https://www.yahoo.com/now/israel-lashes-russia-over-lavrovs-082530896.html

“His words are untrue and their intentions are wrong,” he said. “Using the Holocaust of the Jewish people as a political tool must cease immediately."

The comment is about Russian commentary about Ukraine and Nazism. I am not giving 0's for any purpose other than my own complaints right now, and I have shared my economics system and done plenty of service, so although there is plenty of clarity that Russia is one evil entity acting in the world today, I am not focusing on that right now...I was volunteering anyway.

Anyway, the comment interests me because my first impulse is to wonder why it would be wrong to, e.g., cite the Holocaust in a political discussion to achieve a goal. Politics is often defined in terms of "making decisions about rules and resource allocations for people other than you," e.g., US Republicans might pass a law that tells the whole US that a certain kind of educational system must be used in public schools, even if liberal teachers and students don't like it.

Perhaps the distinction is in the contrast between the meaning of the word "tool" and the word "court." Perhaps if you think of the Holocaust, a historical event, as a metaphorical court--to be appealed to, as an event, respected, and seen as providing a sort of "legacy governance," in the sense that although it was a horrible tragedy, it must be remembered, respected, dedicated mainly to its victims and also to those worked to stop it, and as something that is more "cited" in arguments rather than "employed" or "used as a sort of equipment"; perhaps the Israeli speaker insists that the main big and very sad Jewish tragedy of the 20th century be seen as a "courtroom with a judge, jury, and set of laws consisting of whichever key victims, assistants, and other rightly invested parties presiding over it"...perhaps you could think of the idea of "filing a complaint to be heard in the court," "being a friend of the court," or "arresting someone on behalf of the court."

Of course, I am not Jewish, and don't really think I definitely have the right to cite my great uncle or grandmother's contribution to the war efforts in WW2 to "be a big deal for me personally" as a family member and thus meaningful for my right to speak in a certain way in such a setting. I am just commenting, in a way that I assert is not intended to be offensive and that ought not to be offensive to anyone with reasonable political values, to the best of my knowledge, about an issue that I have some interest in, in spite of me not being much of a historical scholar at all. I don't assert power over the subject of the comment, I am merely discussing it and speculating since I find the subject interesting.

-Philip White (philipjwhite@yahoo.com)