I have remarked before about the similarity between the Orthodox Jews and some Muslim groups, but I hadn't realised that it extended to the injudicious use of the term "Holocaust".
The catalyst for this tale was the sentencing of former welfare minister, Shlomo Benizri, to a four-year sentence for taking bribes, and his imprisonment Masiyahu Prison in central Israel. Corruption in Israel is as endemic as in the rest of the Middle East, but the difference is that they do get caught and punished.
It was some of Mr Benizri's haredi supporters who proclaimed their disgust at his imprisonment with the extreme terms "a disgrace" said one, "a holocaust," said another. These supporters from the Mea Shearim, the haredi (ultra-orthodox) Jerusalem neighbourhood, have put up posters calling the Israeli police - with whom some haredi men are regularly battling at demonstrations over a number of complaints - "Zionist Gestapo".
This use of Nazi terminology is not restricted to politics, with Jerusalem hospital doctors who uncovered a case of child abuse in the community described, by outraged haredim, as "Doctor Mengele's" and hard line settlers calling the police "Kapo!" (A kapo was a class of inmate at the Nazi concentration camps and death camps, whom the guards used to do some of their dirty work on the ordinary prisoners).
All Jews detest it when the term "*Holocaust" is used by others in casual references, or situations that are palpably not a holocaust, such as when arabs refer to Gaza as a "concentration camp" and the treatment of Palestinians as attempted genocide, or when Hamas deplores draft UN plans for Gazan children at UN schools to be taught about the Holocaust because - in the words of a Hamas spokesman - it is "a big lie".
However to the haredi, these language constraints just aren't in place, because like all religious nut cases, they are utterly convinced that they act with Gods blessing, and therefore any constraints don't apply. One liberal rabbi, whose parents are both Holocaust survivors, managed to smile in wonder, as he told dinner guests from America about how some haredim were comparing Jerusalem's main hospital to Auschwitz. "It's amazing how they jump straight in with the most extreme language they can, and then they just turn it up a notch or two."
*The Oxford English Dictionary traces the etymology of "holocaust" back to 1250. It meant a sacrifice completely consumed by fire. From the 17th Century it carried wider connotations of utter destruction
The catalyst for this tale was the sentencing of former welfare minister, Shlomo Benizri, to a four-year sentence for taking bribes, and his imprisonment Masiyahu Prison in central Israel. Corruption in Israel is as endemic as in the rest of the Middle East, but the difference is that they do get caught and punished.
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| Haredi Call Police Zionist Gestapo ..... |
It was some of Mr Benizri's haredi supporters who proclaimed their disgust at his imprisonment with the extreme terms "a disgrace" said one, "a holocaust," said another. These supporters from the Mea Shearim, the haredi (ultra-orthodox) Jerusalem neighbourhood, have put up posters calling the Israeli police - with whom some haredi men are regularly battling at demonstrations over a number of complaints - "Zionist Gestapo".
This use of Nazi terminology is not restricted to politics, with Jerusalem hospital doctors who uncovered a case of child abuse in the community described, by outraged haredim, as "Doctor Mengele's" and hard line settlers calling the police "Kapo!" (A kapo was a class of inmate at the Nazi concentration camps and death camps, whom the guards used to do some of their dirty work on the ordinary prisoners).
All Jews detest it when the term "*Holocaust" is used by others in casual references, or situations that are palpably not a holocaust, such as when arabs refer to Gaza as a "concentration camp" and the treatment of Palestinians as attempted genocide, or when Hamas deplores draft UN plans for Gazan children at UN schools to be taught about the Holocaust because - in the words of a Hamas spokesman - it is "a big lie".
However to the haredi, these language constraints just aren't in place, because like all religious nut cases, they are utterly convinced that they act with Gods blessing, and therefore any constraints don't apply. One liberal rabbi, whose parents are both Holocaust survivors, managed to smile in wonder, as he told dinner guests from America about how some haredim were comparing Jerusalem's main hospital to Auschwitz. "It's amazing how they jump straight in with the most extreme language they can, and then they just turn it up a notch or two."
*The Oxford English Dictionary traces the etymology of "holocaust" back to 1250. It meant a sacrifice completely consumed by fire. From the 17th Century it carried wider connotations of utter destruction
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