6mo ago

Texas school district agrees to remove ‘Anne Frank’s Diary,’ ‘Maus’ and 670 other books after right-wing group’s complaint

forward.com Texas school district agrees to remove ‘Anne Frank’s Diary,’ ‘Maus’ and 670 other books after right-wing group’s complaint

The district in the Rio Grande Valley immediately agreed with activists who said the books were “filthy and evil.”

Conservative activists, led by a local pastor and outspoken Israel advocate, pushed the district, Mission CISD, to excise books mostly about gender, sexuality and race. Their demands represented an extreme version of a nationwide culture war over books that has played out in recent years — and ensnared a number of books with Jewish themes.

In Mission, the long list of books on the chopping block includes a recent illustrated adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary; both volumes of Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust graphic memoir “Maus”; “The Fixer,” Bernard Malamud’s novel about a historical instance of antisemitic blood libel; and “Kasher in the Rye,” a ribald memoir by Jewish comedian Moshe Kasher.

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local pastor and outspoken Israel advocate
Anne Frank’s diary
Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust graphic memoir
…
Israel advocate
Anne Frank’s diary
Israel advocate
Anne Frank’s diary
You fucking disgrace
Get out of my country
For some reason this made me way more irrationally angry than just killing Palestinians. It’s killing Palestinians and running cover for the people who killed Anne Frank and Spiegelman’s brother, and doing it all at the exact same time with no sense of shame or embarrassment but, I’m sure, a smug sense of superiority like everyone else is the monster in this
This guy better really hope that there isn’t a hell
- Hey man. If it looks like a Nazi, walks like a Nazi and quacks like a Nazi, it's probably a Nazi
  
  Idk, if it quacks it might be an undercover nazi-duck
  
  The worst possible kind.
  
  Nazi ducks Nazi ducks Nazi ducks
  DUCK OFF!!
  
  Is... that a DK reference??
  
  Fuck Knight? Yes, it is. ;)
  
  If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and looks like a duck, then it's...
  A swan! It claims to be a swan, therefore it is a swan! Swans are beautiful, therefore if you're against swans you're a bad person! You see ducks everywhere and accuse everyone being a duck! The word "duck" lost its meaning. In fact, we defeated the ducks in 1945, therefore any "ducks" we might have today are just edgy teens cosplaying as such.
  EDIT: If you ask me, I think conservatives are just "good cops" to the fascists "bad cops" (this gave me an idea for a potential video essay).
- It's not really surprising - historically, the creation Israel state was helped massively by antisemitists, who wanted to get rid of jews in their own country and having them a place to immigrate to would be the easiest option (the phenomena is often referred to as Zionist antisemitism).
  So yeah, it does make sense - they can hate the jews, but also support Israel at the same time.
  
  In fact, Zionism is built upon the antisemitic myth of "Jews and non-Jews cannot live together".
- From what I understand, a lot of Israelis are rather unkind towards Holocaust survivors. Which is fucking wild to me.
  
  It's only wild if you believe their fable that their nation represents all Jews.
  If however you see them as just another bunch of ethno-Fascists, it actually makes sense that many of the victims of the other large ethno-Fascist group in the last century wouldn't get along with them simply because they recognize many of the same signs.
  
  I didn't think that would happen in Armenia, but since it does - the way some Armenians act towards refugees from Artsakh is similar, I think.
  It's easier for Israelis (especially when being fascists) to think that they themselves are strong, and those survivors are not like them, they are weak. It's as they wanted to identify with Nazis more.
  With such Armenians too - it's the worse part of them thinking they can be just like Turks if they suck up to Turks, and also because Artsakhtsis lost their homeland for being weak, and they are not weak.
  A bit like ignorant and cowardly people abandon relatives with chronic diseases, when there's no evidence of those diseases being transferable.
  It's just cowardice. Humans do it under pressure or when presented with dark events for their interpretation and self-identification. While good upbringing may reduce the risk of someone growing up a coward, it's very human.
  
  No, quite the contrary.
  You've probably read that in the early days of the State there was a lot of resentment towards Holocaust survivors. They were counter to the national narrative of the "New Jew" who was strong, hard-working, and living off the land. Shoah survivors represented Jews as victims, who did not fight back against the Nazis, instead going like "lambs to the slaughter."
  This all changed after the Eichmann trial (1961), which is when most of the world first came to understand the true nature of how the Nazis operated. Many people did fight back, and many couldn't.
  Holocaust survivors are revered and honored in Israel, although the country suffers from poor social services with a lot of gaps. Shoah survivors often fall through those gaps, along with other elders.
- But an Israel advocate would try to hide the holocaust least someone relate it to what Israel is doing to Palestine.
  Maybe you’re thinking of a Jewish advocate and not an Israel advocate?
  
  In-Israel Israel advocacy, and American Judaism, are absolutely chock full of people who are disgusted with Netanyahu’s government and his “war,” in part because of how much he is doing to destroy Israel on the world stage and get Israelis killed for more or less no purpose, as well as the unfolding horror of the apartheid state and genocide he’s enacting in their name.
  Zionist advocates and Israel advocates and Jewish advocates and human rights advocates are four sometimes overlapping but distinct categories.
  
  Netanyahu is an evil fuck, but this isn't his war, Israel has been doing slow and steady ethnic cleansing of the region for 50+ years.
  
  Rabin was closer than anyone to ending it, and Netanyahu's stochastic terrorism led directly to his death. And he's been propping up Hamas ever since, to give Israel an enemy to hate and prevent peace from ever coming to the region.
  Fuck him, he owns it now.
  
  “No does more for Israel than I do”
  “What about that time you killed a democratically elected Israeli leader who was doing good things for Israel”
  “That’s what I said. He was doing more than me for Israel, and we can’t have that. No one does more for Israel than I do.”
  
  True that. Netanyahu's a little more extreme than the norm, but as I understand it, yes, Israeli politics is:
  A majority that wants full-on ethnic cleansing
  A minority party that wants oppression and murder but not in a way that's explicitly genocidal or threatens their own security
  And maybe a tiny dissident faction that wants actual human rights for the Palestinians
  I'm speaking well of the dissident faction and highlighting its existence in the first place; I'm not saying it's anywhere near the mainstream.
  
  A Zionist advocate and an Israel advocate are the same thing.
  Human rights advocates never overlap with those.
  
  I sense the morass of an ever widening pointless argument opening up beneath me.
  I'll say my feeling on it and be done, and you're free to disagree: No one should be hated for where they were born, or for wanting a home or a safe place to be. Not a Palestinian, or a Russian, or an Israeli citizen, or someone who was born and grew up in Nazi Germany. If you got born in Israel and managed to penetrate through a significant haze of propaganda and groupthink to realize that what your country is doing on the world stage is a monstrous crime, what should you do?
  Advocate for the destruction of your home?
  Move away, never to return, renounce your citizenship and want nothing to do with your evil of a country? Yeah, maybe.
  But I can also see someone who sees it as their duty to resist Netanyahu's government, tries to set their country back on the right course, advocates for the ICC, and turns out for protests against the government and gets brutalized and arrested for it. That stuff happens too. "Pro Israel" isn't really the right word for those people, no. I actually don't fully disagree with what you're saying, that in the modern world if you are "pro Israel" you're probably a piece of shit (or just totally propagandized / misinformed about what's actually going on, which there's a lot of also). So maybe I shouldn't have phrased it in those terms. But definitely, I think there is a type of Israeli person who is trying to support their home, the only place they've ever known to live, by resisting the Netanyahu government, and is ashamed of Israel but not like "against" them in the sense of, I hate my home and all the people here. You can love the town you grew up in, you can have friends and allies (hopefully, ones who are also horrified by the death and destruction in Gaza) there. You can be "pro" that part of it while still hoping that Netanyahu somehow gets what's coming for him, soon, and all of the killing that's being done in your name stops.
  Like I say, I don't think anyone should be hated for where they were born.
  (Oh, and also the far ends of the scale have 0 overlap, yes. You cannot be a Zionist and a human rights advocate, if my way of saying it made it sound like I thought you could.)
  
  No one in Israel is out there protesting the genocide.
  All the protests have been because not enough was done to rescue hostages or some other dislike of Netanyahu.
  Overall polling shows Israel supports what is happening to Palestine or thinks not enough has been done.
  
  Yes they are. It's the same groups that have been campaigning to end the occupation since before October 7th. It's not a majority or even close to - two-thirds of Israelis support the continuation of the war. But saying "no one" is an absolute falsehood. And, I think propaganda and misunderstanding of the situation on the ground is also a large part (in addition to, yes, some large amount of pure racism and violent vindictiveness that says it's okay if Palestinians are dying because they are bad.)
  The wheel you're currently cranking on, is the same wheel that was turning right at the beginning of Israel, and managed to turn its way from "all the Nazis are wrong and evil" around to "the Jews are always the victims about everything" and has now arrived itself at "Israel can do anything it decides to and will still be the victim" and now, on the other side, "all the Israelis are always wrong and evil" is emerging into view coming in the other direction. I am telling you that no matter how hard you crank that wheel, on whichever side, your activity will never crank you around to arrive at a world that is peaceful or just.
  (I know I said I'd stop after saying my bit; I just wanted to say a little more on it and shoot down the absolutely false idea that no one in Israel opposes the war on humanitarian grounds.)
  
  That whole article talks more about protestors pushing for returning hostages and other dislikes of Netanyahu far more than it does generic 'anti-war' protestors.
  So thanks for that really, just further solidifies my point.
  Likewise life is not a fucking wheel, it doesn't travel in some predetermined path you've created. Let me tell you something, no matter how hard you centrist "don't do anything at all" approach it, you will never arrive at a world that is peaceful or just.

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