Mike Pence’s Holocaust Remembrance Day Tweet Stirs Outrage
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By Aiden Pink January 28, 2018
A tweet sent by Vice President Mike Pence on International Holocaust Remembrance Day was sharply criticized by some for its perceived Christian imagery.
A few days ago, Karen & I paid our respects at Yad Vashem to honor the 6 million Jewish martyrs of the Holocaust who 3 years after walking beneath the shadow of death, rose up from the ashes to resurrect themselves to reclaim a Jewish future. #HolocaustRemembranceDay #NeverAgain pic.twitter.com/67UuC1cYI2
— Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) January 27, 2018
Pence, an evangelical Christian, frequently made biblical allusions in his speech before the Knesset in Jerusalem last week. Some online commentators expressed their frustration over what they saw as the tweet’s Christian overtones.
Mike Pence Jesused all of us Jews without our consent. What a smug, condescending fraud. https://t.co/lMMYxKFfLh
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) January 28, 2018
This tweet bears only a passing familiarity with events and meanings of the Holocaust. https://t.co/oklfIRrslm
— Evan McMurry (@evanmcmurry) January 28, 2018
This is honestly one of the most horrifically tone-deaf statements on the Holocaust I’ve ever read. He’s speaking of a Jewish tragedy entirely through a Christian prism, and that use of “ashes” is particularly egregious. https://t.co/ht479nAwTe
— Danielle Blake (@abradacabla) January 28, 2018
However, as Haaretz’s Allison Kaplan Sommer pointed out, many of the “Christian” phrases used by Pence — “martyrs,” “rose up from the ashes,” “resurrect” — also have Jewish connotations, and are often used by Israeli politicians to refer to the Holocaust.
Furthermore, the video accompanying the tweet — which features audio of Pence’s Knesset address — quotes Pence as saying the living Jewish people, not those killed in the Holocaust, were the ones who went on to “reclaim a Jewish future and to rebuild the Jewish state.”
Contact Aiden Pink at pink@forward.com or on Twitter, @aidenpink
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