As a Rabbi, I Agree with AOC: Trump is Running Concentration Camps on our Southern Border Opinion

[BeckyDem]

Brant Rosen
On 6/20/19 at 12:26 PM EDT

Last December, I was arrested on the border in San Diego while standing with faith leaders to protest, among other things, Trump's unlawful incarceration of immigrants. My experiences on the border and at immigrant detention centers in my home state of Illinois have left me with no doubt whatsoever that our nation is warehousing humanity in concentration camps—and that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is correct when she refers to them by this term.

As a rabbi, I am compelled to act on behalf of immigrants because my religious faith and historical legacy demands that I do so. And I'm not alone: most American Jews embrace progressive values of social justice—and understand that we ourselves have a history of oppression at the hands of state violence.

Yesterday, AOC stirred something of a hornet's nest when she retweeted an article in Esquire by an expert on immigrant detention who characterized Trump's immigrant detention centers as "concentration camps." Almost immediately, some Republican politicians, the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York pounced, claiming AOC's "regrettable use of Holocaust terminology to describe these contemporary concerns diminishes the evil intent of the Nazis to eradicate the Jewish people."

It is deeply problematic, highly partisan—and historically incorrect—to declare that the use of "concentration camps" is to be constrained to the limits of "Holocaust terminology" (itself hardly an academic term.) As scholar Jonathan Katz recently pointed out in the LA Times, the term "was invented by a Spanish official ...during Cuba's 1895 independence war." FDR, notably, also used the term in reference to his Executive Order to incarcerate Japanese Americans during World War II. And enough people have pointed out in recent days the usage of the term by the British suppressing the Boer rebellion in South Africa for it to be elaborated on here.

https://www.newsweek.com/rabbi-aoc-concentration-camps-never-again-1445036

[phandancer917]

1. Yes, But....

Last edited Fri Jun 21, 2019, 04:01 PM - Edit history (1)

.....Piers Morgan says otherwise!!

Who am I supposed to believe ????


However, now that George Takai has entered the conversation - maybe I will take AOC's side

(definite sarcasm as I absolutely trust what Rabbi stated)

2 years ago, my wife said she feared a 1930's like buildup (to Nazi Germany) going on here and I debated that....not so much anymore, I tell her she is a Prophet.

[BeckyDem]

2. Smart woman. We always need to be vigilant.

Trump is a symptom and he generates a lot of hate, and he has no way to control it. So we must be the ones to stop it.

[Shaddox]

3. Thank you, Rabbi. I thought all religions demand compassion for those without homes.

But hey, here we are! Ammiright! This is why organized religion is a horse fucking lie.