re: #24 Jimmah

We are having a very difficult time communicating.

I didn’t say the film should be the one I want. I said it was a bad film, I explained why. It raised questions that I’d like answered. It raised questions for you too, but different questions.

You might know that the Holocaust happened, but you don’t know why, or how public opinion was turned, or how, after Antisemitism was reduced to a weed in 1946, many world leaders are hopeful that a nuclear bomb lands on Israel—only 60 years later. How did that happen? You’d have to be watching it closely. But we, Jews, haven’t done a good job of trying to understand it, how to prevent it from happening, what to do when it starts to grow. You’d have to know what it sounds like when it’s growing. It’s not overt, it grows with ease. It’s almost invisible.

I understand that you didn’t see it, I don’t expect you to see it. You even think that the film stressed Wilders’ views are not held by many Israelis. But you want to know more about Wilders’ Israeli ties, don’t you? Did you want to know about that before you saw the film?

Here’s another thing about Holocaust education. Exposing and ostracizing doesn’t work. Hitler was tried and thrown in jail. Can’t get more exposed and ostracized than that. Didn’t work.

I never said anything about American conservative lines. I was talking about the history of immigration in America, that the immigrants landed at east and west coast ports and began to climb the social ladder, landing at the finest US universities in as little as two generations. That’s amazing.

Nor did I say anything about American conservatives. I couldn’t even name one.

Also, the film didn’t show any extreme elements in Israeli society. You’d have to know what Israeli society looks like to recognize that. What about the guy talking about moving the Palestinians to Jordan? Well, when the British Foreign Office was figuring out how to divide the Middle East, that was one idea. They also thought about calling Jordan ‘Palestine’. The guy on the balcony was talking about getting water into a desert and turning it into good land. That’s how Israel grew. Israel exports food. That’s what he was talking about. He’s aware no one talks about that old plan anymore, and he doesn’t much care. He’s just a guy getting interviewed on his balcony.

I said that Wilders is the tip of a very old and dangerous iceberg. One of the lessons of the Holocaust would be how to break that iceberg. We, Jews, haven’t gotten that far yet. And that’s why I say that Holocaust education hasn’t been successful. We haven’t asked the best questions, so we don’t have very good answers.