Former White House aide Sarah Hurwitz, who served as a senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama, warned this week that Holocaust education was “confusing” young people into sympathizing with “weak, skinny Palestinians” instead of “powerful Israelis.”
She continued:
“You have TikTok just smashing our young people’s brains all day long with video of carnage in Gaza, and this is why so many of us can’t have a sane conversation with younger Jews, because anything that we try to say to them, they’re hearing it through this wall of carnage. So I want to give data and information and facts and arguments, and they’re just seeing in their minds carnage, and I sound obscene.”
And you know, I think, unfortunately, the very smart bet that we made on Holocaust education to serve as anti-Semitism education, in this new media environment, I think that is beginning to break down a little bit because, you know, Holocaust education is absolutely essential, but I think it may be confusing some of our young people about anti-Semitism, because they learn about big, strong Nazis hurting weak, emaciated Jews and then they think, “Oh, anti-Semitism is like anti-black racism, right? Powerful white people against powerless black people.” So, when on TikTok all day long they see powerful Israelis hurting weak, skinny Palestinians, it’s not surprising that they think, “Oh I know, the lesson of the Holocaust is you fight Israel. You fight the big powerful people hurting the weak people.”
No one dishonors the holocaust victims like the very lucky descendants of its survivors. This is saddest irony I can think of.
sympathizing with “weak, skinny Palestinians” instead of “powerful Israelis.”
I.e. sympathising with victims instead of fascists? Hell yeah.
You fight the big powerful people hurting the weak people.
Uhm… yeah?!
Like, this is fundamentally the basic plot of one most famous and watched movies of all time.
Star Wars: weak impoverished kid has his family slaughtered by the unstoppable Empire. Finds power in his faith and a “terrorist” resistance group to overcome their impossible power.
And yes. I know star wars was written as the Rebels representing the VeitCong. Almost like imperialism and genocide are on the wrong side of history.
We are not confused and neither are those kids. You show them what happened in germany and they rightfully compare it to what is happening today.
Shocking she thought this was a thoughtful take to say publicly.
Basically saying "We accidentally taught kids that the powerful preying on the weak and powerless is evil and now they can only see the carnage when we tell them to support the genociders like they’re supposed to.
We accidentally gave them the critical thinking skills to identify fascism-fueled genocide and this is bad because now we’re the ones trying to do it and they can’t see past all the carnage and genocide their tax dollars are sponsoring when we try to convince them to support it. Stupid kids."
Reason why theyre an Ex
Because Obama isn’t president anymore?
At least they are taking the masks off and revealing themselves, so there’s that.
Ok. So. Is there something wrong with me that ever since I learned about the Palestinian genocide in the late 2000’s my mind went immediately to “uh, what the fuck, why are we supporting this?”
I’ve always thought "well of course Palestinians are going to support Hamas. Hamas is actually doing something.
Is it empathy? Or is it autism that makes me more resistant to propaganda? Or is it simply that I have an above average means to change my mind in light of new information and most humans lack it?
Fuck Netanyahu but also his psyop Hamas. All enemies of Palestinians
Hamas is the only party fighting for Palestinians along with other Gazan resistance factions.
Hamas is fighting for Iran, not Palestine
My sides.
I’ve kind of realized after my diagnosis and journey into understanding and reframing my whole life, that for people who are on the spectrum, in a lot of cases it’s almost entirely a syndrome of “thinking too much.”
This is a curse when you’re in a social situation and need to be spontaneous and witty and relatable, but it can also mean you have a very strong internal language system for working out situations and seeing things from many angles.
This isn’t to say that autistic people can’t get stuck in wrong modes of thought, or that neurotypical people don’t also have the capability to work things out in their mind, but it is going to have an effect on your politics and how you view the larger world.
I’ve read that autistic people generally have a very strong sense of “justice” in this regard, and this is why it can feel far more painful to see injustice happening, because the power of overthinking lets you experience it from all different angles or imagine being the person experiencing injustice. It’s like brute-forcing empathy.
What you have there is your basic human empathy, untainted by religious or cultural indoctrination.
Keep hold of that we need more of it.
So I’ve heard from a few places that being neurodivergent does give you somewhat resistance from propaganda because you’re already used to having to think through a bunch of shit without being able to rely on group think, etc.
But also, basic fucking empathy does kind of kick in really hard. The propaganda isn’t even that good besides, it’s just a bunch of idiots saying “NO THE DEAD CHILDREN WERE EVIL”.
Supposedly neuros are more sensitive to being just and fair as well.
I’ve been on the receiving end of some bullshit when I was young, and really don’t like seeing that kinda nonsense happen to others if it’s undeserved.
This is actually backwards. Autism undermines the ability to evaluate intentions, which vitiates moral reasoning. Fascinating research into how different brain regions contribute to ethical intuition. Here are some relevant lecture slides from MIT.
And now consider,
The correct answer to the first scenario is 6 or 7 out of 7, and the correct answer to the second is 1 out of 7. People with ASD answer low (2 or 3 out of 7) for both, focusing exclusively on outcomes.
That’s wild. I feel like situation 1 would be more like a 5 or 6 since it never says Grace got permission to use the coffee machine on the tour.
Sure, she’s just trying to get sugar for her friend. Someone put poison in it. She’s not at fault.
This is an absolutely horrible test/explanation.
That’s also why it’s a spectrum. Some of us have compensation for that automatic intuition.
Grace had a different prediction of her action in the first one compared to the second one.
Though admittedly my first gut instinct is “grace killed her, intentional or not.” But because of that “mystery or” my mind says “my understanding is incomplete, seek more information.”
That’s an interesting way to think about it.
Sounds like these people need Holocaust education too
Perhaps the similarity is apparent because
ISRAEL IS COMMITTING A FUCKING HOLOCAUST
Holocaust education was “confusing” young people into sympathizing with [the people being decimated in a genocide] instead of [the overpowered genocidal aggressor]
Wow what a ghoul
They’re not confused, they just have a modicum of empathy
I think she’s over-complicating this.
What should happen, is educating the young Jews about the wrongs of what their country is doing to the Palestinians. What Israel is doing now, is similar in vein to what the Nazis did to them many decades ago and using the same template of an excuse to do it, like the US did with Iraq back in 2003. So we have two major wrong-doings of history coming into play and what the young Jews need to do, is overwhelmingly oppose their government and their leaders that are enabling this.
There, straightened it out for you and yet you were a speech-writer?
like the US did with Iraq back in 2003
No. I’m not excusing anything that did happen there, but it absolutely wasn’t a genocide.
The death toll was 151,000 ~ 654,965 and the numbers varied wildly so much that the wiki regarding the death toll can’t narrow them down. What do you honestly consider ‘genocidal’? Because, the USA went into Iraq for no purpose other than to revive the Gulf War and oil under the guise of “We know that you are making Weapons of Mass Destruction somewhere!” that accounted for those deaths, largely of them are civilians mind you that had no business in this.
And yet you think that’s not genocide. Well, what’s the magical number to you then? Since it is obvious you didn’t get it.
The Iraq invasion from the start focussed on destroying all Iraqi infrastructure and creating as many civilian casualties as possible to destabilize the country. It was 100% a genocide. But since the US has the Hague Invasion Act they will never be charged for it.
That wasn’t the problem.
The problem was, when 9/11 happened, the USA’s clear-cut goal was to find Osama Bin Laden, who was the perpetrator of the 9/11 attack. 2 years later, didn’t find Osama, but we wound up in Iraq suddenly because President Bush and his administration had a discourse based on lies that excused them to go to war in Iraq. During that entire administration’s time, Osama was never found or caught until 2011 by Obama’s administration.
but we wound up in Iraq suddenly because President Bush and his administration had a discourse based on lies that excused them to go to war in Iraq.
Yes totally not a completely pre-planned invasion with the goal to destroy and destabilize Iraq, which conveniently Israel lobbied for for many years. Well at least 9/11 wasn’t an inside job and Saudi Arabian leaders were held to account.
Yeah whatever. You’re still full of it.
Weak, skinny Palestinians? As opposed to the muscular athletic Nazi concentration camp inmates…
Show me the equivalent suffering the various US wars caused? Where is the footage of starving Iraq children?
Show me the reports of non-combatants murdered by the US military trying to access aid drops?
Show me articles where the US blockade foreign aid to war zones?
Can’t because it doesn’t fucking exist.
Since Israel is a puppet state of US hegemony, the US is doing this. They enabled it and did nothing to stop it, so are complicit in this genocide
The troops aren’t.
The leaders aren’t the ones performing genocide. They allow it to happen.
Anyone, it a big deal apparently. Just war, I’m being told.
I’m against all war and apparently there is nothing particular different here because the US also does war stuff.
That’s fun. Emotions won’t fix this, maybe next genocide. Sorry, Palestine. Not sure you can handle another.
Don’t whitewash those wars. Sure, Israel is going above and beyond in finding new and exiting war crimes to commit, but the US wars were also horrendous.
I didn’t. I get it now. What they’ve saying. This isn’t about genocide. Not really.
My mistake for thinking people actually cared about civilians deaths and wouldn’t give genocides are fucking whataboutism argument.
Fucking stupid. You are literally making the argument for Israel to claim it wasn’t so bad, it’s just part of war.
What part of, “Israel is going above and beyond in finding new and exiting war crimes to commit,” reads to you like I’m “literally making the argument for Israel to claim it wasn’t so bad?”
What you said is like saying, “Show me when Imperial Japan did anything as bad as the Holocaust.” Sure, the Holocaust was a special kind of evil that went above and beyond, but Imperial Japan did all sorts of heinous, horrific shit and there is absolutely no reason why we should make favorable comparisons about them. They were even on the same side, much like the US and Israel.
Also how tf is it “whataboutism” when you made the comparison? Completely ridiculous.
This woman sounds insane.
It’s honestly one of the most horrifying statements I’ve ever read.
