It became clear … that two positions had emerged: the position within which the Holocaust and other anti-Semitic atrocities are seen as one instance of many examples of genocidal horror, and the position within which the Holocaust and anti-Semitism are seen as distinct historical and moral entities. One side mocked the idea of comparative victimhood; the other warned that downplaying the uniqueness of the Holocaust could lead to Holocaust denial.
This is a characteristically even-handed and insightful bit of of a analysis. My own feeling is that even though, as Kenneth Patchen put it, "there are no proportions in death," there was something uniquely evil about the Holocaust and to acknowledge that is hardly to give mass murderers like Stalin and Mao a pass. It also seems to me that criticism of Israeli foreign policy (the point of which is that nation's survival) is usually just a disguise for anti-Semitism. What exactly is so great about Palestinian or Iranian foreign policy?
There really is no new anti-Semitism. Just the same old same old.
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