The wasteland of whose imagination ?

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Jan 18, 2012 at 14:31

BB King wrote :

"Ianus, I figured out your shyness over providing me links to back up your claims. You really can't justify your claims based on reality can you? That's why you make up things from wasteland of your imagination."

Give a try to the Google entry "Jews in the Soviet Army" ! What will pop up i.al. is a very interesting article " A desperate campaign to remember Soviet Jewish war heroes races against time". As I do doubt you're really interested in reading any stuff that runs counter to your a priori point , let me quote from it myself :

"For Soviet Jews, two issues surrounding World War II are very important. One is that 500,000 Soviet Jews served in the Red Army, and paid all the associated costs, and helped defeat the Nazis," explained Annelise Orleck, a history professor at Dartmouth and author of "The Soviet-Jewish Americans. [...]

Of the 500,000 Jews who fought in the Red Army, 40%, or 198,000 people, were killed. Shenker says he has found 156 Jewish Heroes of the Soviet Union, along with a number of people who were short-listed but, because they were Jews, never got an award. [...]

"The story of Jews in the Soviet army is a powerful and compelling one," said Edward Serotta, director of Centropa. "I don't blame American Jews for not knowing about this phenomenon. I blame those of us who care about the issue for not creating the kinds of books and films and exhibitions that would help change their minds."

So much for "my wasteland of imagination" and "justifying claims based on reality".

On a general note I can say that he who doesn't want to see reality must call anyone referring to this reality blind and/or incompetent, needn't he? Once upon a time Oriental despots used to cut off heads of messengers of bad news. This old practice seems to have survived until now even though the executions assume mostly symbolic forms.

> So you claim 500,000 Jews fought for the Red Army and many Jews were honored by the Soviets. What you conveniently left out was the aftermath of WW2. What happened to them after the war was over? And regarding Jewish participation in the Soviet Army: Of course they did! It was the only way to halt Soviet persecution of their people.<

You say therefore that the Soviet Jews fought in the Red Army and won highest Soviet awards not because they faced their mortal Nazi enemy but rather "to halt Soviet persecution of their people"? This is definitely consistent with your a priori views in the vast realm of your historical faith which I am afraid no laws of probability and common sense can ever undermine.

"During World War II, much of the attempts to persecute the Jews were halted. When World War II began, Jews played an important part of the Soviet military effort. Their role in the front lines was disproportionately higher then other national groups. While much of Soviet Jewry was decimated in the Holocaust, those living in Russia proper were mostly spared. After World War II was concluded, however, the attempts to suppress Soviet Jewry were resumed. Until Stalin's death in 1953, Soviet Jews were placed in the gulag and were faced with significant physical oppression. In 1952, Stalin had a number of leading Russian Jewish intellectuals murdered in the "Night of the Murdered Poets."

Even after Stalin's death, the attempt to suppress Judaism and Jewish culture continued. Jewish books and religious articles had to be smuggled into the country and attempts to study the books and utilize the religious articles had to be clandestine. The covert nature restricted access to Jewish life to only a few individuals. The few Jews who continued participation in Jewish life were called refusniks, and were severely punished by the Soviet authorities. By 1965, only about 60 synagogues remained in all of Russia. It was not until Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and his policy of glasnost that restrictions on Soviet Jewry lessened.

After the Six Day War, Soviet discrimination against Jews increased. Despite the discrimination, the Six Day War increased Jewish national consciousness. In 1970, 11 individuals (9 Jewish) tried to hijack an airline in order to raise world attention to the plight of Soviet Jewry. The hijacking gave new prominence to the Soviet Jewry movement. One of the hijackers, Yosef Mendelevich, completely secular while in Russia, is now a rabbi in Israel.

Jews were viewed as potential enemies by the Soviet authorities, partly because many Jews had relatives in the United States."

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/russia.html#l <

In order to avoid embarrassing situations like this I urge you Ianus to cite your facts. Otherwise I can simply eradicate your historical revisionism because I have the truth on my side. What do you have?

Do you know the fallacy called "post hoc ergo propter hoc" ? I am not sure whether the authors you quote who put different epochs together succumb to this fallacy unconsciously or they use to in all awareness to prop up a definite theory and so to deflect our attention from a number of inconvenient facts that clearly speak against it.

Tell me what was the first country to recognize Israel de jure , i.e. to establish full diplomatic relations with it and who was chosen as Israel's first ambassador to the USSR and what she spoke about the USSR at that time? Second, with whose weapons did the Jews win their war of independence ? Where did they get artillery and airplanes from ? Just to remind you of one embarrassing fact, the US did recognize Israel de facto but imposed arms embrago on Israel. I hope that even you may well realize that for a nation in a state of siege with implacable enemies armed with Spitfires and artillery just waiting to swoop and exterminate this nation an arms embargo was tantamount to death sentence.

That the Jews later fell out of favor with Stalin is a fact that had its own deeper reasons. That Israel's their relations with the US improved later has also its own explanation but mixing different times, events and reasons to sell a definite theory as your "authorities" and you do is hardly worth imitating. The 'post hoc ergo proter hoc' argument is an old and popular technique among pseudo-historians and I admit you're quite good at it too.

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