HOLOCAUST as a power word

I was watching CNN just now, their report on the protests in front of the Israeli embassy in London against Israel's air strikes on Gaza.

Among the assorted - not very many different - signs the protesters were carrying two were predominant: Free Palestine and Stop the holocaust in Gaza.

In the news "ticker" running at the bottom of the screen CNN chose to highlight the slogan Free Palestine - which is indeed the most all-encompassing and essential message of these protests. That is, in fact, the ultimate goal of most politically active Palestinians - certainly of the Hamas.

The eye of the camera, however, lingered on another one: Stop the holocaust in Gaza.
(N.B. It may have "lingered" on it simply because the group displaying it was the most vocal and visually agitated one.)

In the past thirty years or so, the term holocaust has become synonymous with the most unfortunate chapters in the history of Jewish people.
Furthermore, it has been elevated to a sort of "trademark" of the Jewish people and culture. This statement may sound cynical (even though its intention is far from it), but it is the truth.
(Should you need proof, you can prove it to yourself quite easily. When you hear it, do you think of, say, Rwanda? Armenia in 1916? The Nuba? The Roma - AKA Gypsies - in Nazi Germany? Do you?)

And it was the EYE - not history books or articles - which elevated it to such a status. The eye of the camera - of Hollywood, to be more precise. (Of Steven Spielberg's cameras, to be painfully precise.) The public in the TV era think with their eye.

And so, if you are going to use it - or any "power word" - for your own purposes, you'd better do it by harnessing the power of the camera. Articles, editorials and so on will only get you so far - which, in this day and age, with functional illiteracy rampant, isn't very far. To be seen at all, you have to be seen on TV.

Which brings us to today's protests in London.

If the protesters are using the word "holocaust" as a premeditated attempt to succinctly represent the extent and human suffering, the horror (perceived or real) of what the Israeli government is doing, they have jumped the gun.

To have its presumed intended effect, such a powerful "power word" should only be used in conjunction with much more spectacular protests - or as a consequence of much more (you're going to hate me for this, but your hatred will be misplaced) "dramatic" carnage.

For the media, a few hundred dead - unless it's in the USA or a European capital - is simply not "striking" enough. Worrying - yes, breaking news - most definitely. But at this stage - which, admittedly, may escalate, and quickly - those protests don't seem compelling enough to command "the world's" - i.e. the media - undivided attention.

Now imagine this scene. The air strikes continue, the number of dead rises, the media reports become much more alarming, until there is an ocean of people willing to take center stage in one or more prominent European and USA cities - all displaying just two signs: Free Palestine and (as an example) Stop the Holocaust in Palestine.

The message you want picked by the media and the world's public must be clear and concise (and should not contain too many - more than four - words) - and, of course, in direct correlation with the events that triggered the protests.

And so, you choose a clear and concise wording of your ultimate aim - in this case, - complemented by a message the force of which is directly borrowed from the force of your adversary.
In martial arts terms: you use your adversary's own weight and strength against him. The use of the word holocaust in these specific circumstances is such a message.

What happens?
By seemingly (I said seemingly) mis-using the term usually "reserved" for the Jewish (hence, by implication - whether justifiably or not is another question - Israel) it triggers a brief pause: it makes people stop and think, evaluate what the term really means (we're talking of an extremely fast thought process here: of seconds, perhaps tenths of seconds).

The final conclusion regarding its validity (most reasonably educated people would, of course, agree that the term cannot be justifiably applied to just one group of the world's population) is almost irrelevant.

Because the power of the "power word" - holocaust - is still there.
The emotional and intellectual power it has accumulated - via books and, most especially, the media - from the countless tragedies associated with it is intact. Only, now it has been transfered onto another group.
Furthermore, when it is associated with bloody events - on a large scale - that everyone can witness it potentially harnesses the haunting shadow of historic collective guilt expressed (if not necessarily heart-felt) by parts of the intellectual public - including politicians - regarding the world's lack of reaction to the mistreatment of Jews (and not just them, by the way) 70 years ago.

We're not talking of necessarily very profound emotions on the part of the viewing public; and even the rage - i.e. the direction of the emotions - of those who may oppose its use by the Palestinians is more or less irrelevant. (And BTW, the less the public knows about history, the better.)

What matters is that the transfer of such a powerful and long-lasting "power word" effectively attracts attention; and when it's done on a very large, visually overwhelming scale - and consistently - the process of empathy, emotional adoption (on the part of the viewing public), begins.

And so does the increase of the protesters' bargaining power.
In the eye of the public, of course.
What goes on behind the scenes... ah well, that is another matter.
"History-makers" aren't always the fastest thinking lot around. And they seem to be blood-powered or something: they don't budge unless X-number of gallons of blood have been spilled.
But that is another story.

Or is it?



* This is a slightly longer version of the article published here.

An Experiment (please ignore the post)

A good friend of ours (whose posts we've borrowed on one or two occasions) was discussing certain political issues with us the other day, and she mentioned that one - just one - of the posts in her blog does not show through Google search even several YEARS after having been posted.

Is it really just a coincidence that the post contains thoughts that some overzealous watchdogs might consider "politically incorrect"?

Is it?

We'll see soon enough, I think.
Because we're reposting the post here, if only for a few weeks - long enough for Google to crawl over it.


P.S.
It worked - within minutes.
We still don't know why the original blog post is being ignored, though.

But that's not the main point of this post scriptum... A few minutes after posting this, the forget-me-not who really forgets not (like, anything!) said: "Say... isn't it May 29 today? The anniversary of the Fall of Constantinople!"

So it is.
And, believe it or not, it is a synchronicity.

Don't you just love it when that happens? ;)

"The Holy Wisdom has left the building"

In case anyone doubted it, the vocal (and in their patent irrationality almost touching) demonstrations by the Turks have now irrefutably demonstrated that their country - I mean Turkey, not any of the European countries hosting their emigrants - would indeed be an undesirable addition to the EU.

The Turks are bitter with "Europe" for expressing its concerns about Turkey as a candidate for the EU and for, shockingly, even pointing out Turkey's attitude towards its citizens of Kurdish nationality.

Furthermore, Turkey is opposed to the EU basing its frame of unity on Christianity as a value reference point. It doesn't really matter whether this is true or not. It's the underlying principle what matters.

Each and everyone of the current EU members is a secular state, with a well-defined constituional separation of Church and State. So is the EU, as a sum of its components as well as an autonomous structure.

So, what is there for the Turks to fear? If Turkey is really a secular state (not that Ata Turk's reforms were really all that beneficial for the country in the long run), why should it fear a political structure loosely - and nominally - based on values such as unconditional forgiveness and equal "charity" towards everyone?

I can only speculate what the answer could be. Islam would not have equal standing in the allegedly christocentric EU - right?

Wrong.
All religions - in fact, almost all cults (with very few notable exceptions) - have equal standing in the EU: that is, no real "standing" at all. (Which might be precisely the cause of many troubles this attitude was supposed to prevent - but more on that on some other occasion...)
If anything, non-Christian religions are more shielded than any of Europe's cultural and (especially) religious traditions.

A glance at the crowds on Istanbul's streets makes it obvious that Turkey's outrage (?!) at the Pope's announced visit to Istanbul, the ex-Constantinople, is indeed clearly based on religious grounds, denying the country's nominal secularity - and casting a sharp shadow of ridicule on its own claims against the alleged religious basis of the EU structure.

Furthermore, there's loud talk of reverting the "Aya Sofia" (a name phonetically adapted from the Greek Hagia Sophia, the 'Holy Wisdom'), which was made into a museum by Ata Turk, to its former role of mosque. Of course they fail to mention that it became a mosque only after the 1453 Turkish occupation of Constantinople; before that, since 637, when it was completed, it was a Christian church - in fact, the greatest and most revered one of all Christian churches.

They are only "making a point", of course. And that point should be taken by the EU; it should be taken very seriously.

Turkey would like to join the EU either

(a) for economic reasons only (and I am sorry to disappoint all of you, cynics, but merely economic allegiances never stand the test of time)

or

(b) with some other purpose in mind - and if so, you bet it isn't "multicultural coexistence".

I am somewhat saddened by the politically correct silence of the EU, although I wouldn't expect it to react in any other way. There is a huge elephant in the middle of the room, and nobody is speaking about it. When I was in school (not very many decades ago), we still knew and dared to mention that "elephant". I am not sure that today's school children do.

Let's mention the name of that historical monster: it's the Turkish invasions and bloody excursions into Europe.

There is enough material about them on the web - though not nearly enough to convey even half of the horror that they brought to the European population of the 15th, 16th and 17th century (and in certain parts of Europe even later).

I wish the textbook stories about the Turkish invasions were exaggerated; for a long time I thought they were.
Now I know history and so I know better: they weren't exaggerated. The impaling of babies and toddlers in front of their parents' eyes, the raping of women regardless of their age and condition (including those who had just given birth), the disappearance of thousands upon thousands of people, of entire villages, reduced to slavery or horrific death, are - much to my sadness - NOT a legend, not a lie, not even an exaggeration. They are the historical truth - a truth that my ancestors had to live with, day in and day out.

Is Europe entitled to reproach (not that it does) atrocities to Turkey, considering its own bloody past?

Yes, it is - precisely because of its own bloody past.

Europe has been chastised by its own wars and aggressions, and has learned from them. By acknowledging its own history, it has transcended it.

No such thing seems to have happened in Turkey. They have apparently not been chastised, not by themselves, not by anyone else. They have chosen to forget their subhuman war "tactics" (as well as the many defeats that the unarmed peasant and town populations had inflicted upon their great army by means of pure wit and self-preserving unity, before the Turks' final defeat in 1683).

They have chosen to forget all that; and no official voice from Europe has ever reminded them of those unpleasant facts.

I mention such "ancient" history because the Turks themselves have now, rather short-sightedly, chosen to poke into the embers of "ancient" history.


Furthermore, the Turks' apparent genocidal tendencies were horrifically confirmed by their effective genocide of Armenians as late as 1917. And they still are being confirmed to this day, by their treatment of the Kurdish people.

I can certanly understand that Europe fails to mention the Turkish invasions of the past centuries. It would be rather awkward to do so - even though the disingenuous, double-faced attitude of Turkey towards history would make it perfectly justifiable.

What we, the peoples of Europe, absolutely should not tolerate, by remaining silent, is the fact that the EU - and the USA - have failed to even properly acknowledge the Armenian genocide of 1915-17 and even before that. That is an unforgivable and intolerable distortion of history by omission, by silence.

As for the Kurds, God bless them, the Turks don't like to hear about them or, much less, about their treatment of them and other "minorities". That's not going to change.
Which means that "we" have to.
Or else, it means that we are going to condone genocide, past and present, and invite an unrepentant thug into our living room.

In my opinion, the EU should definitely change its official attitude towards Turkey.

I certainly changed mine.

If asked to vote for or against Turkey entering the EU, until a few weeks ago I would have abstained. In the name of honesty, impartiality and good will, I would have refrained from voting, for I really didn't know whether Turkey's joining the EU would be a good idea, either for the EU or for Turkey itself.

As from today, this EU citizen's vote in that matter would be a definite NO.

***

VOTE FOR THY NEIGHBOURS AND THY BRETHREN IN FAITH (not to mention thy guest workers' homelands)

The text below is borrowed verbatim from a sister - well, "cousin" - blog. The post was written more than a year ago - and yet everything said in it still applies... (duh!)

***

I've always wondered how many people actually watch (I hesitate to use the word "listen to") the dinosaur called the Eurosong.

It is my suspicion that most people only watch the final voting (which has long since become a self-parody, noticeable to everyone except the voters and the votees, it seems).

But even that has become tedious and boring beyond ridiculousness. After all, anyone who has ever watched it more than two or three times, knows by heart how each country will vote: Andorra will always vote for Spain and for France. Greece will vote for its neighbouring countries (except Macedonia, which it doesn't recognise as a country), with the highest number of votes going to Cyprus (the Greek part, of course), and viceversa. Russia will vote for all its surrounding neighbours and for countries which claim adherence to the Orthodox faith. Turkey will vote for Armenia (oh yeah, that'll take the sting out of the genocide of 1916!), Germany will vote for Turkey, no matter what: it's the country whence most of its foreign »guest workers« come from.

And so on.

The endurance of the cretinous anomaly called the Eurosong is one of the great mysteries of our time. I am pretty sure you have no idea who won last year, even if you did listen to the... ehm, music. With very few exceptions, none of the winners – not to mention the non-winners (who were more often than not actually better than the winners) – faded back into international obscurity whence they had emerged for that single night.

It's the debutante ball for »new democracies« - a sort of Vienna Ball, minus the music. In other words, it's tacky, wasteful, has no discernible social or even political purpose (even though voting is done almost exclusively on the basis of current politics).

Bring in the clowns already...
They are way more entertaining and they certainly have more political relevance, free thought - and more durable musical influence.

***

N.B.

And the clowns ARE in... :)