All Pharaohs Must Fall: A Passover Reflection on Sean Spicer
Wednesday, April 12, 2017 By Brant Rosen, Truthout | Op-Ed- font size
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer during his daily briefing with reporters at the White House in Washington, DC, March 21, 2017. (Doug Mills / The New York Times)
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has suggested that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is worse than Hitler, because, "Even Hitler didn't sink to using chemical weapons." He later added the "clarification" that "[Hitler] was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing."
There are so many things that are so horribly wrong about Spicer's comments, it's difficult to know where to start. I'll limit myself to four points (and I'm not even going to touch his inscrutable reference to "Holocaust centers"):
#1: Our own allies have used US-supplied chemical weapons.
During its 2008-2009 military assault on Gaza, Israel dropped white phosphorous -- a chemical that burns flesh down to the bone and can cause fatal damage to the liver, kidneys and the heart -- on densely populated civilian centers. Human Rights Watch (HRW) later issued a 71-page report, "Rain of Fire: Israel's Unlawful Use of White Phosphorus in Gaza," which provided numerous "witness accounts of the devastating effects that white phosphorus munitions had on civilians and civilian property."
Israel initially denied its use of white phosphorous, but when faced with overwhelming evidence, it admitted it did indeed deploy this chemical, claiming it only used it as a smokescreen to protect its troops. This statement, too, was false. HRW's Fred Abrahams pointed out:
In Gaza, the Israeli military didn't just use white phosphorus in open areas as a screen for its troops. It fired white phosphorus repeatedly over densely populated areas, even when its troops weren't in the area and safer smoke shells were available. As a result, civilians needlessly suffered and died.
HRW also noted that "all of the white phosphorus shells that Human Rights Watch found were manufactured in the United States in 1989 by Thiokol Aerospace, which was running the Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant at the time."
More recently, it was reported that Saudi Arabia appears to be using US-supplied white phosphorous in its war on Yemen. When asked about this, the State Department responded that it was "aware of these reports" and is "looking into them."
#2: Spicer doesn't seem to believe that Jews were Germany's "own people."
Whether consciously or not, when Spicer noted that Hitler "was not using the gas on his own people," he was suggesting that the 200,000 German Jews who were murdered by the Nazis were not Germany's "own." This is a time-honored anti-Semitic trope that stigmatizes Jews as alien elements in the nations in which they live.
It is also a meme that Donald Trump and his followers openly apply to immigrants, Muslims, people of color and any other group they deem "un-American." As Michael Daly correctly observed in the Daily Beast:
When the Trumpians tell us that the president is only fulfilling his promises to The American People and doing what The American People want in the interest of The American People, you can be sure that they meant it in the same sense that Hitler spoke of The German People.
#3: We've heard this before.
Even if we chalk up Spicer's comments to ignorance, this kind of insensitivity is part of a growing pattern of disturbing dog whistles Trump has repeatedly been sounding in relation to American Jews: his appointment of "alt-rightist" Steve Bannon as a close White House advisor; his reluctance to disavow his support from full-bore white supremacists, such as David Duke and Richard Spencer; his use of an anti-Semitic image in his campaign; his International Holocaust Day statement that made no mention of Jews; and his use of the "America First" slogan, which has historically anti-Semitic roots.
Some were hoping that given Trump's fraught relationship with the American Jewish community, he would at least attend the White House Passover Seder, as Obama did on each of the eight years of his presidency. Alas, neither Trump, nor his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, chose to attend. (He did, however, issue a tweet wishing a happy Passover "to everyone celebrating.")
#4: On Passover?!
Yes, it certainly added insult to injury that Spicer made these comments on the first day of Passover. However, let's choose to make this a teachable moment. After all, one of the central themes of the Exodus story that is read on Passover is the danger of the Pharaohs who use xenophobia to single out Jews and other minorities for oppression.
So let's take heart from the lesson that Exodus teaches us. As poet Kevin Coval so aptly puts it in his poem "all the pharaohs must fall":
wake in this new day
look around
neighbors are allies
we don't have to compete with
we can ally and fight with them
there are more of us
who don't drill or bomb or legislate
more of us who 3rd shift and wash dishes
more of us who forge papers and sneak over fences
more of us worried about unlawful arrests
and whose worry arrests in the night without sleepwake in this new day
we will all die soon
let us live while we have the chance
while we have this day
to build and plot and devise
to create and make the world
just
this time for us
this time for all
this time the pharaohs must fall
BRANT ROSEN
Brant Rosen is the rabbi of Tzedek Chicago and the Midwest regional director of the American Friends Service Committee.
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