Former White House aide Sarah Hurwitz, who served as a senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama, warned this week that Holocaust education was “confusing” young people into sympathizing with “weak, skinny Palestinians” instead of “powerful Israelis.”
Speaking at a conference hosted by the Jewish Federations of North America, Hurwitz warned, “I think that since October 7th, or really before then, there have been huge shifts in America on how people think about Jews and Israel, and I think that is especially true of young people.”
You have TikTok just smashing our young people’s brains all day long with video of carnage in Gaza, and this is why so many of us can’t have a sane conversation with younger Jews, because anything that we try to say to them, they’re hearing it through this wall of carnage. So I want to give data and information and facts and arguments, and they’re just seeing in their minds carnage, and I sound obscene.
And you know, I think, unfortunately, the very smart bet that we made on Holocaust education to serve as anti-Semitism education, in this new media environment, I think that is beginning to break down a little bit because, you know, Holocaust education is absolutely essential, but I think it may be confusing some of our young people about anti-Semitism, because they learn about big, strong Nazis hurting weak, emaciated Jews and then they think, “Oh, anti-Semitism is like anti-black racism, right? Powerful white people against powerless black people.” So, when on TikTok all day long they see powerful Israelis hurting weak, skinny Palestinians, it’s not surprising that they think, “Oh I know, the lesson of the Holocaust is you fight Israel. You fight the big powerful people hurting the weak people.”
Hurwitz’s remarks went viral on social media, where they received millions of views and condemnation from users.
“I am almost literally speechless,” responded Jenin Younes, the national legal director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). “She’s decrying the fact that kids’ takeaway from Holocaust education has been that we must protect helpless people from powerful people killing them. The real lesson from the Holocaust, it seems, is that Israel must be able to commit genocide if it wants to.”
“The level of condescension is quite remarkable,” weighed in Jewish Currents editor-at-large Peter Beinart, while former Bernie Sanders press secretary Briahna Joy Gray tweeted, “I started to type a response to this but I simply cannot keep up with the pace and volume of unhinged gish gallop and cope.”
