What were your children taught about the Holocaust in school, and do you believe 6 million Jewish people were killed?

But yeah, those non-believers are also very present in the following numbers:“__Almost half (45 percent) of Americans were unable to name a single concentration camp, and the number was even worse for millennials (49 percent). Two-thirds (66 percent) of millennials were unable to explain what Auschwitz was.__”
...

I believe it. I’ve seen the old films/photos taken at those places.
Almost 60 million people lost their lives between 1939 and 1945 so what difference does it make on the exact number?

As far as knowing what Auschwitz was, that didn’t bother me very much that they didn’t recognize the name of the death camp. I sucked at history, and recalling specific names and details is like a black hole in my brain for many historical things. The Holocaust in particular, the details stick with me more, probably because I greatly identify with it being Jewish myself, so I would have gotten these questions right on the questionnaire.

I also wonder if that might explain some of the reason for a bad guess at how many Jewish people were killed. Maybe the specific number just didn’t stick for a lot of people? The “6 million Jews” is repeated so often in the media that’s hard to believe though. I can tell you that I can’t cite off the top of my head how many people died overall in WWII, nor any war for that matter. I know I was taught it in school, and hear about it in movies and literature and remembrance days.

What concerns me more is the idea that there are Holocaust deniers, and also simply people who just don’t know the Holocaust happened, and the basics of what happened. How can that be in America?

@kritiper As far as the 6 million number, I always say the number is incredibly significant, because it was ⅓ of our total Jewish population worldwide. Every single life counts, but also in a big picture view it greatly hurt the total number of a specific people. It set back our population growth significantly, because population growth tends to be exponential. We only now, 75 years later, are back to the original number before the Holocaust.

I also tell Americans to think of how they felt about 9/11, I think that was barely 3,000 people, and how the Holocaust was 6 million! And, let’s not forget the others who were not Jewish who died as well. I feel like people need perspective.

It doesn’t surprise me that as time moves on people forget, or people less identify with what happened. We need to work to keep the history alive.

As far as I know, it never came up in conversation at home so I am not sure how in depth it was covered. Both kids believe it happened however.

@rojo For some reason I thought you were Jewish.

The Holocaust never came up at home? That’s interesting to me. Not even a movie that was showing on TV about the Holocaust? Nothing?

@JLeslie I am sure there were movies and perhaps even conversations but nothing that stands out in the memory so whatever occurred probably occurred in passing and not thought provoking discussions.

Here in Texas it is not a subject that comes up often, at least not with the small crowd I run with. There are the occasional articles, documentaries, etc and, with the Bush Library in town they have remembrances. It is not like it is ignored, just not at the forefront.

My parents grew up in England and were there during the war. Both spent time in foster homes in the country to get them out of the cities and away from the bombings. Dad had fond memories of his time and even kept in touch with the folks he stayed with for a long time. Mom, not so much. Her experience with the system was a big negative. As I understand it my Grandmother and a friend went to visit after mom had been gone a month or so. The found the kids sleeping and living in a barn. As I understand it, the bedrooms in the house were full so what kids didn’t get a room stayed where they could. Grandma to her and her friends daughter away immediately and took them back to Liverpool. When she reported her findings to other neighborhood parents, they too went and got their children. Anyway, between that and the bombing. Mom never wanted to talk about her experiences and as far as I know, never saw a movie about the war. I asked her once and her reply was that she lived through it, why would she want to watch it. Consequently, there was never much discussion about the war and the atrocities committed during it in our household. I guess I just continued on the tradition.

My kids were taught about it in school, plus I showed them numerous films regarding the holocaust, plus we visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington’s D.C and they read the Maus graphic novel.
I grew up with the (adopted) child of a concentration camp survivor.
I don’t believe the numbers of uninformed/nonbelievers from the Newsweek article.

I was not taught much about it, just the bare bone facts and Hitler was a dictator, etc.. Not anything about him disarming the population in order to kill them later, as they were defenseless. I probably learned more from Schindlers List, documentaries and books, than school.

I’ve probably already mentioned this to you, but my grandfather spoke ONE TIME about helping liberate the concentration camps and said he still (at age 80) couldn’t talk to me about what he saw, I’d never known he was there until then. Stuff that makes grown men tear up 50 years later.

This:
“It is estimated that the Germans established 15,000 camps in the occupied countries.”[3] The concentration camps are not to be confused with the extermination camps which were designed and built exclusively to kill prisoners on a massive scale immediately upon arrival.[4] The extermination camps of Operation Reinhard such as Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka served as “death factories” in which German SS and police murdered nearly 2,700,000 Jews either by asphyxiation with poison gas or by shooting.[4] Meanwhile, the concentration camps listed herein served primarily as detention and slave labor exploitation centers. Most of them were destroyed by the Germans in an attempt to hide the evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity; nevertheless tens of thousands of prisoners sent on death marches were liberated by the Allies afterward.[5]

I wondered where these ideas of lower numbers are coming from?

I see you are unfamiliar with Republicans in present day America.

This guy is the Republican choice for US House in Chicago’s western suburbs:
Feb 8, 2018 – Congressional candidate to CNN anchor: ‘Yes, I deny the holocaust’

Also, the Republican front runner to replace Paul Ryan in the US House is a loud and proud Jew hater.

And of course the president praised the Nazis in Charlottesville as very fine people.

I did a project on the gross experiments that one doctor did. I also took a class for a book about the Holocaust that talked about music and how Germans tried to erase Jewish musical composers and pieces. Also wrote a speech from the perspective of Alma Rose. Who conducted the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz

Here’s a history of how the Diary of Anne Frank was taught in US public schools. It gives a decent understanding of how at least part of the history of the Holocaust was taught up until 2002 when the paper was published. http://www.history.ucsb.edu/projects/holocaust/Research/AnneFrank/AnneF20pFinalHM.htm

Holocaust education has been mandated in the NJ curriculum for about the past 20 years. It is covered in age appropriate ways from K to 12.

@JLeslie I didn’t mean to imply that Jewish lives are of no importance, but why single out only that one specific group for special consideration? Why not the deformed, disfigured, insane? Why not the Poles, or the Gypsies, the civilians of Dresden and Tokyo, Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and the many innocent civilians of so many nationalities?
What makes the Jews more special?? Why not Native Americans?
And how many Jews should there be? Is there some determined number??
There are over 7.5 billion people on this planet that should have only a maximum of 500 million.
How many is enough?
In my opinion, there are now too many of everybody.

I’m unsure about the numbers. I would probably believe just about any large figure. I definitely believe that it happened.

I have no idea what they were taught in school, and of course I believe over 6 million Jews were murdered.

@krifiper I completely agree that we should talk about the gypsies and disabled also. The Jews are not more important than other groups. The thing about the Holocaust is it happened fairly recently, it happened it was supposed to be a civilized, educated, developed nation, which means it can happen anywhere. To any group. People in the western world I think dismiss genocide in African nations (not that they should) and other places that they don’t directly identify with.

I’m not sure what you mean by 500 million, I’m missing something. There are 18 million Jews in the world. About 7 million in America. It’s very small. Less than one quarter of one percent of the population. In the US Jews are about 2% of the population.

I think if you asked 10,000 people how many Jews there are, or the Jewish percentage in the US or the world, I bet over 80% of the people you ask get it very very wrong.

My own MIL doesn’t believe the numbers, she thinks I’m wrong and ridiculous. She thinks there are many more Jews, but that’s because she has lived much of her life in little pockets that have lots of Jews like a particular area in Mexico City, and Boca Raton, FL. Her subdivision in Delray Beach I bet is over 80% Jewish.

@rojo Makes sense. Makes perfect sense.

There are 18 million Jews in the world

14 million. A tiny number. 20 metro areas on Earth are larger than that.

My own MIL doesn’t believe the numbers, she thinks I’m wrong and ridiculous. She thinks there are many more Jews

For the same reason as your mother-in-law, I was shocked at the low number when I looked it up a couple of years ago.

I married a Jew. I have dated mostly Jewish women as an adult. When I was a teen, my mother’s business partner was a Jew. When I bicycle commute in good weather, I pass about ten synagogues.

I expected to find that about 10% of the population in the US was Jewish, and that most Western countries were similar.

@Call_Me_Jay I understand why people think the number is much bigger. I just find it funny that she thinks I’m just simply totally wrong. She shook here head side to side and practically laughed at me. We just talked about it last time I saw her, we never talk about things like that, I don’t know why it came up.

I really thought we were back up to 18 million, or very close anyway. Looks like I was wrong. So, we still haven’t caught back up yet to the numbers before the Holocaust. We’re getting close. It’s tough, because Jewish couples tend to not have more than two babies. Plus, there is quite a bit of intermarriage. Times like this I wish I had ten children.

@JLeslie A group of experts has determined that the maximum number of humans that should inhabit the planet is 500 million, otherwise humanity overtaxes the planet’s ability to heal itself.
Maybe the Jews should get together and kill off all of the other people on the planet, then they can have it all to themselves.
If there were 7.5 billion Jews on this earth, would it be enough? How about 75 billion Jews?
We are all human beings, and we are all equal. and there are too many of us! If things keep going the way they are, there will be 15 billion people by year 2100 and 24 billion people by year 2200.There is no need to pretend that there aren’t enough of any one particular sect.
I’m sure, that if there was a heaven, that there would be Jews enough there, even if they have the whole place to themselves.

because Jewish couples tend to not have more than two babies

Not the Orthodox.

A group of experts has determined that the maximum number of humans that should inhabit the planet is 500 million

Thanks for the un-cited opinion of unknown “experts”.

Gee, I’m convinced!

@kritiper It’s not about how many Jews there should be in terms of some number each group should get allotted to them. It’s about other human beings trying to kill us off! Our whole group, just because we are Jewish. I’m not sure why that’s difficult to understand.

Even if I say I don’t identify as Jewish and don’t practice my religion, an antisemite is going to consider me Jewish. I don’t get to escape it. That sort of antisemitism, and other bigotries against other groups, keeps the process going in my opinion. I have a stronger Jewish identity probably because of the hate out there.

@Call_Me_Jay The Orthodox are trying, but they are a minority population within the population of total Jews at large. I don’t know the percentage.

@JLeslie I know the Orthodox are a minority. But I’m more aware of the big families than most. I commute through what I would bet is the biggest concentration of Orthodox between LA and New York (West Rogers Park Chicago). Families walking along, males in black coats, all the women covered, guys with the beards and curls and fedoras. Even the occasional fur hat guy.

I have a stronger Jewish identity probably because of the hate out there.

My ex-father-in-law became an atheist as a kid in the 1940s because if God existed the Holocaust would not happen.

But it also made “never again” the core of his beliefs. He (and his kids) are very proud of their heritage and the grandkids are carrying it on. The holidays might be the thing I miss most about that marriage.

@Call_Me_Jay When I was younger I didn’t understand the “never again” and the feeling that some Jews had to want to keep our group going. I was more in the mind set that everyone is equal, and sometimes things end, like the Roman empire ended. I guess more similar to how @kritiper thinks.

I grew up not feeling any antisemitism, which I think is partly why, and there wasn’t any bigotry in my house, nor did I feel any among my friends, and I grew up in a very diverse town. So, it was from feeling equal and idealism I think that I didn’t feel compelled to protect my group and keep it going. Then I grew up and things changed, and I learned more about my own religion and people, and my Jewish identity grew stronger, and my awareness of antisemitism grew also.

I, like @rojo’s parents, pretty much felt like I didn’t need to see movies and hear the horrible stories, because I was Jewish. His parents lived it, I just grew up knowing it.

Slowly but surely I did see a movie or two either in school or something like Schindler’s List that everyone told me I had to see. I to this day have avoided a lot of the movies. I grew up in the DC suburbs so I eventually went to the Holocaust museum there—it’s fantastic. It’s done so well. Also, a close friend of ours, his dad, whom I know also, found a man left for dead among dead bodies when our military liberated the camps. He was a young man in the US army. That man would be dead had he not found him. Here is a picture of the scene. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1034991

Funny though, the first time I really felt like I wanted ten children to populate the world with more Jews was watching a show where Lisa Kudrow goes to Poland to find a relative. She talks to people who watched their Jewish neighbors shot in front of a pit, and they fell in, or were pushed in, and then set on fire. The remembered hearing screams for a long time as some had not died from the bullets and died smothering and in flames. That fairly recent show gave me such an upset, such a feeling of deep sorrow for those who suffered through that horrible time.

Edit: link to Kudrow episode. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=21IGOtnv1c0

@JLeslie I get it. I always have.
But quit worrying about how many Jews there could, should, or would have been. Get into the 21st century and quit crying about the Jews! What was done to them was a dirty, rotten shame, but nothing, not even weeks of education, can change what happened to them. And there being possibly MORE Jews wouldn’t help a thing.
@Call_Me_Jay I can’t remember who put it up, but there is a stone monument outside of Atlanta, Georgia, that states the info that I presented earlier. (Never assume that the information given to you isn’t true just because it can’t be backed up with some proof. I am not a liar and would not put forth some personal assumption as fact.)

@kritiper You don’t get it. We don’t going around converting people, we have a lot of intermarriage now, and we have a lot of atheism, and low birth rates. It’s about being able to survive. The religion, the group. When there are 100 million of a group, let’s call them the purple people, they won’t easily disappear, even with low birth rates. When there is only 14 million, or whatever it is now, it’s more precarious. It’s about the future, you keep talking about the past.

Never assume that the information given to you isn’t true just because it can’t be backed up with some proof.

OK, clown.

@kritiper And, it’s about all
people, not just the Jewish people. You never know when the crazy murderous people are going to decide your group, whichever group that is, is to be exterminated. The Holocaust is to be remembered so nothing like that happens again to any group. That’s the hope anyway. As we know, there has been genocide in more that one place in the world since the Holocaust.

@kritiper Easy now, we just bombed another country over this whole subject of genocide. It’s pertinent alright. ‘Get over it’ is pretty harsh in this case. You know, like slavery, or native indian massacres-all things we shouldn’t get over quickly.

@kritiper you mean these
Fascinating as they are I believe it’s just a statement made by rich new age yuppie/hippies with too much time on their hands.

@KNOWITALL I agree. Teaching the Holocaust shouldn’t just be about remembering what happened to the Jews and other groups. “Never Again” has to be taken to mean no more genocides – even though there have been many others both before and since.

Teaching the Holocaust shouldn’t just be about remembering what happened to the Jews

This is true, but the Holocaust deniers try to paint the extermination camps as typical collateral damage in a very big war, and they insist that Jews were not particular targets.

For example, see comments above like, “why single out only that one specific group for special consideration?”

@Call_Me_Jay I can see why you thought that’s what I meant but I didn’t mean that the facts about what happened to the Jews and others shouldn’t be specifically taught. I meant that there are broader lessons that should be learned from studying it. The specifics are very important.

(The film “Denial” was excellent by the way.)

Both Liberal and conservative lobbyists are on the side of Holocaust education. Even in rural upper East Tennessee, schoolchildren have seen what six million paperclips look like, and know how many Jews died in the holocaust.

When I myself was in school, I did two book reports (both of them autobiographies) about people who lived through the Holocaust—one was a collection of accounts of children who lived through the Holocaust.

In my own city, There are some Black Muslims who deny the Holocaust and/or that the Jews are Jews—except for the Falasha Jews of Ethiopia whom they claim are the ‘true’ Jews. They claim that European and Middle-Eastern Jews are Tartars or Huns, and that the Ark of the Covenant is hidden from view in a church in Axum, Ethiopia (the Jews had a fake one in the Temple in Jerusalem).

I was working in an Afterschool Activities program in a large church in Midtown Memphis and during the church’s summer camp program, we had a few Black Muslim / Rastrafarian sympathizers who made the above claims, teaching them to fourth and fifth graders. During the camp’s Olympic week, I represented Israel (I have some Jewish heritage) and set the record straight about who the Jews are, and about Ancient and Modern Israel and the European epoch, including the Holocaust.

The Muslims were not trying to deliberately deceive the children. They really believed what they were teaching. But I had enough interesting Jewish items/artifacts and information that I probably won a few of them over.

I think numbers on that scale are inherently difficult to rationally process. I really don’t have any clue how many Jews were killed in the Holocaust, but I’m sure it’s in the ballpark of what experts have calculated. A childhood friend’s grandmother was a survivor and shared her story with our class. I know I’ll never forget her story.

As for the alarming statistic about how about ⅓ of Americans don’t believe the Holocaust was real, I think it’s perhaps one of the most egregious examples of a broader phenomena going on today with regards to the accuracy of “information” on the internet. You have people who don’t believe in the Moon landing, think vaccines cause autism, believe that the Earth is less than 10k years old, etc.

I think this is largely due to our education system teaching “facts” instead of focusing on critical thinking and teaching students how to evaluate sources, and appreciate the scientific method, evaluation of primary vs. secondary sources, etc.

@gorillapaws My guess is a lot of people who believe the things you mention that are blatantly not true did not go to public school.

I know our public s hoops can do better, I know too many teach to the test, but I don’t believe the schools are completely void of teaching critical thinking. Could it be better? Absolutely.

The type of ignorance you mention has more to do with religion and religious school I think. Not that all religious schools are bad, certainly not, but a portion of them have curriculum that leaves our children ignorant on too many topics.

The internet is a culprit too, but how could anything on the internet make you believe the earth is flat or that we didn’t land on the moon? Nothing can, because you were taught the truth. Even rote learning on those things is enough to know better.

I believe it. History is filled with mass murder. Human beings are the fowlist creature God ever created. Man kind has a wonderful track record of hating for the sake of hating, or for power or control or money or out of jealousy. No reason even need sometime.
But yeah, I was taught about the massacres. I think it was my first reality dose of how horrific people can be. I’ve actually met a Holocaust survivor who came to speak in my high school. You could see the pain in her face years later. Till this day, I remember an answer to a question she was asked. Someone asked her why does she put herself though the agony of having to relive her experience. She said, she had to make sure no one forgets or thinks this can never happen again. And here we are today again, doomed to repeat history.

@JLeslie The parents are the ones who need to do better. If a kid doesn’t know about the holocaust it’s more than likely an issue with upbringing.

@JLeslie You’re the one who keeps harping about the Jews, not me. And you keep talking about the past and how there would be more Jews now if the holocaust hadn’t occurred.
I’m talking about right now, and the future.
There are too many people.
Now. Today. Tomorrow.
And it will only get worse if people don’t stop producing so many children!
So quit whining about there not being enough Jews!

Sorry, but that makes no sense. Why would we need more Jews?

We don’t “need,” “more” of any ethnicity…

OMG. LOL. The Jews of all the Abrahamic religions is the one that doesn’t recruit, we aren’t trying to overpopulate the world with Jews, we never have.

Forget it, I obviously will never get through.

My guess is you are not part of a minority group that continues to have some hate against it, even if just in pockets.

I have seen a recent statistic that 66% of Millennials could NOT identify Auschwitz—
and 22 percent of Millennials never heard of, or could not define the Holocaust.

A significant number of Jews are anti-Israeli, but most of the anti-Israel propaganda tolerated on college campuses such as the University of Memphis in my own town, is also anti-Jewish.

I don’t like to pedal one religious culture or ethnoi against another, but Islam and Black Islamic groups on college campuses seems to have anti-Semitism as its core teaching.

@JLeslie . With all due respect, it’s that type of thinking that is the framework of bigotry. Thinking of us in separate terms, is what motivated the Nazis. They wanted more of them, and less of everyone else.

I hate to break it to the purists, but one day, we’ll all be a shade of brown, and there won’t be any physical differences between the human race. Then everyone can find other reasons to hate each other.

Minority, or not, thinking about one’s self as being so different is counterproductive to the advancement of the species. We’re all in it together.

The minor differences between us, are dwarfed by the massive similarities we share.

The wealthy elite are the biggest minority in the world. Should we hope they increase in population? Population doesn’t mean that a type of people aren’t thriving.

Just about every type of person has been oppressed, or screwed over, at some point. A lot of that had to do with other groups thinking about themselves.

Coexistence, is what should be important.

If an alien species invaded Earth, and tried to kill us, they wouldn’t target just one type of human. And our differences would suddenly lose priority right? We would then all just be Earthlings. Why should it take cataclysm, to see that we are all just people?

I am not particularly trying to win brownie points with the Jews or with JLeslie.

But the Jews HAVE been singled out for discrimination, pogroms, and hate, even in Roman times.

Christians have hated or avoided Jews in the middle ages until well into the 20th century, and some Christian and quasi-Christian groups like Christian Identity still do,

I have a children’s encyclopaedia from 1934 which reads, “God knew that only a group of people as horrible as the Jews could crucify Jesus in such a horrible way. That is why Jews pride themselves by calling themselves the chosen people.”

As I said above, there are Islamic groups (three at least) on my local college campus whose only tenet seems to be anti-semitism and anti-Jew and holocaust denial. Everyone approves their free speech because of ‘tolerance’

Today, many Islamic nations want to wipe Israel off the map—and I’m not sure Obama wasn’t one of them because his friend Farrakhan did, as did Obama’s ‘Christian” ‘God Damn America’ minister Jeremiah Wright.

If WWII ever breaks out, it will be because someone starts to unload their nukes on Israel.

Antisemitism is alive and well, and the Jews did not choose it,

With respect to you, read some world history.

With respect to all, the Jewish people have just been one of many types of people to be treated that way. There is active genocide going on right now, but I haven’t heard that it’s an issue on this thread. So. It’s a matter of personal impact apparently. Not ethics.

Plus. Israel is one of the current worst violators of human rights, in the world. Israel, of course, is a Jewish state. I’m not blaming the religion. But it’s pretty hypocritical to point out the problems they faced, when they are now partaking in similar behavior as we speak.

Israel is NOT a violator of human rights. They are a democracy, like much of Europe and North America, and any or all military conquests of additional land has been because they were being bombarded with missiles and needed to drive the enemies out. Anyone can become an Israeli citizen, and Israeli civilians, restaurants and day care centers, have a right to exist without bleeding to death from shrapnel,.

^You don’t have to look far to see that Israel violates human rights, civil rights, and commits war crimes. There is no excuse for their behavior…

I see it on bloody, dramatic posters every day. Barbaric Israeli soldiers. Poor little children used as human shields by terrorist groups die in the crossfire because of those horrible Israeli Jews fire back and defend themselves. I see it on links some of you send me. I know your position.

Realize those children are not only human shields, but their carnage and the crying mothers are also used to spread anti-Israeli propaganda.

Why are there no Israeli terrorists blowing up buildings in other countries?

Lets end the discussion, at least on my end. You are starting to sound like the very people I am talking about

@Yellowdog being a democracy is not a “get out of jail free” card when it comes to violating human rights. It occurs regardless of the type of government a country has. And, please understand, I agree with you 100% when you say that ”...civilians, restaurants and day care centers, have a right to exist without bleeding to death from shrapnel”.

A bomb in a car is a poor mans cruise missile. Or, if you prefer, a cruise missile is a rich mans car bomb. I don’t condone either but nor do see a difference between the two. Both are used to terrorize civilians in order to move a political agenda forward. Both are justified in the eyes of the perpetrator and both are condemned by those against whom they are used and in both cases they are usually used to kill people who would just rather be left alone to live their lives as best they can.

If you care to play the “He started it game” the instigator depends on at which point in time you begin counting so it is not really a very useful gauge.

When you can see Palestinians as just as human as Israelis then perhaps you can see the hypocrisy in stating that Israel cannot be guilty of violating human rights because it is a democracy.

Basic human rights belong to all of us. Here is a list of thirty basic human rights as laid out in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

1. We are all free and equal. We are all born free. We all have our own thoughts and ideas. We should all be treated in the same way.

2. Don’t discriminate. These rights belong to everybody, whatever our differences.

3. The right to life. We all have the right to life, and to live in freedom and safety.

4. No slavery – past and present. Nobody has any right to make us a slave. We cannot make anyone our slave.

5. No Torture. Nobody has any right to hurt us or to torture us.

6. We all have the same right to use the law. I am a person just like you!

7. We are all protected by the law. The law is the same for everyone. It must treat us all fairly.

8. Fair treatment by fair courts. We can all ask for the law to help us when we are not treated fairly.

9. No unfair detainment. Nobody has the right to put us in prison without a good reason and keep us there, or to send us away from our country.

10. The right to trial. If we are put on trial this should be in public. The people who try us should not let anyone tell them what to do.

11. Innocent until proven guilty. Nobody should be blamed for doing something until it is proven. When people say we did a bad thing we have the right to show it is not true.

12. The right to privacy. Nobody should try to harm our good name. Nobody has the right to come into our home, open our letters or bother us or our family without a good reason.

13. Freedom to move. We all have the right to go where we want in our own country and to travel as we wish.

14. The right to asylum. If we are frightened of being badly treated in our own country, we all have the right to run away to another country to be safe.

15. The right to a nationality. We all have the right to belong to a country.

16. Marriage and family. Every grown-up has the right to marry and have a family if they want to. Men and women have the same rights when they are married, and when they are separated.

17. Your own things. Everyone has the right to own things or share them. Nobody should take our things from us without a good reason.

18. Freedom of thought. We all have the right to believe in what we want to believe, to have a religion, or to change it if we want.

19. Free to say what you want. We all have the right to make up our own minds, to think what we like, to say what we think, and to share our ideas with other people.

20. Meet where you like. We all have the right to meet our friends and to work together in peace to defend our rights. Nobody can make us join a group if we don’t want to.

21. The right to democracy. We all have the right to take part in the government of our country. Every grown-up should be allowed to choose their own leaders.

22. The right to social security. We all have the right to affordable housing, medicine, education, and child care, enough money to live on and medical help if we are ill or old.

23. Workers’ rights. Every grown-up has the right to do a job, to a fair wage for their work, and to join a trade union.

24. The right to play. We all have the right to rest from work and to relax.

25. A bed and some food. We all have the right to a good life. Mothers and children, people who are old, unemployed or disabled, and all people have the right to be cared for.

26. The right to education. Education is a right. Primary school should be free. We should learn about the United Nations and how to get on with others. Our parents can choose what we learn.

27. Culture and copyright. Copyright is a special law that protects one’s own artistic creations and writings; others cannot make copies without permission. We all have the right to our own way of life and to enjoy the good things that “art,” science and learning bring.

28. A free and fair world. There must be proper order so we can all enjoy rights and freedoms in our own country and all over the world.

29. Our responsibilities. We have a duty to other people, and we should protect their rights and freedoms.

30. Nobody can take away these rights and freedoms from us.

Personally, I would add the right to clean air, clean water and a safe, non-toxic environment. What would you add?

I think if you took the time to read them and applied them to both sides of this conflict I believe you would see that both sides are guilty of violating these rights against the other side. If the US would stop playing favorites and play mediator and peacemaker it would help stop the suffering. We cannot stop it, the parties involved must come to terms with each other, but we can assist by taking a fair and neutral stance.

I still don’t understand why we need more Jews. That is, like, one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.

And I totally agree with @MrGrimm888 ”@JLeslie . With all due respect, it’s that type of thinking that is the framework of bigotry. Thinking of us in separate terms, is what motivated the Nazis. They wanted more of them, and less of everyone else.”

I feel like my stance is neutral. I don’t want either Israelis, or Palestinians hurt. While I can say that I think the Palestinians would treat Israel the same, if the circumstances were reversed, that doesn’t make it right.

@MrGrimm888 Dutchess_III When you come to my house and meet my Mexican, brown (as you call it) husband, and listen to me tear up as I tell you about the five pregnancies I lost, and how jealous I am of his ability to get beautifully tan in the sun, and his thick, black hair, and the idea my kids could have those features was a bonus to me, not a deterrent, and his gold cross in my jewelry stash (he no longer wears a necklace, but he wore it for years, even after we were married) and the picture of him from his first communion in my Facebook, then you can maybe talk to me about being a purist. I have extremely pale skin, brown hair, blue eyes, and raised Jewish in America. I didn’t try to keep my descendants “pure” as you call it, even though it turned out I never had children.

I am not talking about keeping any group pure, I am talking about people actively trying to eliminate a group.

I could care less what color your husband is. And I have said nothing about keeping any race pure. If you’re going to clock me, clock me for something I actually said. (And I am so, so sorry for the miscarriages.)

I wasn’t trying to be mean. I was saying that I didn’t like the thought that it’s like Jews versus every other type of people. The Israelis are terrible to the Palestinians. I find it especially in poor taste, as they themselves faced similar problems. It’s hypocritical.

^^Rest assured I don’t feel like it’s the Jews against everyone else. Not even close. The hateful people are in pockets in every group. I most certainly don’t think only the Jews have something to point to as an injustice in history. Other people died during the Holocaust, plus look at Rowanda, or Sadam Hussein gassing his people, or Syria now. It’s the theme that’s troubling, not the specific group. The Jews aren’t whining about themselves when they talk about the Holocaust, they are trying to prevent it from happening again. Not prevent it from happening to Jews, but rather prevent it from happening to any group. If you keep focusing on the Jewish thing you are missing the point.

@Dutchess_III Well, you said you totally agree with @MrGrimm888 and then quoted him, and I don’t really see how I can be accused of an us and them mentality.

I agree that it should never be forgotten.

I’ll requote it. I would be very, very interested in how you interpreted it. For the life of me I can not see how you read that I want some sort of pure race into the quote @JLeslie.

“With all due respect, it’s that type of thinking that is the framework of bigotry. Thinking of us in separate terms, is what motivated the Nazis. They wanted more of them, and less of everyone else.””

Yeah. I thought it was well articulated. I wasn’t necessarily trying to say that Jews, are the new nazis. Just pointing out what I considered dated, unwise thinking. And, to my real point. It felt like the Holocaust just taught the Jewish people to act like their former oppressors. Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, is comparable with many atrocities the Jews of Europe dealt with in the time period of the holocaust.
Israel holds the Palestinian people down hard. Then gladly murders them when they protest. I get the feeling that they would gladly wipe out the Palestinians, but are afraid that they would lose US support as a result.
I know that Netanyahu, is pushing Trump for a war on Iran.

As I’ve opined before, I do think that Iran, and by extension Palestinians, would annihilate Israel. But Israel is the one doing all the oppressing, and war crimes. They are in a rough spot. But they aren’t a stabilizing force…

^^Well, I don’t equate Jewish with Israel. It sounds like you are generalizing that all Jews are Israelis. We technically can be if we want to be, in terms of citizenship, but most Jewish -Americans are just that.

There is a saying, “you get what you give.” So, yes, I think Israel is very militant because of their history, including the history in Europe, not only the Middle East.

Maybe America should take note. You go at a group aggressively, you can produce people who will not only fight back, but change their culture for years or even centuries to fight back at ten times the force when attacked, and to be reluctant to trust.

I’m not justifying the response, I’m just saying I agree with you, and putting in my perspective of the situation.

@Dutchess_III Maybe I misunderstood the intent of the sentence, but I can’t compare the Nazi thinking as a simple us and them. Having different groups of people in the world does not have to mean us an them, it can still mean everyone is equal. If the world suddenly had no religion, no borders, no nationalities, except earthling, I’d be absolutely fine with that. Sounds pretty good. It just is not the case.

Pardon me. I guess I considered Israel (wrongly) as like the Jewish capital of the world. I thought that their actions were pretty universally supported by the other Jews of the world. As I have actually spoken to a few, in candid conversations about the issues Israel faces. The ones I hear on NPR seem to support Israel’s behavior.

Anyway. I will leave Israel out of it then.

Well. The Nazis wanted a world with only a certain type of people. So. I stand by my analogy. As far as the thinking.

Who on this Q wants there only to be a certain type of people? No one.

I’ve been reading up that Israel is the number one violator of human rights in the world today.

You send six or eight ballistic missiles into Israel .into just an insignificant part of townl, and those Israelis might take out a whole goddamn base and six military targets in Syria

Funny how, in order to attain the notoriety of worse violator of human rights, they don’t even have to hide behind the skirts of their women, kill homosexuals, kill minorities, or use children as human shields.

@Yellowdog I see your point, even agree, but two wrongs don’t make it right.

Do I have the answer?

No. I wish I did.

I said I would leave Israel out. So, I will…..

Israel only struggles with its right to exist and protect its people. They are not the perpetuator of hate and violence . Check out the sources of the propaganda—they ARE anti-Semitic

I understand that Jews must disown Israel (e.g. ;Leave Israel out’) especially since it is supported by conservatives in the U.S. and most Jews (including most Israeli Jews) are liberal or progressive in this country (U.S.),

But do not be deceived—Israel is hated because it is Jewish.

@Yellowdog For sure Israel has hate against it because it’s Jewish, but consider that Iraq has internal problems because of the different groups of Muslims who don’t like each other.

Israel is not only a religious problem in the Middle East, it’s a land ownership thing. Even if Arabs owned that land, the Palestinians specifically want the land. If Saudi or Jordan took it over, I doubt it would be enough for the Palestinians. Maybe it would be for some.

To your other point, they send some missiles into Israel that doesn’t hurt much of anything, and Israel blows up towns and it destroys infrastructure and kills people. Maybe that’s a reason not to send over misiles against Israel? Plus, Israel does ignore some of those missiles some of the time throughout Israel’s history, they don’t respond to every act of violence against them with more violence. I’m not defending Israel using such heavy retaliation, but I understand it. We went into Iraq without any missiles against us. We went in preemptively. Think about that. Thousands and thousands of Iraqis have died, because of it.

I don’t know the solution for Israel. I have always thought the only way is the two-state solution, but who knows if that would even work. The best would have been if the Palestinians at the time of the UN decision had been excited to have the formation of Israel and a democracy to live in. Of course, that did not happen though.

I learned enough about it in school to understand what it was. I could have answered any of those questions at least. But the more powerful understandings came from my family, especially my grandparents and their friends.

For example, Jaap Sitters was a close family friend for many years. Google that name.
For better and worse, I got a first-hand account of things.

My family is Dutch. So is my ex-husbands. We heard some horrifying first hand accounts too.