To the Editor:
It is sad to see Kadima Party members of the Knesset trying to pass a bill forbidding the use of Shoah-associated words in discourse in Israel. This kind of intended suppression of speech is reminiscent of the Nazi-like laws that forbade criticism of the Hitlerite regime and, more recently, of Turkish laws that forbid speech about the Turkish murder of the Armenians.
The haredi Orthodox behavior is despicable, whether throwing rocks at Shabbos violators or dressing in camp costumes and calling Israeli police "Nazis" in front of the international press. Regrettably, successive Israeli governments have practiced a policy of appeasement of haredi extremists.
For the Knesset to outlaw Nazi metaphors and similes while turning a blind eye to the BDS rantings of Ben-Gurion University political science professors and Israeli employees of anti-Israel NGOs funded by Europeans Quislings, and even Israeli-Arab Knesset members whose anti-Israel words often cross into treasonous incitement, makes no sense. Once you start down the path of suppressing annoying or even strident, nonviolent speech, it’s not long before you start censoring what people read on their iPads, watch on TV, hear on their iPhones or speak to their friends in the cafe.
Serious Nazi murder didn’t start with the Einsatzgruppen in 1941; it started with the Nuremburg Laws in 1935, which suppressed Jewish behavior and, broadly speaking, Jewish speech.
Ken Price
Dallas, Texas
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These people are no better than Islamics; perhaps they would be happier being in an orthodox Muslim state. They don’t serve in the Israel Defense Forces, they take welfare from the state and they attack 8-year-old girls who don’t cover up. To do what they did by mocking the Holocaust is a foul and despicible deed.
Sam S. Snyder
Los Angeles, Calif.
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