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Exploitation of the Nazi Holocaust in the MFSA’s “Social Questions Bulletin”

The Methodist Federation for Social Action (“MFSA”) uses an article by Dr. Sara Roy to exploit the history of the Jewish Holocaust in its January-February 2008 edition of “Social Questions Bulletin.”

• The article by Dr. Roy first assumes an attitude of sympathy towards the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

As a child of Holocaust survivors she says it was the “defining feature of [her] life” (p.1) and describes how her father’s memories caused her “such pain” that she had to ask him to stop sharing them with her. (p. 2)

• But Dr. Roy’s attitude turns to one of contempt when she refers to her aunt’s identification of Israel as “the only safe place for Jews after the Holocaust.” (p. 2)

Dr. Roy proudly reports that her own mother refused to go to Israel because of her belief that “tolerance, compassion and justice cannot be practiced or extended when one lives only among one’s own.” (p. 2) Dr. Roy fails to explain, however, what she thinks is so unique about the Jewish people that only their state ( as opposed to Japanese, Italian, Swedish or Palestinian states for example) would be incompatible with “tolerance, compassion and justice.”

• The MFSA article accuses Israelis of being disdainful of the Jews who died in the Holocaust.

“For [Israelis] . . . .the Holocaust and pre-state Jewish life . . . . were times of shame, when Jews were weak and passive, inferior and unworthy, deserving not of our respect but of our disdain.” “There was little need to understand those millions who perished . . . . less need to honor them.” (p. 14)

• It accuses Israelis of using the Jewish experience of the Holocaust and their disdain of Jewish victims as an excuse to persecute Palestinians.

“[T]he Holocaust was used by the [Jewish] state as a defense against others, as a justification for political and military acts. . . . If so many among us could negate our own and so pervert the truth, why not with the Palestinians?” (p. 14)

• Dr. Roy pulls isolated instances of abuse by Israeli soldiers out of context to draw false parallels between Israelis and Nazis.

After describing an incident where an Israeli soldier humiliated a Palestinian man in front of his grandson (Dr. Roy neither identifies the soldiers involved or the actual location of the incident), Dr. Roy states “I immediately thought of the stories my parents had told me of how Jews had been treated by the Nazis in the 1930s . . . .What happened to the old man was absolutely equivalent in principle, intent, and impact.” (p. 14)

Dr. Roy speaks out of both sides of her mouth. On the one hand she is careful to state that “Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians is not the moral equivalent of the Nazi genocide of the Jews.” (p. 15) But then, on the other hand, she proceeds to expressly “compare Israeli actions or policies with those of the Nazis” when she openly distorts and misrepresents the reality of Israeli conduct in the territories to correspond with actual Nazi policies by asking “what does it mean when Israeli soldiers paint identification numbers on Palestinian arms; when young Palestinian men and boys of a certain age are told through Israeli loudspeakers to gather in the town square; when Israeli soldiers openly admit to shooting Palestinian children for sport . . .” (p. 15)

Israel can fairly be criticized for some of its behavior in the Palestinian territories;

but the Methodist Federation for Social Action has crossed the line of decency by using Dr. Roy’s article to create false parallels between Israelis and Nazis.

The Holocaust undoubtedly left profound scars on the Jewish soul and psyche. How Jews grapple with this will differ from person to person;

however, no one should exploit this tragic episode in Jewish collective life by publishing an article like Dr. Roy’s and using it in their arsenal of weapons against Israel.