An Israeli high school student was arrested and questioned by police for doing a Nazi salute during a school trip to Auschwitz, Israeli media reported on Sunday.
The teenager from Kiryat Bialik was on his school’s field trip to Poland when he did the gesture under the entrance sign to the camp.
He was questioned for two hours by Polish police and was fined approximately NIS 1,500 after security guards observed him performing the salute. The museum also captured the incident on its security cameras; the footage was handed over to the police.
Polish police charged him with promoting Nazism, local media reported. Performing a seig heil is illegal in Poland, and carries a potential sentence of up to two years in prison.
Personally knowing some young Israeli’s.
A lot of them don’t take the holocaust very seriously and tend to joke about it a lot, (maybe it’s a coping mechanism)? In any case, this is probably a case of an edgy high schooler trying to make their friends laugh.
Could be a coping mechanism. If they took it seriously they would probably have to reflect about the similarities between the Nazis and Israel.
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It’s not that deep. Lots of teenagers do edgy stuff just because it’s edgy and not allowed.
He’ll look back in 10 years cringing about himself.
Thank goodness we can arrest them for it. Imagine the objective harm & deprivation of rights or opportunities or resources that teenage edginess causes to the people it offends. Right?
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The world is not that black and white my dude, go outside sometimes
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Touch grass, man. When people call zionists nazis, they mean they are genocidal ethno(-religious) fascists. They don’t literally mean they speak german, sport swastikas, heil hitler, and hate jews. Zionists despise literal nazis. I can’t believe this actually has to be explained.
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Hm, Netenyahu saying palestinians made the nazis into the nazis we know today doesn’t seem like nazi apologism, it sounds like more anti-palestinian propaganda to me.
It makes sense, essentially by remaining oblivious and reductive about one act you can then allow yourself to also be blind to your own current amoral actions. Essentially it’s easier to stay dense than it is to actually face the reality you are a part of.
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I think most teenagers are not nearly so self-aware. Most people see things as in-group/out-group, simple as that. Doing a nazi salute was probably meant as am (ignorant) way to defy authority; teen most likely was not thinking about palestine at all.
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No – nazi salutes are not acceptable in Israeli culture. Nazi salutes are the ultimate anti-semitic gesture. Why would those be “expected”?
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that’s an antizionist gesture. Some fascists like to pretend antisemitism = antizionism.