Like you, I find the lack of empathy, historical memory, and imagination at this site to be profoundly troubling. Far too many people glibly wish on others that which they cannot imagine and would not be able to bear. I'm not going to address/engage with the Holocaust deniers, because I have truly come to believe that they are mentally ill (how else to judge those who wish to deny the most thoroughly documented -- through multiple sources, media, nations, observers, witnesses, participants and survivors-- catastrophe in human history?)so it simply wouldn't be fair to try to engage them. I used to think that it was a rare disease, but reading these pages has disabused me of that fantasy. Sad. Sad and really frightening.

I compare this illness to those who keep voicing the belief that those who have been tortured did not "really" suffer. There were many letters on another Greenwald thread to this effect. Because the Canadian citizen was "only" in a "grave box" for most of a year, that doesn't count. Because he does not bear visible wounds, it doesn't count. I've given up trying to make sense of this kind of fatal lack of imagination. As you said, these people should hope they never have visited on them what they so cavalierly wish on others. The real issue, of course, is that this very attitude is what dooms us to continually enact horror.

Thank you for sharing your ideas so eloquently.

But I'm sick to fuck

Of his sulking sad

I know you've signed off but if you happen to come back and read just wanted you to know. It seems like you're just trying to understand history. I've just recently been made aware of how much was known about the cultural norms that brought about the atrocities during world war two. All my life, I've been baffled by the brutality of it and couldn't connect that horrid man with all of it. Look at the blissful expressions of those old newsreels on the faces of those people saluting the monster while he passed, and you just have to know they loved the monster. Years before, someone wrote that they identified with the monsters in their fairy tales rather than the hero that defeats them. How true did that prove to be? It's such a shame that they were allowed to get a pass on so much and then rise again to cause the death of fifty million people.

You holocaust deniers imagine you'll always be safe, well fed, able to ridicule people who have gone through things your wretched little minds can't conceive of, but you may one day get a rude awakening. In fact, I'm sure you will. Where will it come from? Think about Sophie's Choice. She believed the Nazi propaganda, but they put her in a camp anyway. Those types don't care if you agree with them, they just like to kill. If I were you, I'd be careful about judging an old man who was a child when the monsters came and devoured his whole community and how he survived is not for us to evaluate. What would you do to survive? You've never been tested to find out, but someday you will be. Am I wishing this on you? No, I just know what happened to the people who mocked Jesus on the way to the cross. He told them not to weep for him but for themselves. So go ahead, laugh at Wiesel, spew hatred and you'll find out where that path leads.

Elie is a monopolist and they failed to get their shoa license from him. Unlicensed shoa comparisons are strictly prohibited.

I have been up for two days. And my belly is full. Someone has just informed that indeed, the word "Elder" in my paragraph brought to mind the Protocols. I can honestly it never occurred to me. I say "elder" all the time.

Anyhoo, maybe we, or all of us, can discuss the meaning of the word "Zionism" at a later date. I do distinguish between "Jew" and "Zionist," and do not use it as code. Check out my Sig.

'nites.

Finkelstein nailed him. He IS a weasel. He was protected in camps, Today, while he is a milionaire, actual Holocaust survivors languish in poverty in Israel.

The Shoah is Mr. Weasel's trump card, fueling his biased career. You don't, after all, hear the "Great Man" speaking up for Palestinians. How odd, that: An Ashkenazi emulating a Nazi!

What does an abusive person do? She justifies her acts by saying she suffered so much that she has no choice but to make others suffer, too. And for their own good. And we are to "understand."

But if we "see" why she does what she does, why not also "see" what was done TO her?

Israel and its propagandists justify abuse by saying, "We suffered the most in history!" Of course, it's a lie. More died under Stalin and Mao than Hitler. But the point is not to be factual. It's justifying the abuse THEY inflict.

Wiesel is the Jewish Jesse Jackson (that sham artiste who funded his hoochie's kids with organizational funds) and Al Sharpton (who ignores black-on-white violence: http://tinyurl.com/kqso4d

Wiesel, Inc. wants to dominate discourse a la Goebbels. Ain't gonna happen, E-man. Holocaustians own neither history nor analogies. We won't kow-tow to them no more.

I just said "Oh My God" outloud when I read the following:

and also it's offensive to the nth degree to use the phrases "elder" and "zionism" together to describe a Jewish person

You have to be fucking kidding me. This is Liberal hysteria to the nth degree. What are you, setting me up for a hate crime?

I used the term "elder" out of respect, as in "senior citizen." See, I am from the Midwest, and was raised with Southern values, in which we respect our elders. I was also raised with stories about Native Americans, and the term "elder" was used a lot in their stories. As it is used in all indigenous peoples, who respect their elders. All I meant was, as someone who has lived a long time, he has wisdom most of us do not have, that is all that I meant. Any sane person could see that.

You did invoke it, just now, and beforehand, in your mind. It never crossed my mind.

This is insanity, absolute insanity: Paranoid delusions of persecution.

Is the Holocaust™ a mind virus, a form of mental illness?