Spec Fic Blog Carnival

Thank you, everyone. I now have hosts for every month until November, and I'm only hosting one of those months (October - expect Conflux links). This is great and wonderful and I'm thinking of making a Sekrit badge for hosts. Or maybe a fridge magnet. Or a recipe card. Or ....

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I just read this (I was supposed to be working, but I read the first few words and just couldn't stop): it sums up a whole bunch of daft opinions on anti-Semitism and the Shoah that I've encountered recently and it refutes them. Not cheerful reading.

The most important point Geras makes as far as I'm concerned is that "there is not too much attention given to the Holocaust, or any other genocide, there is too little" and he explains why.

It made me think about children at play. Child A is left alone by other children because one of them beat him up.

"Why don't you help him?" asks the teacher.

"Because he got bandages and things after someone beat him up. He gets too much attention. Besides, Child B beat up Child C too, and Child C didn't get bandages and things so it wouldn't be fair if we played with Child A. Anyhow, I never got a plaster cast and Child A wrote poetry on hers and it isn't fair."

As a result, Child A and C are both alone, hurting. Child B was given a mild scolding then went back to playing with the same group of children who were busy feeling aggrieved about that plaster cast.

All attempted genocide is abominable, whether it's happening now (and it is) or whether it happened a half century ago, or whether it happened a century ago. We're still talking about murder based on race, religion, land ownership, skin colour.

Why do we waste time arguing about someone deserving more or less attention than someone else? Why isn't that time spent helping people who hurts beacuse of racism or working to prevent this kind of evil? Instead of discussing whether Child A is worthier than Child C, the critic could have tossed a coin and chosen a child and played with them. Or the critic could have found the cause of the pain and tried to prevent Child B hurting other children.

Every single person who was murdered was a human being. Every single survivor is a human being. And that's the bottom line. Humans being hurt by other humans, and the rest of us standing on the sidelines arguing semantics.