In an article for The Daily Wire, Rabbi Yakov Menken debunked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s claim that the US is currently housing illegal aliens in Concentration Camps.
The Daily Wire:
Defense #1: Nazi death camps were merely the most “extreme” and inhuman manifestation of a concentration camp system.
AOC sourced this from Esquire magazine, in which a left-wing writer asserted that the Nazi death camps were merely the most “extreme” of an evil broader phenomenon that includes forced labor camps in the Soviet Union, the imprisonment (and starvation) of Dutch Boers and native Africans in South Africa from 1900 to 1902, the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II … and, of course, the detention of voluntary migrants trying to illegally enter America in 2019.
This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying.
This is not hyperbole. It is the conclusion of expert analysis ⬇ï¸https://t.co/2dWHxb7UuL
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 18, 2019
Once one places all forms of confinement — even for those doing an illegal act, such as entering a country without a visa — into a single basket, a prison becomes a “concentration camp.” Given leftist opposition to the death penalty, this naturally leaves no other option for murderers other than letting them go scot-free.
Argument number two
Defense #2: Concentration camp are not death camps. How dare you imagine I meant otherwise! When her first attempt (unsurprisingly) failed to placate her critics, AOC then tried an entirely different story — while pretending it was the same.
And for the shrieking Republicans who don’t know the difference: concentration camps are not the same as death camps.
Concentration camps are considered by experts as “the mass detention of civilians without trial.â€
And that’s exactly what this administration is doing.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 18, 2019
Set aside for the moment that detention “without trial” still includes the pretrial imprisonment of those held without bond. AOC says that Republicans “don’t know the difference” between concentration and death camps. She is trying to hide that it was she who lumped them together.
On Instagram, she declared that she only wants to talk to “the people that are concerned enough with humanity … that ‘Never Again’ means something.” Those two words are tied uniquely to the Nazi death camps. According to historical accounts, it was first written on signs at Buchenwald by newly rescued Jews. It was then popularized by the 1972 book, “Never Again! A Program for Survival” by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane — hardly someone you would have expected AOC to quote. Having used that catchphrase, her denial that she did intend to compare detention centers to death camps is patently ludicrous.
Argument number 3
Defense #3: Concentration Camps Lead to Death Camps, So They Really Are the Same.
This third option is so grotesque that AOC, to her credit, could not manage to voice it herself. I have previously written about the tragic abandonment of Jewish values by leftist Jewish groups, to the point that the Jewish Telegraphic Agency rightly described the “agenda of the Reform [Judaism] movement” as that of left-wing progressives. So we should not be surprised that she found Jews willing to join her in trivializing the Holocaust.
She found this gem from Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Ok, Internet. Time to learn the difference between concentration camps and death (“exterminationâ€) camps.
Germany started with concentration camps in 1933.
Death camps started in 1941.
Never again is now. https://t.co/W3rbM5asVc
— Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg (@TheRaDR) June 14, 2019
Ruttenberg not only runs with the idea that detention of illegal immigrants is equivalent to concentration camps, but implies that they lead to death camps. “Never again is now,” she says — unless we allow illegals to flood into the country, at some point the U.S. will start using Zyklon-B! But AOC wasn’t done. She then found and retweeted Bess Kalb, writer for a TV show and apparent expert in Jewish affairs:
Jew here. @AOC’s point is exactly why we say “Never forget.†The Holocaust did not begin with the murder of 6 million Jews. It began with the same dehumanization, deportation, and internment we see today. You, sickeningly, invoke the Holocaust to minimize their suffering. Shame.
— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) June 18, 2019
Kass states explicitly what Ruttenberg merely implied: That internment of illegal immigrants is the first step to mass murder. Having thus trivialized the Holocaust, she then falsely claims that it is not AOC, but her critics, who brought it up.
I had to share this because he does such a good job of destroying all of there arguments. The best part is that he showcases how their argument actually would be an argument against anyone to be put in prison. Their argument would claim putting people in jail would be putting them into a concentration camp.
Here is the truth about these detention centers. Illegal aliens crossing the border are breaking the law. It is illegal to enter the US without being a citizen of having some sort of Visa that allows you in the US. When migrants apply for asylum they are willingly giving themselves up to the United States and therefore it is not against any law that they are detained in these facilities. If the left truly cared about these migrants they would support President Donald Trump’s immigrant agenda which would stop this mass migration to the US and fix many of these facilities.
We also have the fact that many of these actions being taken at the border happened under the Obama Administration. It strikes me as really odd that the Democrats were so silent about the border until Trump came into office. Remember when they told us there was no crisis at the border? Did Democrats think Concentration camps at the US Mexico Border didn’t equal a crisis?
Democrats believe in Open Borders. That is why they must claim any protection of the Border equals a concentration camp that would only be supported by evil, evil people.
I have no clue what Rabbi Yakov Menken’s politics are but what I do know is that he is right on the money here. The radical left’s flimsy arguments are nothing but propaganda for a radical open borders agenda that they know the vast majority of Americans would never support.
The Palmieri Report is a Pro-America News Outlet founded by Jacob Palmieri two years ago at the age of 19. Since its founding, it has gotten over 200k pages views and over 20k followers. The Palmieri Report is dedicated to debunking the lies spread by the left-wing Mainstream Media.
