Quote from: bryant.coleman on April 20, 2015, 10:18:25 AM

Quote from: J. J. Phillips on April 20, 2015, 06:52:38 AM

In a thread where so many people have trouble with simple factual statements, I'm hesitant to bring in counterfactuals/hypotheticals. Still, I will. I wonder what would've happened if many of the Romani had immigrated to, say, Kashmir in the early part of the 20th century. (They do have northern Indian ties historically, so it isn't so far-fetched.) Suppose that at the end of British rule in the late 1940s the Romani declared an independent state in part of Kashmir. Clearly there would be lots of armed conflict in that region, just as there is today. However, I imagine we'd hear much more about the Kashmir conflict and most of what we'd hear would be cartoonish misinformation about evil Gypsies lying, cheating and oppressing poor indigenous Muslim children who just want peace and crayons. The reason would be racism.

Oh..... Now you are saying that 80% of the Western European Romani wouldn't have been butchered in the holocaust, had they migrated to India. What if I say the same about Jews?

Had the Jews migrated to either Uganda or Madagascar, the holocaust could have been avoided (I am not a supporter of this idea... this is just to counter Phillips' arguments).

Bwaahaaahaaa. Oh, that's funny. Since this is such a bizarre interpretation of what I said, I'll assume you're just trolling. I mean, come on. It's obvious that I was describing "what if the Romani had started moving to build a homeland like the Jews did," to make a hypothetical point. If I were saying the Romani could've avoided the Holocaust by doing so, it would imply I thought the Jews avoided it by moving to (what is now) Israel. To be clear: I don't think that. Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. I think if the people opposing me in this thread have their way, six million more Jews will be killed in Israel. I think that's a bad thing.

In case anyone actually doesn't understand what I said or its context, I'm happy to clarify. Earlier I said something like this:

(JHKA) If there were very little Jew hatred in the world, the Arab-Israeli conflict would be about as important as the conflict in Kashmir.

As with most of my statements and questions, this was ignored.

My hypothetical is to acknowledge: (1) It's not just the Jews that are hated, as one can see by looking at the Romani. (2) The conflict in Kashmir would be seen as far more important if Westerners were racist against one of the sides.

It's an imperfect comparison. The important thing with the Jews is that they are hated by Muslims (going all the way back to conflicts with Mohammed) and by the West (hmm, to some degree this traces all the way back to the roots of Christianity [Christ-killers!]...interesting). That's what makes both the West and the Islamic world side against Israel, and draws so much attention to the conflict. I'm not sure of any history between Islam and the Romani. I'm sure someone could google it for me. I think there's bad blood between Islam and Hinduism (death to all polytheists!), but that at least doesn't date back to Mohammed. Well, the death to polytheists does, but not Hinduism specifically. The West isn't really antagonistic towards Indians. The most racist image of India in the West is Apu from The Simpsons. I'll bet Jews would love it if that were the most racist image of Jews.

The part that makes the comparison good is that India was under British rule until the late 1940s, just like the Palestinian Mandate. In both cases the land was divided into -- very roughly speaking -- a Muslim part (Pakistan) and a non-Muslim part (India). [By the way, is Pakistan "occupied territory"?] In both cases there's a conflict about who has part of the land, and the conflicts have both been violent. So why aren't we seeing constant threads and propaganda about Kashmir? No Jews. My point was, well, maybe if instead of fighting Indians the Pakistanis were fighting the Roma, there would be a lot more propaganda. You know, about how the Pakistanis got "gypped" -- that kind of thing.

People may also wonder why we're talking about the Roma at all. Well, I was responding to Bryant Coleman bringing up the Roma (and others) who died in the Holocaust. (Well, he generalized to those who died in WW2.) He did this because he mistakenly believed I was implying only Jews died in the Holocaust. (You can tell it's a mistaken belief because he hasn't supported it by quoting anything I've written. While most of the victims of the Holocaust were Jewish, there were about five million non-Jewish victims. In addition, obviously millions more died fighting in WW2.) He did this after I brought up the fact that six million Jews died in the Holocaust. I brought that up as a response to this quote from him:

Quote from: bryant.coleman on April 18, 2015, 12:01:16 PM

We were talking about the right of Palestinians to live on the lands where they were born (and their ancestors were born), and not about gassing a few hundred Jews.

I interpreted this comment to mean that Bryant Coleman is a Holocaust denier. A common form of Holocaust denial is saying that the number of Jews who were killed (six million) is exaggerated. Since then, he indicated he agreed six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. It's good that he's not a Holocaust denier. We have more than enough of them on this thread already.

But it leaves me to wonder: what in the holy fuck did the phrase above mean? Does Bryant Coleman think only a few hundred Jews live in Israel? Surely not. Then...what? As I mentioned before, the only charitable interpretation I can think of is that it was just a typo. He meant to write "million" but wrote "hundred". It's a strange typo. Not quite "there" vs. "their." But, honestly, I can't make any sense of it. I can't help but wonder if he might be a Holocaust denier, but backed away from it because it makes him sound crazy and dumb.

Oh, by the way, to those of you who are Holocaust deniers: most of the world thinks you're crazy and dumb. Given the crowd on this thread, that might need to be said explicitly. Like earlier when I mentioned the classic question with a presumption: "When did you stop beating your wife?" It later became clear to me that that might be confusing to the Muslims on this thread. I should've made it explicitly clear that the rest of the world things beating your wife is a bad thing. Sorry I wasn't clear about that before.