What's wrong with this picture?

Nazi boycotts of Jewish businesses 1933

Well, nothing is wrong with the picture itself. It's real. It wasn't faked. It is a true artifact of 20th century European history. The poster on the shop window reads: "Germans beware. Don't buy from Jews".

What started as boycotts against Jewish shops and businesses eventually led to the gas chambers and incinerators of Auschwitz and Treblinka. All of this is irrefutable.

What's wrong is how this picture, and others taken at the same time in the early 1930's, are now being used to suppress free speech and non-violent protest and brand a movement for civil and political rights as racist and illegitimate.

It's an ironic and depressing state of affairs.

What we are seeing is a deliberate attempt to make a direct link between those that follow the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel and those that perpetrated the Holocaust.

[It] is poor deduction, sloppy history, and appalling ethics. It also looks desperate and hysterical.

Read the full post at Writing from the Edge my new blog at Patheos.