ABSTRACT
Use of the term Holocaust in English began sometime between 1957 and 1959, in order to express the then-widespread feeling that what had happened to the Jews during World War II was unique or unprecedented, as indeed it was. Stealing the Holocaust became central in the ideology of the most militant and aggressive of anti-Israel groups, particularly the American Friends Service Committee. This wealthiest and most politically active corporate component of the Religious Society of Friends, better known as Quakers, has since 1967 consistently sought to portray Israelis as the new Nazis and Palestinian Arabs as their "Jewish" victims. Anti-Israel journalists soon developed a standard formula for exploiting the Holocaust. The blurring of the crime that was the Holocaust is not always political and not always a weapon used against Jews or Israel. It often seems characteristic of nothing more than the intellectual vulgarity and lack of distinction that are besetting sins of our culture.
