Oh boy, where to start…
1. The only way I can remotely say “he has a point” is with regard to how most secular Jews relate to the Holocaust. All too often, you hear the trite “Never Again” being bandied about, like it’s the slogan of Judaism. Aside from the fact that there’s so much more to the Holocaust than that, there’s so much more to Judaism than the Holocaust. When the only argument against marrying Christina is that some relatives died 70 years ago, it doesn’t bode well. So in that sense, yes, there’s some “getting over it” to do. That being said…
2. The Jewish people are all about collective memory. Has this guy ever read the Hagaddah? Not only have we NOT “gotten over” being enslaved in Egypt, we talk about Yetzias Mitzrayim in terms of WE- WE were enslaved, WE were taken out by Hashem, WE were brought to EY as Hashem promised etc. It’s never just our ancestors, it’s US. That can be a very difficult concept to wrap your head around, but with the Holocaust being recent enough that we still have people among us who were there, it’s a little less difficult.
3. The Holocaust IS uniquely Jewish. Yes, other non-Jewish minorities were brutally slaughtered by the the Nazis, and yes, there have been some terrible genocides since then (including Darfur, which continues to this day), there is NO COMPARISON to what Hitler did and tried to do to the Jews. We weren’t just slaughtered, our entire religion was attacked- Torahs and other holy objects burned, tallesim and tefillin used for mockery; the Nazis knew full well when Yom Kippur was so they could davka offer starving Jews lavish meals on that day, and they knew when Pesach was so they could davka offer loaves of fresh bread. No other genocide has so systematically attacked a people down to their foundations like that.
4. When people get offended by inappropriate use of Holocaust terms/imagery, it’s not because the Holocaust is taboo. It’s because such imagery generally trivializes the evil that went on. When an American president or Israeli prime minister is compared to Hitler ym”sh, it trivializes the level of evil that he was. No one other than Ahmedinejad (and a few choice others) comes even close.
5. There was a recent article in the NYT by known Jewish anti-Semite Roger Cohen, who basically said we Jews need to get over the Holocaust and stop being victims, because those poor Palestinians are the real victims now. He’s not alone in this thinking. Plenty of left-wing intellectuals and politicians are calling for us to “just get over it already” and using this as ammunition against us in our struggle against the Palestinians. How quickly people forget. Although EY is ours because Hashem gave it to us, NOT because we are victims of the Holocaust, the world sees it as the latter. They gave us the scraps 64 years ago because they felt sorry for us, but now they don’t have to feel sorry anymore so they’re trying to take it away CH”VS. We CANNOT just get over it and let Europe off the hook.
There is so much more…This is just off the top of my head…