Much of the sane Jewish world was shocked and scandalized by images of insane self-styled Kanoim co-opting Holocaust imagery at a protest of theirs a few months back. They dressed themselves and their family members in Concentration Camp and Ghetto regalia prominently featuring the געלע לאטע (the yellow Mogen Dovid patch with the word "Jude", "Jood" or "Juif" emblazoned on it), had their little children pose in imitation of the iconic image of the child emerging from the sewers of the Warsaw ghetto after the uprising and sat in mock prison cells. The rest of us were aghast at their historical ignorance, cynical manipulation and brass/ harlot-forehead-brazen effrontery to the martyrs of our People.
Now, a few months later, I think that we can add "making holocaust trivialization acceptable in polite society again" to their rap sheet.
It seems that a schemata manufacturer called "Urban Outfitters" thought that a T-Shirt with a געלע לאטע theme would be a "hip" product. Had Jews from Central Casting such as the Hafgona organizing Meah Sheorim denizens not already made minced-meat out of the געלע לאטע I don't think that designing and marketing such a product would have occurred to even the most debauched and perverse of fashion designers.
The usual suspects are raising cries of protest and will, no doubt, be criticized in the days and weeks to come as being overly-sensitive and playing into the hands of "Urban Outfitters" in the days to come. But absent the Meah Sheorim Hafgonos I doubt that the current ADL and Commentary Magazine hand-wringing would ever have been necessary.
Yasser Arafat once infamously employed the following pretzel-like cogency : "How can I be called an anti-Semite when I am a Semite myself?" Similarly, how can we accuse "Urban Outfitters" of incredibly poor taste, being offensive to Jews and/or marketing an anti-Semitic product when Jews themselves have abused the image even more egregiously?
בא המבדיל והעמידן על אחת
"Those who cannot tolerate Havdala cannot appreciate Qedusha"
2 comments:
I saw the shirt and until I read what people thought it was, I simply didn't see it. I didn't even see it was a magen dovid until it was suggested to me.
Did you see this on your own? Or after it was suggested?
IMO they made a mountain out of a molehill. What the NK chevra did was about 10,000 times more offensive. the only possible link to the gella lahteh was the color of the actual T-Shirt and even considering that it takes a really wild imagination and paranoid sensibility to connect the dots back to what the Jews were made to wear in Naziland.
At 100 bucks a pop this Tees were destined to be a fashion flop even among the Neo-Nazi set. Now they will be sought after like banned copies of the Making of a Godol.
If this company did not have a track record of offending other ethnic groups I would have called the reaction of Commentary and the ADL utter madness. Now I merely call it playing into Urban Outfitters hands.
The Commentary editorial begins with this wise maxim:
It is generally a good rule to ignore those who purposefully seek to generate outrage, but there are times when even those who are hoping to be condemned for their behavior need to be obliged.
IMO this was NOT one of those times.
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