JTA: A South Carolina rabbi’s Holocaust memorial speech was pulled from public TV for being too ‘political’

The Holocaust industry has always been about promoting immigration, diversity, etc. From the Preface to Culture of Critique:

The Holocaust framework allowed one to put aside as irrelevant any legitimate ground for criticizing Israel, to avoid even considering the possibility that the rights and wrongs were complex” (Novick 1999, 155). As the threat to Israel subsided, the Holocaust was promoted as the main source of Jewish identity and in the effort to combat assimilation and intermarriage among Jews. During this period, the Holocaust was also promoted among gentiles as an antidote to anti-Semitism. In recent years this has involved a large-scale educational effort (including mandated courses in the public schools of many U.S. states) spearheaded by Jewish organizations and staffed by thousands of Holocaust professionals aimed at conveying the lesson that “tolerance and diversity [are] good; hate [is] bad, the overall rubric [being] ‘man’s inhumanity to man’” (Ibid., 258–259). The Holocaust has thus become an instrument of Jewish ethnic interests, not only as a symbol intended to create moral revulsion at violence directed at minority ethnic groups—prototypically the Jews, but also as an instrument to silence opponents of multiethnic immigration into Western societies.

A South Carolina rabbi’s Holocaust memorial speech was pulled from public TV for being too ‘political’

… Following the prayer, Rose instructed the crowd to be seated and launched into his speech, during which he sought to tie the Holocaust to “the attacks on human rights and human lives which echo a dangerous refrain.”

“In our time we are witnessing a resurgence of hate, of antisemitism, of prejudice, of discrimination,” the rabbi said, in a video he later posted to YouTube himself. “Our country, which has served so often as a beacon of hope to those suffering around the world, is now, as of this week, refusing aid of any kind to refugees.”

He then implored attendees to visit the website of HIAS, the Jewish immigrant and refugee aid group, which has been open about its struggles to continue to fulfill its mission after Trump’s recent freezing of federal funds for refugee assistance.

“If the Holocaust happened and ended yesterday, would the same Jews who were let in this country be let in today?” Rose continued. He then moved onto LGBTQ issues, referencing Trump’s recent executive orders that recognize only two official sexes and bar transgender health care for minors: “My friends, my neighbors, my colleagues who are members of the LGBTQ+ community, are terrified right now.”

Rose then briefly pivoted to the issue of book bans, especially potent in South Carolina as one of the leading states for book challenges. “When we talk about education and the censoring of things where we need to learn about and legitimize the experience of suffering of other people, books are being taken out of libraries and our children are not being taught the full spectrum of experience in this country,” he said.

South Carolina in recent years has restricted classroom access to some books about the Holocaust and antisemitism. Districts in the state have briefly pulled the novel “The Fixer” from one district prior to a review and pulled a book about local Holocaust survivors from its middle-grade curriculum. The state is currently facing a civil rights lawsuit over a new law restricting the teaching of subjects including race and gender; the state superintendent, who was a featured speaker at the Auschwitz event, is a named party in the suit.

“I was so nervous giving the speech that I was trembling,” Rose recalled on Friday about his speech. “But I was immediately surrounded by people who wanted to give me hugs.”

Only one person told him they objected to the speech, he said, because “he didn’t believe that religion and, in particular, prayer was ever the platform to bring in politics. To which I responded, then you might as well get rid of the Hebrew Bible.”

The injection of modern-day politics into Holocaust commemoration events, which are often attended by political figureheads, has been a subject of controversy for years. Similar ceremonies this year have also been magnets for political grandstanding, as Jews were removed from one commemoration in Dublin for protesting the Irish president lamenting the death toll in Gaza during his remarks. No world leaders were invited to speak at an event this week at Auschwitz to mark the 80th anniversary of its liberation, a date that the United Nations designated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day 20 years ago.

The South Carolina speech wasn’t the only Holocaust memorial controversy to play out this week in the United States. This week a leaked memo from the Defense Intelligence Agency, a wing of the Pentagon, instructed staff to pause all activities related to the commemoration of Holocaust Day of Remembrance and other activities the agency deemed representative of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, or DEI, now banned from the federal government via a Trump executive order.

Rose has harsh words for the South Carolina Council on the Holocaust, which the state created in 1989, because it exists in parallel with the state’s other education policies suppressing the teaching of racial history and the recognition of children’s gender identities.

“They believe that by talking about Holocaust education, it gives them license to ignore every other political issue of suffering in their educational processes,” he said.

This week the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission also announced a broad investigation into NPR and PBS that could lead to their funding being revoked, putting public broadcasters on edge.

2 replies
  1. Emma Smith
    Emma Smith says:

    Whatever its causes and specific details in the factual realm, The “Holocaust” religion ensures that the Jews inside and outside Israel are largely protected from accusations of harmful “racial nationalism”, while non-Jewish people can be referentially subjected to accusations of harmful “racial nationalism”.
    Could it fairly be described as the greatest legacy posthumously gifted by Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels to their worst enemies? At any rate, the Zionist networks are more influential than they were 90 years ago.

  2. Gerbils
    Gerbils says:

    The fact that Americans refused jewish refugees but destroyed germany for the same jews shows how retarded they were. I include my own grandparents here.

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