I was mildly surprised when reading your article about the alleged misuse of the word ‘Shoah’, and its impact on the survivors of the Holocaust. It was not that long ago when an the Israeli minister, in fact the deputy defence ministerMatan Vilnai, in 2008 said ‘they (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger Shoah because we will use all our might‘.
At the time whilst many decent peace loving people around the world, including Holocaust survivors, were in deep shock and horrified at the use of the word, we were reassured that Shoah did not always mean Holocaust and in fact in this cpntext meant tragedy or catastrophe. This was reiterated again and again by Israeli officials and concurrently by Israeli and Zionist commenters in opinion pieces and blogosphere.
Now we are being told by The JC that Shoah does indeed mean Holocaust and is offensive. If so, either the Deputy Defence Minister of Israel called for the genocide of the Palestinans,or he didn’t. If he did shouldn’t you energies be directed at the offence to Holocaust survivorshehas caused and potentially criminal statement he made, if it doesn’t can you stop trying to silence voices that are critical of Israel and her policies.
Furthermore there is no evidence that the word Shoah was used to deliberately cause offence as you state in your article, but from looking at the site it is usedto draw a parallel, if that is offensive to people then I would suggest, they put pressure on the IDF to change its conduct, and the Israeli government to change its policies that lead to such comparisons being made, as there is an increasing chorus of voices in the world that agree with the parallel and inference being made.
