Former White House aide Sarah Hurwitz warned this week that Holocaust education was "confusing" young people into sympathizing with "weak, skinny Palestinians."

Former White House aide Sarah Hurwitz, who served as a senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama, warned this week that Holocaust education was “confusing” young people into sympathizing with “weak, skinny Palestinians” instead of “powerful Israelis.”

She continued:

“You have TikTok just smashing our young people’s brains all day long with video of carnage in Gaza, and this is why so many of us can’t have a sane conversation with younger Jews, because anything that we try to say to them, they’re hearing it through this wall of carnage. So I want to give data and information and facts and arguments, and they’re just seeing in their minds carnage, and I sound obscene.”

And you know, I think, unfortunately, the very smart bet that we made on Holocaust education to serve as anti-Semitism education, in this new media environment, I think that is beginning to break down a little bit because, you know, Holocaust education is absolutely essential, but I think it may be confusing some of our young people about anti-Semitism, because they learn about big, strong Nazis hurting weak, emaciated Jews and then they think, “Oh, anti-Semitism is like anti-black racism, right? Powerful white people against powerless black people.” So, when on TikTok all day long they see powerful Israelis hurting weak, skinny Palestinians, it’s not surprising that they think, “Oh I know, the lesson of the Holocaust is you fight Israel. You fight the big powerful people hurting the weak people.”

  • SGGeorwell@lemmy.world
    641·
    17 days ago

    No one dishonors the holocaust victims like the very lucky descendants of its survivors. This is saddest irony I can think of.

  • falseWhite@lemmy.world
    155·
    17 days ago

    sympathizing with “weak, skinny Palestinians” instead of “powerful Israelis.”

    I.e. sympathising with victims instead of fascists? Hell yeah.

    You fight the big powerful people hurting the weak people.

    Uhm… yeah?!

    • wheezy@lemmy.ml
      23·
      17 days ago

      Like, this is fundamentally the basic plot of one most famous and watched movies of all time.

      Star Wars: weak impoverished kid has his family slaughtered by the unstoppable Empire. Finds power in his faith and a “terrorist” resistance group to overcome their impossible power.

      And yes. I know star wars was written as the Rebels representing the VeitCong. Almost like imperialism and genocide are on the wrong side of history.

  • arcterus@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    17·
    17 days ago

    How was this person a senior speechwriter jfc. Those speeches must have been terrible if this is the sort of garbage that spews out of her mouth.

    • WhatThaFudge@lemmy.world
      2·
      17 days ago

      Thank you for finding the timestamp for us! I was looking at the video and couldn’t stand listening to the people speaking before her even and just wanted to see the actual quotes.

  • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
    513·
    17 days ago

    Ok. So. Is there something wrong with me that ever since I learned about the Palestinian genocide in the late 2000’s my mind went immediately to “uh, what the fuck, why are we supporting this?”

    I’ve always thought "well of course Palestinians are going to support Hamas. Hamas is actually doing something.

    Is it empathy? Or is it autism that makes me more resistant to propaganda? Or is it simply that I have an above average means to change my mind in light of new information and most humans lack it?

    • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
      7·
      17 days ago

      What you have there is your basic human empathy, untainted by religious or cultural indoctrination.

      Keep hold of that we need more of it.

    • ameancow@lemmy.worldEnglish
      101·
      17 days ago

      I’ve kind of realized after my diagnosis and journey into understanding and reframing my whole life, that for people who are on the spectrum, in a lot of cases it’s almost entirely a syndrome of “thinking too much.”

      This is a curse when you’re in a social situation and need to be spontaneous and witty and relatable, but it can also mean you have a very strong internal language system for working out situations and seeing things from many angles.

      This isn’t to say that autistic people can’t get stuck in wrong modes of thought, or that neurotypical people don’t also have the capability to work things out in their mind, but it is going to have an effect on your politics and how you view the larger world.

      I’ve read that autistic people generally have a very strong sense of “justice” in this regard, and this is why it can feel far more painful to see injustice happening, because the power of overthinking lets you experience it from all different angles or imagine being the person experiencing injustice. It’s like brute-forcing empathy.

    • Baggie@lemmy.zip
      213·
      17 days ago

      So I’ve heard from a few places that being neurodivergent does give you somewhat resistance from propaganda because you’re already used to having to think through a bunch of shit without being able to rely on group think, etc.

      But also, basic fucking empathy does kind of kick in really hard. The propaganda isn’t even that good besides, it’s just a bunch of idiots saying “NO THE DEAD CHILDREN WERE EVIL”.

      • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
        52·
        17 days ago

        Supposedly neuros are more sensitive to being just and fair as well.

        I’ve been on the receiving end of some bullshit when I was young, and really don’t like seeing that kinda nonsense happen to others if it’s undeserved.

        • yeahiknow3@lemmings.world
          72·
          15 days ago

          This is actually backwards. Autism undermines the ability to evaluate intentions, which vitiates moral reasoning. Fascinating research into how different brain regions contribute to ethical intuition. Here are some relevant lecture slides from MIT.

          And now consider,

          The correct answer to the first scenario is 6 or 7 out of 7, and the correct answer to the second is 1 out of 7. People with ASD answer low (2 or 3 out of 7) for both, focusing exclusively on outcomes.

          • frostedtrailblazer@lemmy.zip
            21·
            17 days ago

            That’s wild. I feel like situation 1 would be more like a 5 or 6 since it never says Grace got permission to use the coffee machine on the tour.

          • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
            3·
            17 days ago

            That’s also why it’s a spectrum. Some of us have compensation for that automatic intuition.

            Grace had a different prediction of her action in the first one compared to the second one.

            Though admittedly my first gut instinct is “grace killed her, intentional or not.” But because of that “mystery or” my mind says “my understanding is incomplete, seek more information.”