Tom Rogan wrote an article under the title: “Toure, the
Holocaust and Hashtagosophy” and the subtitle: “In four words he trivialized
mass murder.” It was published on May 26, 2014 in National Review Online. I don't
know who Toure is but the picture accompanying the article tells me I may have
seen him once or twice while surfing the television channels.
I reckon he is of African descent as much as I reckon from
Tom Rogan's writing that he must be Jewish. I am not going to mediate between
these two gentlemen; they are capable of looking after themselves. But there is
something about the Rogan article that reminds me of discussions I had with
Jews that were friendly to me and others that were not so friendly. No matter
which way the discussions began and what course they took, they always boiled
down to a couple of related questions: What moral or financial claim do Jews
who did not experience the Holocaust have over society? What moral or financial
obligation does anyone that was not responsible for the Holocaust have towards
the Jews?
The answers always came down to the reality that Jews who
never experienced the Holocaust were owed nothing, morally or financially. As
to those who were not responsible for the Holocaust, they owed nothing even to
the survivors of the Holocaust, let alone to those who weren't even born then.
And so, during my discussions with the Jews who thought I owed them something
because they were as Jewish as those that experienced the Holocaust, they came
to understand that I had every right to be contemptuous of them if they
believed I owe them enough deference not to criticize them if they did what may
offend me.
Thus, to have offended Canadian Jews who never experienced
the Holocaust, such that I deserve to be blacklisted for life because I wrote
an article titled: Don't listen to propaganda, Egypt is a civilized country –
in response to a year-long barrage of insults that portrayed my countrymen as
being primitive savages – gives me the right to tell the truth as I see it
about the nature of Judaism. And the fact that six million Jews were
exterminated at just about the time that I was born does not give a Jew the
right to make a claim on me because of something that happened long ago, away
from here that neither he nor I had anything to do with.
And no, I shall not visit a Holocaust memorial or a
concentration camp because they mean nothing to me. In fact, the people who
suffer and those who die today – be they Palestinians or human rights advocates
– because the Holocaust happened to Jews long ago, concern me more than those
who died then and cannot be brought back to life. If I want to learn about
man's inhumanity to man, I have my own experience to study, and the experience
of those who at this very moment suffer at the hands of Jews. I do not need to
visit a Holocaust memorial or a concentration camp to teach me that lesson; I
am the lesson in flesh and blood.
And so are the individuals who may have been passed over for
a slice of the good life because of the color of their skin to accommodate a
Jew whose skin might be of a different color. Toure can speak for himself in
this regard, but I can say that to make reference to the fact that skin color
still matters in America
is not something that can be countered with an argument about the Holocaust.
The fact that Rogan has mounted the savage attack he did on
Toure tells me that Norman Finklestein's argument to the effect that the
Holocaust has become a business by which the Jewish leaders enrich themselves
is true. Finklestein lost family during the Holocaust, and he could have joined
the gimme crowd to get rich in the process but that's not what he wanted.
Because his moral compass is not of the kind that guides the likes of Tom
Rogan, he would have been satisfied to see a dignified yearly ceremony at which
time the living would take a minute of silence to remember the dead.
Rogan, on the other hand, shows every sign that he is
terrified of the possibility he may lose the privileges he has gained by virtue
of the fact that he is a Jew, that Jews died long ago, and therefore he is
entitled to things which people who suffer today because of the color of their
skin are not entitled to. He has a calling card to the cushy life, and he does
not want to lose it. He is a miserable creature that deserves only contempt.