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About erosion, or: what are we talking about when we talk about a pogrom

A number of media people have used words like "riots" or "pogroms" to describe the violent clashes between Arabs and Jews in the cities involved in the past week, but this is a wrong, hypocritical and dangerous framing, bordering on irresponsible.

Admittedly: the dangerous chaos in the streets is severe enough even without remembering Kishinev

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• The guardian of the walls

Nadav Menuhin

Sunday, 16 May 2021, 08:26 Updated: 11:54

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What are we talking about when we talk about riots? About a pogrom?

These two words were repeated by publicists, journalists and panelists from time to time to describe the violent events between Arabs and Jews in the cities involved in the past week. These events leave a great impression. I, a resident of Jaffa, are also shocked. It is impossible not to be overwhelmed by indiscriminate violence - on all sides - against innocent civilians. It is hard not to feel terror in the face of violent harm to businesses, synagogues, and private homes. But as the blood boils, the use of terms like riots or pogroms for framing and description that takes place in Lod, Acre or Jaffa is wrong, hypocritical and even dangerous. The use of it by media people above main stages borders on irresponsibility.

It is clear to everyone why it is easy for journalists to use this very charged branding and not, say, in words like riots, riots or violent confrontations.

They want you to see 1957 as particularly traumatic events in modern Jewish history. Look at Acre and think of Chisinau, look at Lod and think of 1905.

We do not need much beyond that for the worst historical memory to come to mind.

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Lucy Aharish: "My parents' house in Dimona was marked as Arab. They left the house for fear of being harmed."

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Serious as it is.

A day after the riots in Bat Yam (Photo: Niv Aharonson)

Although there is no unequivocal agreement in the study to define riots and pogroms, even if we ignore the critical historical difference between then and now in majority and minority relations and the government's attitude to the Jewish population and its involvement in events, we can use the quantitative test. Just before we go back in our imagination to Kristallnacht and the like, we should remember that in Kishinev, for example, 49 Jews were murdered. In the multitude of Petliura riots, there are tens of thousands of victims. In Farhud - almost two hundred. In pogroms in Europe during World War II, in Lvov and Iasi for example, the numbers of murders are enormous. The version of the Land of Israel - the events - also includes significant numbers of Jewish victims: in the events of 1941, 47 Jews, in 1903 - 133. An effort must be made to find a prominent event defined as a pogrom without a significant component of murder.

In addition, pogroms often include other elements of extreme violence.

Those who study the history of the people of Israel do not need a reminder of horrific descriptions of inconceivable cruelty, beyond all imagination, associated with such events.

In the events of 1941, praise be to God, so far no Jews have been murdered or raped (however, an Arab resident of Lod was shot to death). The events are frightening; Probably not, and the Cossacks are not here yet.

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This pogrom is not.

Preparing for riots in Lod (Photo: Niv Aharonson)

Of course, it is allowed to compare. Always. But it is worth remembering how much we revolt when other events are compared to the Holocaust, for example. Most of us feel itchy and even permeated when vaccine opponents compare the green mark to the yellow badge, or even just recently, when CNN's esteemed journalist Christian Amanpour made the parallel between Kristallnacht - a pogrom in our case - and the tenure of US President Donald Trump. Similar. According to reports, Israel then, through the Foreign Ministry, demanded an official apology from Amnfor, which did indeed back down. We resent such cases both because it is clear to us the gap between historical events and current events, however serious, and because of the ignorance, insensitivity and harm to the memory of the victims by a pointless comparison, which erodes the meaning of the original disaster.

These things provoke even more public anger when the comparisons are directed at us, and we are the champions of the "forbidden to compare."

Israelis are outraged at any attempt to attribute to them, however serious the incident, descriptions charged in this spirit.

When it comes to the actions of Arabs towards Jews we are probably less sensitive to extreme historical comparisons, and this is nothing but hypocrisy, certainly when similar acts occur from the other side as well.

We demanded an apology from her.

Amenpur (Photo: screenshot, CNN)

Historical ignorance or insensitivity are unfortunately not a really unusual thing in the Israeli or global media. that's not the point. The real danger in framing the violence in the cities involved as riots and pogroms in the media is the burning of fire and the boiling of blood. It is a hard-to-resist victim image, and it feeds the deepest fears of Jews in recent centuries. It may justify in the eyes of some people even extreme violence that will come from the other side. The events of the last few days teach us that unfortunately the same violence is not long in coming. When journalists now shout "Fire Brothers Fire", they are in fact pouring, even unintentionally, more oil into the fire.

These days are difficult for everyone, and it is the media that mediates the events around us to the public.

Precisely for this reason, in these charged days, journalists must refrain from quarreling and raising flames, be careful with their language, and provide viewers, readers and listeners with as close a report as possible to the facts - even without the need for exaggerated images.

We are in 2021, and at a time of catastrophic escalation against Gaza - Arab and Jewish citizens, furious, beating each other in the streets mercilessly.

Admittedly it is serious enough even without thinking about Chisinau.

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