Thursday, May 5, 2005

Inappropriate

People must learn to look at a situation from someone else's point of view, they simply must.

Vandals spray swastika, Sharon slur at entrance to Yad Vashem
Unknown men Thursday sprayed swastikas and graffiti reading "Sharon is continuing Hitler's way" on the road leading into the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, minutes before the opening of the central ceremony marking Holocaust Memorial Day.

Similar graffiti was also sprayed on the facade of the Central Zionist Archives building in the capital.

Housing Minister Yitzhak Herzog, who was taking part in the March of the Living between the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps vehemently condemned the graffiti.

"Only a sick mind can compare the prime minister to the Nazi enemy on Holocaust Memorial Day," Herzog said.
So true. Persecution is a terrible thing, and I understand that many feel that the Palestinians aren't getting a fair deal. Some even believe that they're being eliminated. And some believe that they're being treated too kindly, and that giving in to them - any concession at all - is comparable with the most tragic incident of slaughter in the 20th Century. This is simply not true. Fighting and death as a result of conflict has nothing to do with the wholesale rounding up of certain types of people, detaining them, putting them to death, and dumping them in mass graves. It's not the same as using their body fat for soap or their skin for lamp shades, or performing medical experiments on them "because they're not really people", anyway.

There are many terrible moments in history, and some can indeed be compared reasonably to the Holocaust. Sadly, it is not unique in it's horror. The current situation, however - policies enacted by Sharon - they are NOT of that level, and saying that they are is a tremendous show of disrespect for the human race.

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