FO, I'm sure you're right that the social status of Hitler's victims has a lot to do with the attention that gets paid to the Holocaust. I'm sure that the fact it happened in Europe and not someplace like Asia or Africa also has a lot to do with it. But I think it's more that other episodes of mass murder don't get the attention they deserve then that the Holocaust gets more then it deserves.

About 3 million people died in the Russian Civil War, which was by far the bloodiest part of the Russian Revolution. Keep in mind that was an actual war, not the mass murder of defenseless civilians. And most of the cases of mass murder weren't proper genocides in that they often targeted political opposition or segments of society that were seen as being opposed to the regime, such as Communist purges. Even when racial or ethnic groups were targeted, such as when Pol Pot targeted ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thais in Cambodia, it was not on anything like the scale of the Holocaust.

I think you hit on another important difference between the Holocaust and other genocides. Most of those other instances ran their course and ended on their own. The Holocaust was stopped. If it hadn't been it's entirely possible that Hitler would have succeeded in completely exterminating the Jews in Europe. The Holocaust was a deliberate attempt to completely exterminate an entire race of people on a continent wide scale that came close to succeeding. That's what sets it apart. The Khmer Rouge could never have possibly exterminated 2/3 of the Chinese in all of Asia.

Of course, none of this even remotely begins to excuse what the government of Israel is doing today.

No.
What is unprecedented is that the genocide hit people with money and decently integrated in the society.
People that had power and with which is easy to identify and empathise.
The survivors had the means and the resolve to (rightly) complain about it.

The other genocides?
Different skin colour, different job, different clothes, different language.
And most importantly, those who committed the genocide got away with it and cleaned up, while the other powers let them because it was nicer to be allies.
(Red Revolution? How many deaths? But they won the war...)

Antisemitism and the murder of Jews was certainly not something new with the Third Reich. What sets the Holocaust apart is its scale and scope - the Nazis brought industrialization and economies of scale to mass murder. There are instances of mass murder with higher body counts, and there have been more intense episodes of genocide, but there are few, if any, instances in history of killings on this scale combined with the systematic targeting of particular groups. Approximately 11 - 17 million people died in the Holocaust, including 2/3 of the Jews in all of Europe. By comparison, Cambodia's Killing Fields claimed 1.7 - 2.5 million victims. The Rwandan Genocide killed 800,000. Stalin's Great Purge officially killed 680,000, and possibly as many as 1.2 million. Mao Zedong may have the highest body count, with 40 - 70 million deaths attributed to his regime, however a large portion of those deaths were due to famine in The Great Leap Forward and other such incidents. So basically, the Holocaust was the most extreme event of its kind in modern times.

As for Netanyahu, considering that he seems to have come to the US purely to try to push us into a war, I can only applaud Obama for not meeting with him. Personally, I'd have been tempted to throw his warmongering butt out of the country.

Given that the Israeli government right now (or...to be more rpecise, prominent elements in said government) is pushing right now, hard, for a major war that will devastate the region and lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths, as well as cratering the world economy, I'm not too concerned about hurting their feelings. Nonetheless, kessy makes some good pioints.

Still...as a percentage of the population, the Rwanda genocide was pretty bad (especially when one reads about how elements in the French Secret Service assisted in the preparations because they were worried about undue "Anglo" influence in Rwanda). The devastation of millenia-old communities in Iraq seems pretty bad. While the Holocaust was terrible on an unbeleivable scale, I am suspicious of efforts to paint it as unique, as sui generis. Cambodia, anyone?

I can compare the direction they are taking, and I think it is a useful comparison.

And yes, it is conveniently forgotten that the Nazi had it rather easy because everyone else hated the jews anyway.
But hey, some won the war and some lost it.

I'm not sure you can compare two things like this. The easy way out of it is, "we're not that bad." You have to criticize them on their own merits of terribleness. Merits... of ... terribleness. ??? They are not likely to reflect on their actions and realize the horror they've become like their enemy, because they are behaving unreasonably out of a deluded self-righteousness and trying to fulfill a prophesy. Reality doesn't matter, death doesn't matter. I live in a fairly Jewish neighborhood, which means they have a visible presence, but are not the majority, and having a visible presence means they are orthodox. They stand with Israel, the banners on the temples say so, and they don't really seem to mix with others. They live here but they stick with their own. It's really weird and that's how they filter what information they have and shape their opinions. These are not the doctor and lawyer and comedy Jews you see stereotyped on TV. They're persecuted and they've always been persecuted, and Hitler actually helped their victim status. We're all mad at Hitler, aren't we? That means we get sucked into pro-Israel stuff. The middle-of-the-road nominal Jews are still culturally aligned with their birthright; liberal Christians are fond of and inclusive of their friends the Jews; fundamentalist Christians require that Israel retain establishment; and I think all those "COEXIST" hippies just think Palestinians ought to chill and let the Jews hang out there too. The last one is a coin-toss, I think the less informed are pro-Israel, like we've been raised to be in the post-WWII era of not hating the Jews so much. Didn't everyone before Hitler used to hate Jews? I think it was a thing. Did Europe hate Hitler for killing Jews or mostly for taking their land and bombing them and stuff? We're not that fucked up about other genocides in history.

Fair.

What if I clarify?
"Israel is walking on the same path as Nazi Germany."

Hmmm. You make a good point.

The Nazis also rounded up and systematically exterminate millions of people from a variety of groups of undesirables, conducted horrific medical experiments on prisoners, used POW's as slave labor and literally worked them to death...

WWII is the most extreme event in recent world history. A comparison to the Nazis is *the* single most inflammatory thing you can say about anyone. You should use it very, very selectively. When you invoke the Nazis you evoke the worst of their crimes, whether those are the relevant aspects of the Third Reich or not. Consider this. If I were to say that Dwight Eisenhower modeled his Presidency on what he saw in Nazi Germany, what does that sound like? Strictly speaking, it is a true statement. Of course I'm only talking about how Ike was so impressed by the Autobahn that he went on to model the Interstate system on it.

The irony of a nation that was founded as a refuge for those fleeing tyranny turning around and oppressing another group is hard to resist. But you should resist it. A Nazi comparison is a rhetorical nuclear bomb - you don't use it in a street brawl. And there are plenty of more appropriate comparisons to use. Mark mentioned a really good one: Apartheid.

I don't think that anything anyone has said here is antisemitic, and I'm sorry if it sounded like I was in any way implying anything like that. I was just pointing out that there are people who use the charge of antisemitism as a club to try to silence any critics of Israel, and using that sort of over the top rhetoric is handing them a weapon to use against you.

I'm with FO on this one. I know South African people who have been to Gaza and say that the situation is remarkably similar to the apartheid era.
Israel is a Nazi-esque apartheid state. That isn't an anti-Semitic statement, that's the plain truth. Comparing the pointing out of Israel's racist crimes against humanity to anti-Semitism, is like claiming that anti-racist activists in the 1940s-60s were anti-Caucasian because they were against lynching.

@Kessy: it is very hard not to point out that a nation of people who have suffered immensely for something end up behaving exactly like that something.

Nazism is antisemitic.
A Jewish nation ends up behaving like Nazism.
I don't see how can I be accused of antisemitism if I point that out.

They've ghetto-ised Palestine and kill Palestinians with impunity. I think the Nazi analogies are entirely cogent.

~_~ While I agree with a lot of the individual points made, I'd be careful about the Nazi analogies - it's just so loaded. While Israel has done some really nasty things to the Palestinians, that's worlds away from the Third Reich. I think it's important to keep the criticism as factual as possible. Otherwise we're just giving ammunition to those who brand anyone who criticizes Israel as anti-Semites.

Although I do agree completely with Blot that the situation with Israel is one of the most destabilizing things in the world, and has been for the last half century.

Wow that's heavy stuff. I think by-and-large Jews get a pass because the ones we're familiar with are pretty liberal and innocuous (and often downright atheist). So when we are faced with the zealots on the extreme opposite end of the Jewish spectrum the result can be quite jarring. I too am not a huge fan of Isreali nationalism. I think it's a threat to international peace and prosperity at least on the same scale as North Korea, only it has more powerful allies.

Persecution complex, exceptionalism, persecution of another race/nationality, expansion by conquest, secret development/posession of weapons of mass destruction, extreme right-wing rule (fascism), religious devotion to the state, brainwashing of children from infancy, special dress code to identify selves from others, repeated breaking of treaties, tacit state approval for citizens who break treaties, building of ghettos, institutionalised corruption at all levels of government, compulsory military service, and... The underlying cause of countless deaths through war.

Nazi Germany and Israel. Both fulfil this description.

@kessy: there is a lot of people that agrees with you.
Ironically, Israel and Nazist Germany have a lot in common: surrounded (?) complex, very strong nationalism, belief to be "the chosen people"...

It does seem to me that there is a certain element in Israel who use the Holocaust as an all purpose excuse to justify anything and everything Israel does. For example, did you see Netanyahu on US TV the other day trying to push us into a confrontation with Iran? It sounded to me like his justification for this sort of war mongering reduces to something like, "I don't like Iran, therefore Hitler!!"

@Brian K: Yes. In general, Nationalism doesn't work too well on people that travel by choice.
Travelling is still one of the best ways to become a better person.

FO: Diaspora jews are probably by definition less comitted to Zionism. Except for the definitionally insane ones who still help run American foreign policy, of course.

sarcasm tags needed for above. Like all nationalisms, I am extremely skeptical about Zionism and Israeli nationalism, but anti-semitism is irrational.

I think I read somewhere that God's Chosen People and the Vermin Who Need To Be Expelled are genetically identical????

Too many Israeli Jews make a religion not of their God, but of themselves and their country.

Just yesterday I was at a Jewish New Year party thrown by an Israeli Jew friend of mine who, while being not religious, his very proud of her culture.
Eventually the middle-east question came up, and I must say everyone kept it very friendly and very reasonable.
I was in a horrible mood and was more concerned about not making it into a bad arguing, so didn't push too much.

Ended up chatting with a very vocal Israeli who was stating that the Jews didn't steal the land from the Palestinian, but got it from the British, and the Arabs arrived there at the same time, so the claim 'steal the land' was unjust.
He was not happy with the settlements and was boycotting their products, and conceded me that culling the power of the religious leaders on both sides would have been a good start to solve the problem.

When I told him that the Israeli I quarrelled with were kinda single-minded and brainwashed, he tried to argue and eventually conceded, blaming the military service for the injection of nationalism.

All in all, we disagreed on a few things and I skipped challenging him on a couple of things, but he (and the others) were definitely decent and compassionate human beings.

Morale: The people you meet out of their country are usually much better that those you meet in.
It felt very good, after my online arguments, to improve my idea of the Israeli.

Well, I think you're arbitrarily singling out Jewish religious zealots from the rest of them for special contempt, but they're only one small example of what happens when you claim to unerringly know the will of an invisible god who dictates morality.

Extreme Orthodox Jews can be just as fanatical as extreme Muslims. I've know lots of Jews over my lifetime. Most weren't very religious, and those that were tended to keep it to themselves. Thankfully I haven't encountered any of the type you describe above.

I'm really uncomfortable with the current realtionship that the US has with Israel. I'm uncomfortable with the fact that Israel has undeclared nuclear weapons. I really hate the kind of thuggery that Israel seems to get away with on a regular basis.

So.... This is just me then? I am a lone racist bastid?

Okay: It's making me really anti-religious Jew.

I hate that term. Arabs are Semites, too.

So a few weeks ago, I was at work, and one of my patients was reading a paper. Nothing unusual, except that the paper was the Daily Mail, and the patient was Jewish. The patient saw the look on my face, I think, because he asked what was the matter. I replied:

"That paper... It was founded by a Nazi."

The patient's response was... How can I put this... Histrionic.

"Oh GOD! MY PEOPLE! MY COUNTRY! DON'T SAY THAT WORD! OOOOH GOOOOD!"

Dude was about thirty. It's unlikely any of his family closer than his great-grandparents could possibly have been directly effected by the Nazis.

Anyway. Right now, I'm watching a program about Israeli youth terrorists called Price Taggers. The absolute inability of these people to see any other point of view but their own is fucking scary. They're screaming about how outrageous and unjust it is that they're being evicted FROM LAND WHICH THEY HAVE FUCKING STOLEN!!!

Absolutely terrifying. You say to these people: "But you stole this land", and they respond "God told us to take it".

I swear, this stuff is seriously making me anti-Semitic.