UPDATE: As if to prove the point of this post, the r/Germany subreddit deleted the link to this post when I posted it to the sub. Who’d have thought it possible! It had 800 upvotes in eight other subs.
You’ll have to excuse me, but this is going to be a dark one. The language or thoughts may offend. I can only apologize and say: it’s what I’m feeling and I have no choice. Bear with me.
Until today, the German state prohibited any rallies for Gaza. Simply verboten: part of a widespread crackdown on Palestinian activism there. Today, authorities permitted the rally, but warned it would be under “strict police supervision”:
Save
Palestine solidarity protestors at Saturday’s rally in Germany
According to the police, any statements that are anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli and glorify violence or terror are prohibited.
These are terms that are almost impossible to define clearly. They are in the eye of the beholder. I would never leave to a cop to be the judge of this. Keep in mind, this is a country proudly calling itself a western democracy. With all of (or most) of the rights that entails.
But there is one glaring exception: Palestine. Palestinians are Israel’s “bitch” and Germans don’t want to mess with that.
17,000 Palestine supporters rally in Dusseldorf (David Young/DPA)
For historical context, the Nazis came to power in 1933. The country’s prior democratic government was the Weimar Republic, whose downfall in that year led to Hitler’s electoral triumph.
After Weimar, Germans decided against the messiness and uncertainty of democracy. Instead, they sought a single all-powerful leader who had a clear vision and charisma to realize it. Hitler seemed at the time a perfect antidote to the nightmare of instability and economic panic that was Weimar.
Hitler was nothing if not ambitious. He wasn’t content with bringing the German economy out of the Depression (by restarting its steel and weapons factories) and resting on his laurels. His was a revolutionary ideology of bold action. National socialism was, Hitler claimed, a system that would spread far beyond Germany.
Nazism thrived on enemies. Jews were enemies of course. Bankers too (see “Jews”). The nations with defeated Germany in WWI. And Bolshevism.
Hitler believed that the restoration of German glory meant vanquishing all these enemies. Nor was he content to confront them one-by-one. That would not show the world Germany’s power. Instead, it would take them all on at once.
Nazi Genocide ‘Perfected’ via technological innovation
Germany has been known as a technological innovator for the past one hundred years. Its Ruhr steel factories were the envy of other industrial and non-industrial nations. Its chemical companies produced ingredients for scores of critical industrial production processes. It car brands were known for quality and style.
When Hitler determined he must attack and defeat his enemies, he unleashed all of that innovation for the sole purpose of creating an indomitable military machine.
But the Nazis had something special in store for the Jews. By 1942, Hitler decided that expelling Jews from European countries was insufficient. It was far too messy and inefficient. If Jews are an enemy of the human race (according to Nazi race theory), why stop at expelling them? Logically, you must eliminate them entirely. That would be the only, and “final” solution to the “Jewish Problem.” To achieve this meant mobilizing vast human resources and technology in order to create an industrial death machine.
Killing Jews one-by-one, or via pogroms or even the mass killings at Babi Yar, were too time-consuming and labor intensive. This PBS documentary, The Killing Evolution , describes how the ‘industrial process’ of genocide developed:
The Nazis did not start World War II with a plan to eliminate the Jews. This solution evolved—especially from 1939 to 1941—as they tried different techniques to accomplish their goals. Particularly in Germany and Poland camp commandants experimented with various killing methodologies and consulted with one another on their successes and failures. The ability of a single camp to kill 2,000-3,000 people per hour took years to achieve. At first, though, murder was done at close range-man-to-man, woman, or child.
But Nazi commanders soon realized that murder by firing squad, done as repetitively and gruesomely as it was practiced, took a psychological toll on the poor Nazi executioners:
Himmler realized he had to find new methods that would spare his troops the psychological strain of killing human beings at close range.
That’s when some clever German came along and realized that ZyklonB, a common everyday cyanide-based disinfectant invented by a brilliant Jewish chemist to kill vermin, would be ideal. It was cheap, plentiful, and efficient at eliminating pests, whether they be lice or Jews.
If this were an industrial process, rather than genocide, it would be a triumph of technological innovation. As it was, it meant the cruel asphyxiation of nearly 3-million of all those who perished in the Holocaust.
The 21st century’s first genocide
Israel has earned the “distinction” of perpetrating the first genocide of the 21st century. Like Germany, it too is a known for technological innovation in the realms of Big Data, cybersecurity, surveillance technology, and weapons development. It has armed its soldiers with weaponry more lethal and sophisticated that almost any other on the globe.
Like Hitler, Israel has many enemies. Much of the innovation and weapons development mentioned above arises from the country’s security obsession and perpetual war mentality.
Which brings us to Palestine. Israel field tests these weapons for its global weapons customers. Palestinians who resist Israeli Occupation offer the IDF a perfect opportunity to prove their effectiveness in a combat environment.
The Gaza War has highlighted yet another Israeli military innovation: genocide by air. Whereas the Nazis killed by gas, Israel kills by bomb. It doesn’t need thousands of camp guards, sonderkommandos to dispose of bodies, gas chambers, crematoria, etc. It needs a pilot, a plane and a bomb (along with the technology integrated in them). In less than a month, Israel has destroyed most most of the homes, schools, infrastructure in vast swaths of Gaza. Over half of the population has become refugees after losing those homes. They have no food, no water, no electricity. They beg for bread in the streets.
Soon we will see images reminiscent of the Holocaust: pedestrians on the streets passing by corpses sprawled on the pavement. These were Jews in the ghetto who starved to death or died of disease on the street like discarded trash. The only reason we have not seen them yet in Gaza is that the war hasn’t gone on long enough. But don’t worry: Israel assures the world it could last for “months.”
With an powerful air force and an almost unlimited supply of US-made munitions, you can commit an automated genocide. Clean, efficient and deadly. Your pilots come home every night for dinner. With barely a speck of dust on their flight boots.
Which brings me back where I began: Germany. Today’s Germany. It takes a peculiar approach to genocide. While it may seem logical for the nation to have a profound sensitivity to the enormous suffering it caused, that doesn’t seem translate to sensitivity toward other nations and peoples suffering their own genocides. Like most other western nations, it was slow to act against looming genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda.
Gaza is the most problematic genocide of all for Germany. Israel’s war has proven to be terribly “inconvenient.” German police beating and arresting German-Palestinians whose families are dying daily under Israeli onslaught is an unpleasant sight. The country is paralyzed by its guilt over the Holocaust. But it a self-induced paralysis. It’s not that it cannot criticize Israel. It can. But it refuses. Even if it means condoning genocide.
This attitude is a perverse repetition of the common refrain of many post Holocaust Germans who denied any responsibility for the tragedy because they “didn’t know” what the Nazis were doing. That response has been rightly ridicules for its moral obtuseness. But Germany is doing something not dissimilar. It sees with its own eyes the devastation of Gaza on TV and online. Yet somehow it unsees what it has seen. It’s genocide denial. Little different than Holocaust denial.
Germany remains imprisoned by its past. Instead of studying it, learning its lessons, and using them to confront similar injustices, Germany says an implacable, No. Israel has clapped it in moral irons. Not that it had to force Germany to immobilize itself. It did so willingly.
It has adopted the most draconian anti-speech laws of any country in Europe regarding political debate on Israel. You cannot insult Israel. You cannot call it a racist state. You cannot call the Gaza war genocide. You cannot use slogans common virtually everywhere in world but Germany; such as “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” The presumably is forbidden because Palestinian freedom means the destruction of Israel–or some such nonsense. Signs and banners face the same fate. If they display an “offending” message, the police arrest you, charge you with a criminal offense and you face months or years of legal battles as a result.
Germany is one of the few countries which adopted the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism, and enforces it vigorously. Germany-Palestinian state broadcasters were fired merely for being Palestinian (they won their jobs back after court challenge).
A country which perpetrated genocide, decides it owes an eternal obligation to a nation which didn’t even exist at that time in history. That obligation not only prevents it from recognizing the latter-day genocide, but actually criminalizes the genocide victims and their supporters.
This is a toxic and atrocious betrayal of what the legacy of the Holocaust and all genocides should be. They must be discussed, analyzed, debated. Then once there is consensus, there must be action by individuals, NGOs, nations, world bodies. Any effort like German’s to block such critical processes make genocide possible. The terrible irony is that Germany, believing it is insulating itself from genocide, is helping facilitate one.
Czech transport document for Jonas Goldsand, who survived two years in Theresienstadt, only to be transported to Auschwitz, where he perished in 1944
Genealogy and genocide
After my son began doing extensive genealogical research into the histories and of my wife’s and my European Jewish roots, I discovered how many relatives had been murdered in the Holocaust. These were not distant relatives. They were in many cases brothers and sisters of my great-grandparents who arrived here well before the Holocaust.
These family members lived throughout central Europe from Vienna to southern Poland. They dwelt mostly in villages and small towns, where they eked out a living as what might be called the working poor. They had little in the way of a formal education. They operated what today we would call small (very small) businesses. There were no entrepreneurs among them.
US naturalization papers of Adolf Lack, who escaped Austria in 1940
But some understood enough that if they wanted a better future they must emigrated. Those are the ones who were my grandparents and great-grandparents. They were the lucky ones. They in turn, tried to save as many as they could. They succeeded in a few cases. But far too few.
A few examples: a cousin living in my father’s hometown, Haverstraw NY, bought a share in an Irish sweepstakes ticket. He won, and used his share to bring several relatives out of Europe. They are the lucky ones.
Shortly after the Austrian Anschluss, two couples tried desperately to escape and resettle in America. They each named my great-grandfather, Sam Goldand, as their American sponsor. One survived. The other didn’t.
Entire lines of my genealogical tree were wiped out. The family line going back centuries in these places (we have traced ancestors back to the 1740s in some cases), simply disappears in the ashes of Auschwitz and other places of horror. Most of these relatives died within a two-year span of 1941-43.
My genocide, their genocide
When I read the tweets of Gaza victims who recount that 10, 20, or 30 of their immediate family were murdered by a single bomb that destroyed their home or place of refuge. I recall the same fate of my own ancestors.
I am enraged that a State responsible for doing to my kin what Israel is doing to the kin of Gaza, can stand to look at itself. I say to the Germans: what you did, others are doing. DO NOT PERMIT IT! “Never again” is not a slogan reserved for Jews alone. It belongs to any nation or people subjected to genocide. You Germans are not the only perpetrator, and we are not the only victims.
I reject Israel’s self-designation as the recipient of financial and political largess deriving from the Holocaust. No one appointed Israel as the guardian of the memory of European Jewry. Such presumption usurps the mantle and memory of the victims of the Holocaust. Yad Vashem does not belong in Israel. The genocide belongs where it happens. The perpetrators and succeeding generations need to see what happened on their streets and in their towns in these very sites. Putting this museum in Israel validates a false claim of relevance.
Israel made few sustained efforts to rescue Jews. Though it had some marginal successes, these played no significant role in saving them. In fact, both Zionist factions negotiated wit the Nazis before the Final Solution became formalized policy. After the Holocaust, Israel sought to bar disabled and mentally-ill survivors on the grounds that they would be a burden to the State. Those survivors who immigrated, often lived lives of penury with the State offering them little assistance.
Germany made a grave mistake in paying billions in reparations to Israel. Those funds should have been provided to European Jewry to rebuild itself. Instead, they were sent to a place that didn’t deserve them and used to turn Israel into the garrison state it has become. This began a process of guilt and co-optation of Germany by Israel. They became actual political allies as well. But willingly placed a set of golden handcuffs on itself which it has never released.
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17 thoughts on “Germany Criminalizes Calling Gaza a Genocide – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم”
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I take this German blindness to be the result of shame and guilt expressed in the extreme, trying to make amends for what can never be forgotten or forgiven. The guilt is particularly regarding Jews. It doesn’t broaden to a general lesson about humanity. So Germans and Jews, Israelis own it. In this way this extreme inhumanity gets repeated. “Never again” became proprietary .
I find there are basically two reactions to the Holocaust. Once again, maybe forever in our lifetimes, what’s happening now is reverberation from the Holocaust on top of the long history of European scapegoatism, hatred, anti-Semitism, and the helplessness of Jews throughout the centuries.
This Israeli response in Gaza is causing a bloom of anti-Semitism along with anti-Muslim-ism or anti-Arabism. The cycle repeats. Some Jews wallow in this; it bolsters their tribalism, it harbors their own reciprocal hate, and the need to show the world strength.
The two “lessons” or reactions to the Holocaust under the rallying cry “never again” can be forked into 1. Jews will not ever again allow this to happen to us : we will fight to the end by ALL means and with the help of allies — those who still feel guilt, shame ,along with political expediency. They are those trying to make amends for Jewish suffering throughout the ages especially the Holocaust; they feel only or mainly Jewish victimhood: Germany the US etc. Jews are the victims period. Arabs, strangers, are our enemies, Amalekites “human animals” can never be trusted. An eye for an eye, or better, TWO eyes for an eye.
2. There are those, Jews and others, maybe the majority of people, who take “never again” to mean humanity as a whole; humanity must never ever see this again, must never ever let this happen again to ANY people. The solution is not an eye for an eye ( or two eyes for an eye) because, for one, it will boomerang back on us. That is the lesson also in the Bible. Leviticus 19:18 states, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.” Also Sermon on the Mount andthen here from John 4:If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.
The Holocaust/Nazi football has been so kicked around, so misused as a cover, it’s become perversely a license to commit, ironically, sadly, outrageously, crimes against humanity all over again. Gaza, Ukraine.
The demonstrations all over the world are a sign of hope. People are moved by the injustice and hopefully will move leaders while leaders who act politically. I believe Israel under Netanyahu is hoping all this will calm to a “status quo”. The US is helping Israel to commit these crimes with the one hand ( usurping our attention) and with the other trying to help Ukraine fend off Russian aggression and crimes. Try to point this moral blindness out! Our support of Israel is stuck in this blindness, sadly for us. It does not help us or Israel nor us in the world, nor the world.
The tragedy unfolds….
[comment deleted: I started to respond to your comment. But more I read of it the more I realized you were practically regurgitating all the IDF talking pts of the past 3 wks. You are either an Israeli official or someone closely briefed on social media talking points. Or you’re simply someone who reads Israeli propaganda intensively and has absorbed all of them. Anyway, I have better ways to spend my time than reading pure unmitigated propaganda. Israel’s statements are a tissue of lies. I read them every day. I don’t need to see them again in your comments. You are now moderated. If you can publish a comment that isn’t regurgiation I will publish it if I see it.]
[comment deleted: I can see a new hasbara strategy emerging here among the Israel apologists. I’m going to nip it in the bud. An annoucement: if you are one of the apologists (and you know who you are–if I read any IDF talking point in yr comment I will delete it. There is far too much Israeli propaganda on the media and social media. I will not permit the comment threads to be infected by them as well. Anyone whose comment is deleted for this reason will be moderated as well. COnsider yourself well-warned.]
Thank you for great courage Richard … past few years I personally tried to write about this perversion of history and escape of responsibility by today’s leading politicians in the European Union.
Particularly, the history of Polish Galicia and Western Ukrainian territory the role of collaboration of OUN and Stepan Bandera.
Ethnic Cleansing, horror of 20th Century Europe continuous today.
The suffering now is much much larger on the Gaza side, as it always has been. The world sees this now.
Israel is not allowed to justify drop bombs on civilians justify it.This is in GROSS disproportion to the crime Israel has suffered. That is even if it is claimed to be “not targeting Palestinian civilians, but targeting Hamas; it’s active rocket sites, ammo depots, tunnels, command centers, supply depots, and, of course, Hamas armed combatants.”.
International Humanitarian Law. https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/assets/files/other/what_is_ihl.pdf
The accuracy of the bombs is not believable in this densest tightest confined area where ordinary people ( if you concede they are) cannot escape. Israel attempts to cover itself by telling people to leave- to where? To the already densely populated South with Egypt’s doors closed except for foreign nationals? Many were and are not able to leave. Many, despondant, sick, old, young, hosptialized, in need of medication were supposed to somehow go where? They stay.. getting labeled human shields.
Israel is attempting to cleanse Gaza.
Eitay Mack, Esq., the perennial Israeli legal gadfly and human rights activist disagrees with you.
Israel, Mack opines, is not committing genocide, he offers this cogent fact to buttress his argument.
“How does one draw the line between legitimate self-defense and a disproportionate response? That is a fair question.
And that’s also why it’s essential to note the close supervision of the U.S. and German governments on Israel’s war plans, and also Israeli coordination with France, Italy, Canada and the U.K. – none of these countries would greenlight a genocide of the people of Gaza, despite conspiracist claims that they would.”
Load of crap … Abu Ghraib … Iraq War half a million civilian deaths … torture and rendition … Fallujah1.0 and 2.0 … urban warfare and interrogation techniques … lessons from Jenin massacre and sexual perversion of treating Muslim prisoners … impunity, reject the ICC, even threaten people involved with UN investigations … SHAME
Indiscriminate as well as disproportionate. Not caring.
Consider that there are alternatives to killing civilians. Consider that civilians are indistinguishable from supporters that did not participate in the suicides and the murdering. Israel is punishing a whole population for crime they may or may not supported or have known about but are essentially victims.
There was a discussion of alternatives that Israel could have taken that would have been less costly to Gazans and to Israel. Check Ezra Klein’ s podcasts with this person https://www.vox.com/2023/10/20/23919946/israel-hamas-war-gaza-palestine-ground-invasion-strategy Also there’s a good interview with the much maligned and “cancelled” Norman Finkelstein on youtube that makes a strong case about why we are here, giving his version of the history of this.. which I find truthful.
We determine whether acts fall under forbidden acts of the relevant international conventions or customary international law. If the acts do, we then investigate intent. The US was perpetrating genocide until 1978. France, Italy, Canada, and the UK have never come to terms with their crimes against non-European and non-white peoples.
Statistica: The Soviet Union lost as many as 27 million people during the war, and 10 million of these were due to Nazi genocide. It is estimated that Poland lost up to six million people, and almost all of these were through genocide.
Although I agree with most of this I have serious disagreements with somethings. Richard you say that
‘By 1942, Hitler decided that expelling Jews from European countries was insufficient. It was far too messy and inefficient. If Jews are an enemy of the human race (according to Nazi race theory), why stop at expelling them? Logically, you must eliminate them entirely. That would be the only, and “final” solution to the “Jewish Problem.”
I disagree. Firstly the extermination of Jews began with Operation Barbarossa, 22 June 1941 and arguably the holocaust began in October 1939 with the ‘Euthanasia’ campaign.
The decision to turn to extermination had nothing to do with it being messy and inefficient. It was because war made emigration impossible and set the seal on the Madagascar project. It was war imperialism that led to genocide, not only of the Jews but Roma too. The Poles would have been next in line. It had nothing to do with Nazi racial theories either.
You also say that ‘Israel made few sustained efforts to rescue Jews.’
Israel wasn’t in existence until 3 years after the holocaust. If you mean the Zionist movement then its actions caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews, in particular in Hungary with the notorious Kasztner case. I suggest anyone in doubt about this read the book ‘I Cannot Forget’ by Rudolf Vrba, the first escapee from Auschwitz whose Report, together with his fellow escapee from Auschwitz, Alfred Wetzler revealed for the first time the existence of Auschwitz as an extermination as opposed to a labour camp.
Kasztner suppressed the report when he received it on April 27 1944 in order that he could reach an agreement with Eichmann for a special train out of Hungary for the Zionist elite. This is not seriously disputed by the Zionists. The Zionist movement OPPOSED any rescue scheme that involved a destination other than Palestine. It is impossible now to quantify how many people might have escaped if a group claiming to be Jewish hadn’t opposed schemes such as the Freiland and Darwin schemes in Australia, that in the Dominican Republic, Alaska and many others.
Everywhere people proposed a rescue scheme up jumped the Zionists to shout ‘what about Palestine’. Building a Jewish state was their main priority not rescue of refugees. No serious historian disputes that this was the case .
Their major conference during the war was at Biltmore in April 1942 where the call for a Jewish state was first made. No mention at all in the conference was made about rescuing Jewish refugees even though the Zionists were already aware that the holocaust was taking place from reports from exchange Jews from Poland who had come to Palestine in the autumn of 1941 describing the terror.
You say ‘Germany made a grave mistake in paying billions in reparations to Israel. ‘
That was no mistake. Reparations to and military equipment to Israel was the price of integration into the Western alliance for West Germany. And Israel effectively stole those reparations meant for the holocaust survivors to build its military machine.
There is nothing about Zionism which is too disgusting. When Roosevelt called the Evian Conference in July 1938 to deal with the Jewish refugee problem the Zionist leaders panicked at the thought that they may find a solution because if a solution was found then what need would there be for a Jewish state? And also such efforts to rescue Jews would distract from their own fundraising e fforts.
A meeting of the JAE on June 26, 1938 decided to:
‘belittle the [Evian] Conference as far as possible and to cause it to decide nothing…. We are particularly worried that it would move Jewish organizations to collect large sums of money for aid to Jewish refugees, and these collections could interfere with our collection efforts. ‘
Ben-Gurion at the same meeting pulled no punches: ‘No rationalizations can turn the conference from a harmful to a useful one. What can and should be done is to limit the damage as far as possible.’
Menachem Ussishkin at the same meeting cited the fears of the future Chairman of the JA Rescue Committee, Yitzhak Gruenbaum:
He hoped to hear in Evian that Eretz Israel remains the main venue for Jewish emigration. All other emigration countries do not interest him… The greatest danger is that attempts will be made to find other territories for Jewish emigration.
In a letter to Stephen Wise of 13 June 1938, George Landauer, later Director of the JA’s Central Bureau for the Settlement of German Jews, wrote of his concern:
‘Even if the Conference will not place countries other than Palestine in the front for Jewish immigration, there will certainly be public appeals which will tend to overshadow the importance of Palestine…. it may bind Jewish organizations to collect large sums of money for assisting Jewish refugees, and these collections are likely to interfere with our own campaigns’
Fortunately for the Zionists the Evian conference agreed nothing and was nothing more than a face saving exercise by the West. But the Zionists fear that it might do something speaks volumes about their real agenda
Tony: Thanks for your comment. My dating of 1942 regarding the implementation of the Final Solution was based on the date of the Wansee Conference. I didn’t mean there hadn’t been major acts of extermination prior to that.
As for the transition from inefficient to more efficient means of killing, that’s in the PBS documentary to which I linked.
Thanks for the other historical information, which I appreciate.
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I take this German blindness to be the result of shame and guilt expressed in the extreme, trying to make amends for what can never be forgotten or forgiven. The guilt is particularly regarding Jews. It doesn’t broaden to a general lesson about humanity. So Germans and Jews, Israelis own it. In this way this extreme inhumanity gets repeated. “Never again” became proprietary .
I find there are basically two reactions to the Holocaust. Once again, maybe forever in our lifetimes, what’s happening now is reverberation from the Holocaust on top of the long history of European scapegoatism, hatred, anti-Semitism, and the helplessness of Jews throughout the centuries.
This Israeli response in Gaza is causing a bloom of anti-Semitism along with anti-Muslim-ism or anti-Arabism. The cycle repeats. Some Jews wallow in this; it bolsters their tribalism, it harbors their own reciprocal hate, and the need to show the world strength.
The two “lessons” or reactions to the Holocaust under the rallying cry “never again” can be forked into 1. Jews will not ever again allow this to happen to us : we will fight to the end by ALL means and with the help of allies — those who still feel guilt, shame ,along with political expediency. They are those trying to make amends for Jewish suffering throughout the ages especially the Holocaust; they feel only or mainly Jewish victimhood: Germany the US etc. Jews are the victims period. Arabs, strangers, are our enemies, Amalekites “human animals” can never be trusted. An eye for an eye, or better, TWO eyes for an eye.
2. There are those, Jews and others, maybe the majority of people, who take “never again” to mean humanity as a whole; humanity must never ever see this again, must never ever let this happen again to ANY people. The solution is not an eye for an eye ( or two eyes for an eye) because, for one, it will boomerang back on us. That is the lesson also in the Bible. Leviticus 19:18 states, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.” Also Sermon on the Mount andthen here from John 4:If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.
The Holocaust/Nazi football has been so kicked around, so misused as a cover, it’s become perversely a license to commit, ironically, sadly, outrageously, crimes against humanity all over again. Gaza, Ukraine.
The demonstrations all over the world are a sign of hope. People are moved by the injustice and hopefully will move leaders while leaders who act politically. I believe Israel under Netanyahu is hoping all this will calm to a “status quo”. The US is helping Israel to commit these crimes with the one hand ( usurping our attention) and with the other trying to help Ukraine fend off Russian aggression and crimes. Try to point this moral blindness out! Our support of Israel is stuck in this blindness, sadly for us. It does not help us or Israel nor us in the world, nor the world.
The tragedy unfolds….
[comment deleted: I started to respond to your comment. But more I read of it the more I realized you were practically regurgitating all the IDF talking pts of the past 3 wks. You are either an Israeli official or someone closely briefed on social media talking points. Or you’re simply someone who reads Israeli propaganda intensively and has absorbed all of them. Anyway, I have better ways to spend my time than reading pure unmitigated propaganda. Israel’s statements are a tissue of lies. I read them every day. I don’t need to see them again in your comments. You are now moderated. If you can publish a comment that isn’t regurgiation I will publish it if I see it.]
[comment deleted: I can see a new hasbara strategy emerging here among the Israel apologists. I’m going to nip it in the bud. An annoucement: if you are one of the apologists (and you know who you are–if I read any IDF talking point in yr comment I will delete it. There is far too much Israeli propaganda on the media and social media. I will not permit the comment threads to be infected by them as well. Anyone whose comment is deleted for this reason will be moderated as well. COnsider yourself well-warned.]
Thank you for great courage Richard … past few years I personally tried to write about this perversion of history and escape of responsibility by today’s leading politicians in the European Union.
Particularly, the history of Polish Galicia and Western Ukrainian territory the role of collaboration of OUN and Stepan Bandera.
Ethnic Cleansing, horror of 20th Century Europe continuous today.
Ukrainian-Polish Ethnic Cleansing 1943
The suffering now is much much larger on the Gaza side, as it always has been. The world sees this now.
Israel is not allowed to justify drop bombs on civilians justify it.This is in GROSS disproportion to the crime Israel has suffered. That is even if it is claimed to be “not targeting Palestinian civilians, but targeting Hamas; it’s active rocket sites, ammo depots, tunnels, command centers, supply depots, and, of course, Hamas armed combatants.”.
International Humanitarian Law. https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/assets/files/other/what_is_ihl.pdf
The accuracy of the bombs is not believable in this densest tightest confined area where ordinary people ( if you concede they are) cannot escape. Israel attempts to cover itself by telling people to leave- to where? To the already densely populated South with Egypt’s doors closed except for foreign nationals? Many were and are not able to leave. Many, despondant, sick, old, young, hosptialized, in need of medication were supposed to somehow go where? They stay.. getting labeled human shields.
Israel is attempting to cleanse Gaza.
@Richard
Eitay Mack, Esq., the perennial Israeli legal gadfly and human rights activist disagrees with you.
Israel, Mack opines, is not committing genocide, he offers this cogent fact to buttress his argument.
“How does one draw the line between legitimate self-defense and a disproportionate response? That is a fair question.
And that’s also why it’s essential to note the close supervision of the U.S. and German governments on Israel’s war plans, and also Israeli coordination with France, Italy, Canada and the U.K. – none of these countries would greenlight a genocide of the people of Gaza, despite conspiracist claims that they would.”
Eitay Mack, Esq. has a point. Does he not?
Load of crap … Abu Ghraib … Iraq War half a million civilian deaths … torture and rendition … Fallujah1.0 and 2.0 … urban warfare and interrogation techniques … lessons from Jenin massacre and sexual perversion of treating Muslim prisoners … impunity, reject the ICC, even threaten people involved with UN investigations … SHAME
Indiscriminate as well as disproportionate. Not caring.
Consider that there are alternatives to killing civilians. Consider that civilians are indistinguishable from supporters that did not participate in the suicides and the murdering. Israel is punishing a whole population for crime they may or may not supported or have known about but are essentially victims.
There was a discussion of alternatives that Israel could have taken that would have been less costly to Gazans and to Israel. Check Ezra Klein’ s podcasts with this person https://www.vox.com/2023/10/20/23919946/israel-hamas-war-gaza-palestine-ground-invasion-strategy Also there’s a good interview with the much maligned and “cancelled” Norman Finkelstein on youtube that makes a strong case about why we are here, giving his version of the history of this.. which I find truthful.
Gaza ’Nuclear’ Option
[comment deleted: nope, we’re not doing terror porn here.]
We determine whether acts fall under forbidden acts of the relevant international conventions or customary international law. If the acts do, we then investigate intent. The US was perpetrating genocide until 1978. France, Italy, Canada, and the UK have never come to terms with their crimes against non-European and non-white peoples.
Please do remember Australia when you’re listing genocidal states
German psyche and the massacre of Israelis @1972 Olympics in Munich … caused severe feelings of guilt.
”Robespierre articulated his conception of terrorism as a „virtuous‟ political weapon in 1793.”
The Munich Massacre: A New History
Advanced the study of International terrorism and counter-terror measures influenced by foreign policy.
U.S. Used Many Ex-Nazis Sought for War Crimes | CIA Archives – May 1949 | see also Gladio and the damage done.
What are your thoughts on Ahed Tamimi’s arrest, and do you think the accusation regarding her social media posts are true ?
Although I agree with most of this I have serious disagreements with somethings. Richard you say that
‘By 1942, Hitler decided that expelling Jews from European countries was insufficient. It was far too messy and inefficient. If Jews are an enemy of the human race (according to Nazi race theory), why stop at expelling them? Logically, you must eliminate them entirely. That would be the only, and “final” solution to the “Jewish Problem.”
I disagree. Firstly the extermination of Jews began with Operation Barbarossa, 22 June 1941 and arguably the holocaust began in October 1939 with the ‘Euthanasia’ campaign.
The decision to turn to extermination had nothing to do with it being messy and inefficient. It was because war made emigration impossible and set the seal on the Madagascar project. It was war imperialism that led to genocide, not only of the Jews but Roma too. The Poles would have been next in line. It had nothing to do with Nazi racial theories either.
You also say that ‘Israel made few sustained efforts to rescue Jews.’
Israel wasn’t in existence until 3 years after the holocaust. If you mean the Zionist movement then its actions caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews, in particular in Hungary with the notorious Kasztner case. I suggest anyone in doubt about this read the book ‘I Cannot Forget’ by Rudolf Vrba, the first escapee from Auschwitz whose Report, together with his fellow escapee from Auschwitz, Alfred Wetzler revealed for the first time the existence of Auschwitz as an extermination as opposed to a labour camp.
Kasztner suppressed the report when he received it on April 27 1944 in order that he could reach an agreement with Eichmann for a special train out of Hungary for the Zionist elite. This is not seriously disputed by the Zionists. The Zionist movement OPPOSED any rescue scheme that involved a destination other than Palestine. It is impossible now to quantify how many people might have escaped if a group claiming to be Jewish hadn’t opposed schemes such as the Freiland and Darwin schemes in Australia, that in the Dominican Republic, Alaska and many others.
Everywhere people proposed a rescue scheme up jumped the Zionists to shout ‘what about Palestine’. Building a Jewish state was their main priority not rescue of refugees. No serious historian disputes that this was the case .
Their major conference during the war was at Biltmore in April 1942 where the call for a Jewish state was first made. No mention at all in the conference was made about rescuing Jewish refugees even though the Zionists were already aware that the holocaust was taking place from reports from exchange Jews from Poland who had come to Palestine in the autumn of 1941 describing the terror.
You say ‘Germany made a grave mistake in paying billions in reparations to Israel. ‘
That was no mistake. Reparations to and military equipment to Israel was the price of integration into the Western alliance for West Germany. And Israel effectively stole those reparations meant for the holocaust survivors to build its military machine.
There is nothing about Zionism which is too disgusting. When Roosevelt called the Evian Conference in July 1938 to deal with the Jewish refugee problem the Zionist leaders panicked at the thought that they may find a solution because if a solution was found then what need would there be for a Jewish state? And also such efforts to rescue Jews would distract from their own fundraising e fforts.
A meeting of the JAE on June 26, 1938 decided to:
‘belittle the [Evian] Conference as far as possible and to cause it to decide nothing…. We are particularly worried that it would move Jewish organizations to collect large sums of money for aid to Jewish refugees, and these collections could interfere with our collection efforts. ‘
Ben-Gurion at the same meeting pulled no punches: ‘No rationalizations can turn the conference from a harmful to a useful one. What can and should be done is to limit the damage as far as possible.’
Menachem Ussishkin at the same meeting cited the fears of the future Chairman of the JA Rescue Committee, Yitzhak Gruenbaum:
He hoped to hear in Evian that Eretz Israel remains the main venue for Jewish emigration. All other emigration countries do not interest him… The greatest danger is that attempts will be made to find other territories for Jewish emigration.
In a letter to Stephen Wise of 13 June 1938, George Landauer, later Director of the JA’s Central Bureau for the Settlement of German Jews, wrote of his concern:
‘Even if the Conference will not place countries other than Palestine in the front for Jewish immigration, there will certainly be public appeals which will tend to overshadow the importance of Palestine…. it may bind Jewish organizations to collect large sums of money for assisting Jewish refugees, and these collections are likely to interfere with our own campaigns’
Fortunately for the Zionists the Evian conference agreed nothing and was nothing more than a face saving exercise by the West. But the Zionists fear that it might do something speaks volumes about their real agenda
Tony: Thanks for your comment. My dating of 1942 regarding the implementation of the Final Solution was based on the date of the Wansee Conference. I didn’t mean there hadn’t been major acts of extermination prior to that.
As for the transition from inefficient to more efficient means of killing, that’s in the PBS documentary to which I linked.
Thanks for the other historical information, which I appreciate.