merah was vividly exposed in court. BENOIT PEYRUCQ/AFP/Getty

In the days after the revelations by Henda Ayari, the first alleged victim to accuse Mr. Ramadan, a huge wave of threats and insults were posted on French Muslim web sites and social networks calling her—among other epithets—a “whore paid by Zionist Jews to smear Tariq Ramadan’s good name.”

The phenomenon of French Muslim anti-Semitism was first noted only by a few academics and groups like the American Jewish Committee (AJC) as early as 2000, when anti-Semitism exploded in France in the wake of the second intifada. Anti-Semitic acts ramped up dramatically at the time, going from 81 incidents in 1998 to 744 in 2000.

There have been a number of studies tracing this disturbing trend, notably by Fondapol in partnership with AJC (in 2014 and 2016), showing that deeply-rooted anti-Semitic stereotypes continue to be widespread in certain Muslim communities in France.

While the number of anti-Semitic incidents in 2016, 808, remains similar to the 2000 figure, these are rarely related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict anymore. The problem now is structural.

It exists on the far right, the far left, and among Muslims with a fundamentalist vision of Islam, just as in several other Western European countries. Yet French anti-Semitism is distinguished in Europe by its level of violence, ranging from attacks to abductions and even to murders.

But only recently have a few intellectuals and politicians, in particular from the political left, dared to speak out. Notably, former Prime Minister Manuel Valls, a Socialist, was among the first to describe, denounce, and combat it, and also to criticize those on the left who opposed him, because he understood that the fight against anti-Semitism, from wherever it comes, was and is a fight for France’s values.

Now, some French Muslim intellectuals are speaking out. The most recent example is film director Said Ben Said, who, writing in the French newspaper Le Monde , clearly and courageously criticized Arab Muslim anti-Semitism, after learning that he would not be allowed to sit on a film jury in Carthage because he had produced films in Israel.

The moral courage of such Muslim intellectuals should be commended because we know how difficult it is for them to make themselves heard. Journalists often prefer to invite more controversial figures such as Tariq Ramadan to their TV and radio shows.

And even when these intellectuals are invited, the simple act of denouncing anti-Semitism and extremism makes them susceptible to criticism, insults, and even threats of violence.

They are afraid. How could they not be, when they see that jihadists assassinate French Muslim soldiers and policemen because they are considered apostates, or that outspoken Muslims who denounce violence need police protection?

http://www.newsweek.com/muslim-anti-semitism-threatens-frances-democracy-716055

------

FWIW I think it's impossible to separate religion from the culture it emerges from, European Muslims are simply expressing the values that they have been raised with, including a rejection of egalitarianism, liberal pluralism and democracy. Obviously religion plays a part in forming those opinions but culture plays a large role as well.

[syringis]

45. This

FWIW I don't think this really has anything to do with religion, Muslim Antisemitism goes back a long way and is based more on the idea of domination and control. The immigrants are simply expressing the values that they have been raised with, including a rejection of egalitarianism, liberal pluralism and democracy.

Here I totally and strongly agree with you, except for the last part about the rejection

If you don't mind, I will not argue for the rest. I said it once in a thread : I never ever argue about this conflict on the net. It is too sensitive, it gets easily derailed and very frustrating.

I really do have a deep knowledge about the conflict and its historical roots.

All I can say is that is one of the trickiest problem (if not simply the trickiest), on both side people are suffering.

It is not all black on one side and white on the other, alas, for many countries it is a convenient conflict, an outlet.

It is clearly sensitive for you. I really understand you and respect what you feel. Also, even if I think you are not entirely right, you are certainly not totally wrong.

I reacted to the "due to Muslims". I hope you'll agree it is a bit harsh to present it this way.