On the horns of a dilemma

Every so often as I consider the turmoil in Skypeland, I run across an episode that is difficult for me to document for various reasons. Sometimes this is because I want to avoid revealing personal information. Other times it is because I do not want to embarrass a "friend", or do not want to oppose them in some argument they are involved in. I might want to avoid reopening old wounds in other cases. Some disputes are so complicated that it is not easy to decide what to do.

This post describes an example of a very complicated messy contentious dispute that has erupted in the last while in Skypeland. I am friends with those on both sides, and I feel that both sides are correct to a certain extent. I have avoided weighing in since it is so politically-charged and I do not want to offend any of those involved. I will attempt to describe the situation but I am nervous that I will not do a good job, and I will offend one or both sides.

D is a secular Jew and expatriate American. D is understandably sensitive about the Holocaust and Holocaust denialism. D defends Israel, with no questions asked, on almost all issues. Many enjoy baiting D and trying to get him angry, in particular the mystery man A and his associate, the graduate student J, as well as the pothead college student BT and the Holocaust denier CD. However, muck expert Mucus and pipe fitter Mrs. B have also done their part in goading D into arguments and tried to yank his chain.

Sometimes D is slightly over-aggressive in his defense of Jews and Israel. D has even irritated other Jews on occasion with his proclamations, although I think D means well. D has sometimes been so aggressive that he has alienated a few friends and supporters, as has been pointed out by the moderator Y. D vehemently denies this charge.

I think D's behavior is perfectly understandable. D has children and grandchildren, and does not want anything bad to happen to them. D believes that he is helping the cause of making sure an event like the Holocaust never happens again. D wants Israel to be safe. D is justifiably proud of Israel's accomplishments, and the contributions of Jews to the world. However, sometimes this has to expressed carefully and tactfully.

Y brings up the Holodomor, the death of millions of Ukrainians during failed attempts at collectivization during the early 1930s, whenever D becomes too enthusiastic about describing the Baba Yar atrocity, an event during which tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews were killed by the Nazis. D has recently started posting material that denies the Holodomor, which has been a staple of Soviet and communist propaganda for decades.

Anyway, this situation made me wonder why the Holocaust has so much greater historical and emotional resonance than other disasters of similar or even greater magnitude. I think there are at least several reasons:

*Although the Holodomor and other collectivization disasters cost a lot of lives, and although some deny they ever occurred, they are not used as justification to attempt the extermination an entire body of people, or to advocate the removal of a country from the map.

*Events like the Rwandan genocide or the Armenian genocide or the Cambodian killing fields might have annihilated a similar fraction of a given group, but there is no comparable serious effort by a widespread collection of people to pretend that they did not happen.

* The Holocaust is sort of an echo of similar historical events, like assorted pogroms, killing of Jews during the Crusades, the Inquisition, the captivity of Jews during ancient times in Egypt, and the exiles of Jews to Babylon.

There is a lot of heat associated with this discussion, and not really enough light. Anyone weighing in risks getting smeared by one or both sides. I hope I will not suffer this fate.