8 responses to “Israel threatens holocaust against Gaza?!”

1. Adam Holland says:
   01 Mar 2008 11:44:27 GMT

   This is an egregious case of mistranslation. The term "shoah" is Hebrew for disaster or catastrophe. When Israelis speak of "Hashoah" or "The Disaster", they mean the Holocaust. When they use the term shoah or "a disaster", they mean any disaster. If a terrible flood occurs in a town in Israel, it's called a "shoah". Vilnai used this term, not "Hashoah".

   Of course, your knowledge of Hebrew must be very considerable indeed and I don't want to disparage that. Furthermore, I wouldn't want to believe that your post reflects an anti-Israel bias. You most likely have some perfectly legitimate reason for PRETENDING to understand what Vilnai meant. You wouldn't risk your legitimacy as a journalist in order to score points in a debate.
   I'm reminded of George Bush Sr.'s use of Saddam Hussein's "mother of all wars". That figure of speech was understood as commonplace hyperbole in Iraq. Bush used the language gap to take the hyperbole literally and to highlight the absurdity in the direct, uninformed, translation. In this instance, Vilnai's warning that the missile attacks on Askelon and Sederot would bring a disaster for Gaza is being distorted as well as being magnified; his warning has been transformed into a horrible threat.
   You may think that this is good for you in the sense that it convinces those who don't speak Hebrew. Fine. But (with respect to this story at least) you reveal yourself as uninterested in the underlying facts -- less a reporter than a propagandist.

2. Andrew Stroehlein says:
   03 Mar 2008 09:48:46 GMT

   It is not anti-Israel to point out the foolishness of a single Israeli deputy minister. Please, get serious. The fact is, his comment was wrong-headed and caused an uproar in Israel, where many were upset that he had used the word "shoah". An article in yesterday's Jerusalem Post detailed the back and forth. One quote, for example:

   "It was a very poor choice of words, you could really expect better from a senior general," an Israeli official in Jerusalem said Sunday.
   And even the deputy minister's spokesman himself is quoted as saying: "It could be that he should have picked another word."
   I don't think their recognition of the blunder makes either of these people anti-Israel.
   You can read the full JPost article here: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1204214002068&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

3. Andrew Stroehlein says:
   03 Mar 2008 10:04:45 GMT

   The long link got cut off there. Copy and paste the following and remove the line breaks to read the JPost article: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid= 1204214002068&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

   Interesting reader comments there, too, many calling on the deputy minister to resign.

4. stupidity says:
   03 Mar 2008 15:01:31 GMT

   Nothing else, while Adam is right and Israelis do use the term Shoa to descibe a crisis and not the holocaust, it is not totally without context, I think Vilnai should not have used this term. he should have picked another. or maybe just shut up alltogether.

   Tamar

5. Axel says:
   06 Mar 2008 12:16:56 GMT

   ...and by the way what is meant by israel is threatening Holocaust? Are they not in the middle of it, doing it. They are also not doing it against "Gaza", they are cleansing, exterminating Palestinians and their culture, their heritage. Why do you think someone would perhaps decide to end his / her life by strapping explosives to the body and may even take some bad guys with it in the desperate attempt to end the sufferings. For how do world-leaders let us watch this crime by israel, by jewwish-elite israel? Happy Days, Axel

6. Nathan Fluet says:
   14 May 2008 14:41:54 GMT

   Well I don't speak Hebrew but if you type define: shoah in Google here is what you get

   Holocaust; usually used in ha-shoah, the Holocaust www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/yizterms.html
   The Hebrew word meaning "catastrophe," denoting the catastrophic destruction of European Jewry during World War II. The term is used in Israel, and the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament) has designated an official day, called Yom ha-Shoah, as a day of commemorating the Shoah or Holocaust. www.chgs.umn.edu/Educational_Resources/Curriculum/Witness_And_Legacy_-_Teacher_R/Glossary__Teacher_Resource_Boo/glossary__teacher_resource_boo.html
   (Hebrew, "chaos, destruction, catastrophe") â€" Term widely used in Israel and increasingly used in the United States to denote the murder of the Jews by the Nazis. See Holocaust. www.cofc.edu/~jhc/stories/glossary.html
   Shoah is a nine-hour film completed by Claude Lanzmann in 1985 about the Holocaust (or Shoah). Though Shoah is conventionally classified as a documentary film, director Lanzmann considers it to fall outside of that genre, as, unlike most historical documentaries, the film does not feature ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoah (film)
   the Hebrew word for catastrophe www.promotega.org/fld00005/wordstoknow.html

7. Robert Alan says:
   01 Jun 2008 12:59:56 GMT

   Axel, Unfortunately, the knife cuts both ways, Palistinians are no less guilty of criminal acts then Israelis and the poor unfortunates who straps explosives to their bodies are only pawns in the terrorists playbook. It does nothing to win the war and as a result Israel has built huge walls in the West Bank to protect themselves, while making life even more difficult for the Palistinians. The world isn't sitting back, they are working toward getting both sides to start implementing the Roadmap, but as long as Hamas, rules Gaza and does not recognize Israel's right to exist there can be no end to the conflict. Palestinians may have voted for Hamas, based upon the belief that Fatah is corrupt, but Hamas, a terrorist organization is not the solution. Democracy allows power to the people and Palestinians can demand more from Fatah or create a government that is focused entirely on peace. Abbas and the PLO seem willing to make the compromizes both sides must make. Neither side can end the conflict with violence, history has proven this. Both sides have suffered immensely, and a dead child is equally catastrophic for both sets of parents. The world is only waiting until both sides want to live more than they want to die.

8. Jabadini says:
   05 Jul 2008 12:19:44 GMT

   For everyones information many of the suicide bombers and such are from middle class families and have university education. We are not talking about people living in slums at all.

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Enter the code shown on on the left *