Lebanese & Palestinian Flags proudly fly over Galway City during a recent anti-war protest
Below is the text of a letter that I wrote that appeared in this week's 'Galway Advertiser', one of Ireland's best & most popular weekly newspapers
Time for the Israeli Myth to be Shattered
In light of recent events in Lebanon and Gaza, is it not time now for Europe to finally expose the lie that Israel is a beacon of democracy and freedom in an unstable totalitarian Middle East? In fact it is the very country that has created the regional instability in its never-ending wars of aggression that represents such a growing threat to world peace. Europe has consistently supported or acquiesced in its deliberate humiliation of the Arab peoples. Continuing failure by Israel to implement a string of UN resolutions and to secretively build a large nuclear arsenal has gone unpunished by the European Union.
Israel was created in the aftermath of World War Two largely due to the efforts of a guilt-ridden Europe shocked by the 6million Jews exterminated on its soil in the Holocaust.
Parts of the British-controlled Palestine were to become a homeland for the survivors of the death camps and would go some way in acting as a form of redemption for the thousand years of oppression suffered by Jews at the hands of Christian Europe. But right from its inception it metamorphosed into an expansionist, racist, militaristic state that has taken on so many aspects of the ideology of the Jews’ former Nazi oppressors.
In 1948, its military terrorised hundreds of thousands of the indigenous Palestinian natives to flee from their United Nations-designated lands into neighbouring countries where they and their descendents still live today in squalid refugee camps. These peoples are still denied the right of return. In 1967, the Israelis repeated a similar process by invading the remainder of Palestine.
Armed and financed by the United States, successive governments have encouraged hundreds of thousands of foreigners to colonise the lands of the Arab population. This process followed a similar path to the Nazi policy and plans for Poland in 1939-‘41: the best lands were given to racially or religiously-aligned settlers; the raw materials and main sources of water requisitioned; the natives confined to isolated apartheid-style Bantustans with all borders and main roads through the newly conquered territories controlled by the military. Gaza is no more than a large concentration camp completely surrounded by a perimeter fence with its air and seaways controlled by the Israelis. With the continued construction of a massive wall on Arab lands, the West Bank will soon follow suit. A whole people imprisoned in their own homeland.
Today, the famed biblical Jordan River is reduced to a trickle as the Israelis siphon off its waters to supply its own farms and cities. As with Nazi Poland, the occupying power sees the primary role of the governing councils of these glorified ghettos and camps is to ensure that the inmates do not undertake aggressive actions against the occupier. In classic racist parlance, the Israeli state warns that the whole population will suffer collective punishment for any individual attack on their soldiers or settlers. When the downtrodden rebel, the Israelis immediately implement a draconian 'Iron Fist' policy; until a few years ago, the family homes of young stone throwers were bulldozed to the ground. Today the offices of the democratically elected Palestinian Authority are demolished and its politicians imprisoned. When a Hezbollah unit recently kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and demanded a prisoner swap from some of the over 10,000 Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners held in Israel, the response was to refuse negotiation and to publicly promise to send Lebanon back 20 years in time by a massive bombing campaign with the proviso that Israel considers all inhabitants in south Lebanon to be legitimate targets.
Furthermore, the need for the West to secure cheap oil supplies by invading Iraq, by supporting repressive Arab regimes and by ostracising democratically elected governments in the region has only increased awareness amongst ordinary Arabs that Europe and the United States are the enemy. Anti-western fundamentalism is understandably on the rise. It says a lot that if Osama Bin Laden was allowed to run in a free and fair election tomorrow in his native Saudi Arabia, he would win by a landslide.
The source of the cancer in the Middle East is Israeli expansionism. Europe should at the very least now impose a total economic embargo on the country and demand its compliance with UN Resolution 242 and begin a complete withdrawal to its pre-1967 boundaries.
Yours sincerely,
Brendan Smith
bspeedie@eircom.net
11 comments:
Hi Brendan,
I have responded to your comment on my blog. I have copied it here as well:
You are undoubtedly right that there were some early zionists who have “the basic fundamentalist belief in a huge land grab & expansion of territories that their followers believe is theirs by divine right as the ‘master’/’God’s chosen’ race.” But we can see this in all types of nationalisms. Would you also consider the English settlers to Ireland Nazi’s as well (although anachronistic)? It was these settlers in 1367 who adopted the Statute of Kilkenny to prevent further “cultural degeneration” from the local Irish inhabitants. English nationalism in Ireland also contained a degree of “land by divine right” if we consider some of the reasons Henry II was got involved with Ireland in the first place - pressure from the See of Canterbury.
Furthermore, zionism’s racialist attitude does not do enough to connect it with Nazism. Consider this quote by Marcus Garvey, leader of the Black nationalist movement ‘Back to Africa’ in Jamaica and America: “As Christ by His teachings, His sufferings and His death, triumphed over His foes, through the resurrection, so do we hope that out of our sufferings and persecutions of today we will triumph in the resurrection of our newborn race.”
The way you describe Zionism as ‘Nazi’ is actually a comparision between zionism and colonialism. The Nazi’s believed themselves to be superior and anyone inferior worthy of death and slavery while European colonialists (starting in the mid 18th century) believed their culture to be vastly superior but did not advocate outright genocide in the same way the Nazi’s did (see the British in India).
While the colonialist comparison is still suspect in my view, I have seen no documentation where a leading Zionist has advocated the mass genocide of all Palestinian-Arabs. Even as historian Benny Morris points out, there wasnt even an official policy to expel the Arabs and the dispossession must be looked at in the context of war after the Arab rejection of the UN resolution for partition. In fact prominent Zionists supported sharing the land with the local Arabs. Even the militant revisionist Ze’ev Jabotinsky accepted the national rights of the local Palestinians in teh 1920s. And while he adopted a very defensive and militant approach to the Zionist relationship with the Arabs, he did not advocate Nazi-type solutions.
In regards to today, Israel has committed many crimes in its war in Lebanon and Palestine. But its more polemical than academic to say that Israel bombed civilian targets so they could intentionally kill civilians, namely children. Where is the proof of this bold assertion? And we can not ignore the fact that Hezbollah embedded itself within a civilian population - Walid Jumblatt even said so. To call Israel Nazi is more of a public relations scheme than an honest assessment of the state and its relations with its neighbours. Many people like it because it provides an easy answer to a complex issue that many (including myself) do not fully grasp.
I fully support you that Israel’s crimes should be exposed. But the crimes of Hezbollah should also be exposed. Do Nasrallah’s anti-semitism bare any resemblance to the anti-Semitism and Judeophobia of Hitler and other Nazis? And what of India’s treatment of the Dulat’s; or China’s treatment of the Tibetans or Uighurs; or the Ba’hai in Iran? Why are these state not called out as Nazi?
If you are working for peace in the region, isolating Israel and Jews by claiming Israel to be a Nazi state will only make your job much more difficult. It’s not engaging but rather isolating and only makes people angry on both sides. Ignoring its hyperbolic nature, the comparison begs the question of why single Israel out in this world as Nazi’s when there are people actually committing a horrific genocide in Sudan. Are the Janjaweed also Nazi’s? If so, will you also advocate for exposing their crimes?
All I want is moral clarity and for people to apply the same standards to Israel as they would any other nation or group. Israel deserves serious condemnation and perhaps censure at the ICJ but so do the many other atrocities that are going on today all over the world that are far worse in scale and quality. In sum, Walter Laqueur states “According to peace researchers 25 million people were killed in internal conflicts since WWII, of them, 8000 in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which ranks forthy-sixth in the list of victims.”
best,
david
Brendan, I am not sure if you are still following the conversation on my blog re: your article. I have found some details on the Nazi policy to which you refer.
In 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland without provocation. The Nazi’s, with control of Poland, then employed a policy of resettlement and forced labour for the Polish Jews under foreign occupation. And this resettlement was only the first step. A 1939 directive, from Reinhard Heydreich to Einsatzgruppen officers in Poland, stated: “For the time being, the first prerequisite for the final aim is the concentration of the Jews from the countryside into the larger cities.” In this document what the ‘final aim’ is kept secret on purpose, as declared by Heydrich himself, but I think we all know what it entailed. Accordingly, the 1939-41 policy was not one of resettlement and ethnic cleansing only but instead prepared the groundwork for mass extermination. In 1940, Himmler ordered the building of Auschwitz.
In Aug 1941, in line with Heydrich’s orders, a Reichkomissar ordered: “In the ghettos the Jews are to receive only as much food as the rest of the population can spare, but not more than is required for their bare subsistence. The same applies to the allocation of other essential goods.” This left many to starve to death in the ghettos that were the predecessor to the extermination camps.
From 1939-1940, approximately 10,000 Polish intellectuals, nobility and clergy were killed by the Einsatzgruppen in an effort to crush Polish resistance. During this time, the Nazi’s also employed a policy of kidnapping “racially superior” children and sending them back to Germany. On Dec 8 1941, Chelmo death camp began operations, gassing its first victims.
Considering this and for the sake of honesty, would you send a retraction to the Galway Advertiser for your comparison?
Greetings David.
You say that “…Where is the proof of this bold assertion (regarding Israel bombing civilian targets so they could intentionally kill civilians)…?”
I say this with confidence as there is no other explanation of why 90% of cluster bombs were dropped by Israel on civilian areas in the last few days of the Lebanese war in the full realisation that a ceasefire was about to happen. For the perpetuators knew that many of these 100,000 bomblets (UN estimate) would be left unexploded (a feature of cluster munitions) until after the conflict was over and the return of civilians to their bombed out neighbourhoods.
Of course, Nazism and colonialism emanate from the same ‘master race’ mentality be it in Ireland, Palestine, India, Sudan or North America. They are two sides of the same coin. Likewise, intolerant Christian/Hindi/Judaism/Islamic fundamentalism also bears the same evil core if you replace ‘race’ with ‘religion’. For I concur wholeheartedly with Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Sack’s comment that ‘no one religion has a sole monopoly on spiritual truth’. I believe in a pluralist society based on tolerance, respect and diversity. In the world of the ‘global village’ this can be the only way for humanity to survive. We need to unite to overcome the dangers posed by mankind’s destruction of the planet’s ecosystem.
But the reversal of Israel’s aggression and expansionism is the key to putting in place a permanent solution to the Middle East conflict. Unless this is addressed, there will be no end to ‘terror’ and ‘fundamentalism’. Likewise Bush and Blair boastful talk about ‘peace’, ‘democracy’ & ‘human rights’ will ring hollow on the streets of Cairo, Amman & every other city when they consistently back Israel’s illegal occupations and aggressive wars.
You say also that “…I have seen no documentation where a leading Zionist has advocated the mass genocide of all Palestinian-Arabs…”
I never said ‘mass genocide’. But as with the Nazis before 1941, the Zionists wished for ‘mass expulsion’ from the territories earmarked for colonialism.
Examples from an article in the excellent ‘Mid-East Web’:
1. Eli’ezer Kaplan, Head of the Jewish Agency Finance and Administrative Department, said:
” The question here is one of organised transfer of a number of Arabs from a territory which will be the Hebrew state, to another place in the Arab state…” - (Convention of Ihud Po’alei Zion in August 1937. ‘Al Darchei Mediniyutenu, op.cit, pp.82-83.)
2. Berl Katznelson, a leader of the Mapai party wrote:
“The matter of population transfer has provoked a debate among us: Is it permitted or forbidden? My conscience is absolutely clear in this respect. A remote neighbour is better than a close enemy… I have long been of the opinion that this is the best of all solutions…. I have always believed and still believe that they were destined to be transferred to Syria or Iraq.” - (At the World Convention of Ihud Po’alei Tzion, August 1937. Al Darchei Mediniyutenu: Mo’atzah ‘Olamit Shel Ihud Po’ali Tzion (c.s.)-Din Vehesbon Maleh, 21 July-7 August [1938]
3. “What is a compulsory transfer? Compulsory transfer does not mean individual transfer. It means that once we resolved to transfer there should be a political body able to force this or that Arab who would not want to move out…we must wage a war for maximum territory….” - (Protocol of the Jewish Agency Executive meeting of 12 June 1938, vol.28, no.53, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem).
4. Joseph Weitz, a former director of settlement in the Jewish Agency, wrote in his diary: “Amongst ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples in this country. No ‘development’ will bring us closer to our aim to be an independent people in this small country…. There is no room for compromise on this point….land purchasing….will not bring about the state;.. Not a single village or a single tribe must be left. And the transfer must be done through their absorption in Iraq and Syria and even in Transjordan. For that goal, money will be found - even a lot of money. And only then will the country be able to absorb millions of Jews…. There is no other solution.” - (Weitz Diary, entry dated 20 December 1940, pp.1090-91, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem.)
5. David You mention historian Benny Morris. In his book in ‘The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee problem, 1947-1949’ he confirms that Weitz was active in encouraging the Zionist leadership to take advantage of the flight of the Palestinian In 1948, he wrote:
“I made a summary of a list of the Arab villages, which in my opinion must be cleared out in order to complete Jewish regions. I also made a summary of the places that have land disputes and must be settled by military means.” - (Weitz Diary, entry dated 18 April 1948, p. 2358, CZA)
6. David Ben Gurion, Jewish Leader and later Prime Minister gave this advice: “… we [the Haganah] adopt the system of aggressive defence; during the assault we must respond with a decisive blow: the destruction of the [Arab] place or the expulsion of the residents along with the seizure of the place.” - (Ben-Gurion’s advice on 19 December 1947. Cited in Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Reality, p.90.
7. Chaim Weizmann, “With regard to the refugees, we are determined to be adamant while the war lasts. Once the return tide starts, it will be impossible to stem it, and it will prove our undoing. As for the future, we are equally determined … to explore all possibilities of getting rid, once and for all, of the huge Arab minority, which originally threaten us…(to Chaim Weizmann, president of provisional council of the state of Israel, 18 August 1948. Cited in Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-49, pp.149-50.)
Regards
Brendan from Ireland
Hi Brendan,
You argue that the Nazi Policy in Poland in 1939-41 was not bent on extermination but rather only resettlement. So are you arguing that suddenly in 1942 the Germans thought “hey, why don’t we just start killing the Jews instead of deporting them?” If so, what exactly explains the building of Auschwitz in 1940. If you consider that the Nazi resettlement plan of 3.3 million Jews was not essentially a genocide, then you probably fit into the school of thought that deny the Armenian Holocaust by Turkey which did not use death camps but rather relied on a brutal policy of ethnic cleansing and masscare that led to the death of one million civilans.
You write: “The removal of Jews to a concentrated land area of Eastern Poland (near Lublin) was a stated policy of the Nazis (which is similar to the Israeli policy). The Death camps only came later.”
As stated above, you are trying to argue that Nazi policy was ONLY bent on resettlement and had no desire for extermination as this is the only way you could possibly compare it with Israeli policy (as you stated earlier). But you are not proving your point. The idea of a Final Solution (or ‘final aim’) existed in Nazi thinking in 1939 and 1940. The idea to exterminate Jews en masse did not suddenly appear out of thin air.
You also seem to focus on only one specific component of Nazi policy in Poland while conveniently discarding the rest. What about the massacre of 10,000 Polish elites? And what about kidnapping blond hair, blue eyed Polish kids to send back to Germany? And what about the conditions set up by the Germans in the ghettoes? Do they not entail mass genocide? In 1941-1942 20% (112,000 people) of the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos starved to death. The Wannsee Conference only made the extermination of Jews far more systematic and efficient through the use of death camps. The counter-argument that extermination had not begun because the death camps had not yet been put to use is as much wrong as it is morally bankrupt.
“Likewise the proposal to expel European Jews to Madagascar was something that equates with the thinking of some Israeli government ministers in recent times in their demands to expel Palestinian Arabs from the West Bank.”
Here you seem to paint the entire Israeli polity with the same brush. The views of some racist Israeli politicians are not the defining characteristic of Israel as much as Jean-Marie Le Pen defines French political culture.
Nazi mass expulsion and extermination was all encompassing. No Jews anywhere were immune to it. In Turkey, the Armenians who were deemed not to pose a security risk were safe from harm i.e. those in Istanbul. The Zionist expulsion of Arabs was also predominatly motivated by security concerns and not the racialist concerns expressed by Hitler et al.
Ben-Gurion’s statement in a letter written in 1937: “We do not wish and do not need to expel the Arabs. All our aspiration is built on the assumption - proven throughout our activity - that there is enough room for ourselves and the Arabs in Palestine.” And in 1948, Ben-Gurion explains how the expulsion of Arabs occurred as a result of war rather than a racialist policy like that of the Nazis towards the Jews.
You also fall into the trap of using of selective evidence to make your point. The source of the string of quotes your provided earlier is from http://www.mideastweb.org/refugees1.htm
You have wrenched these quotes out of context without reading the article. Most importantly that MidEast Web article stated:
“There is certainly abundant evidence that Zionists contemplated transfer of the Arab population of Palestine prior to the War of Independence, but there is no evidence that transfer became public policy, and most advocates had in mind voluntary transfer with compensation.”
You have ignored this point to make your Nazi comparison. And you also had to ignore how the article goes in detail about the complex reality of the Palestinian ‘flight’ - something you reduce to as merely the result of a policy of ethnic cleansing which was not the case.
I agree that many ideas expressed by Zionist leaders are immoral and wrong. But the way you are framing this debate and the way you are using evidence is very misleading and dishonest. Even Benny Morris, an expert in the Palestinian refugee situation, does not compare Israeli policy to Nazi policy in Poland.
“The call by Sharon of a few years back for French Jews to leave France en masse and settle in ‘expanded’ Israeli echos in some ways the calls from the Nazis for Germans to move from their homes to colonise the new Eastern terrritories.”
Where in Sharon’s statement did he say or imply “expanded Israel?”? When Scotish First Minister Jack McConnell encouraged 4.5 million Canadians of Scottish heritage to return to Scotland, did you also compared that to Nazi policy?
Greetings David,
I have, in my little own way, raised the issue of the Armenian genocide a number of times in different fora. I am one of those Europeans that stongly feel that Turkey must recognise this genocide before they are allowed to join the European Union. I sincerely hope that it does.
Anyway, as you say, Auschwitz was built in 1942 ( 3 years after the Nazi invasion).
Destruction of the Polish elite was a war aim of the Nazi occupation from day one. I never said otherwise. Interestingly, the Israeli closure of Palestinian colleges at various times of their occupation also shows the occupiers contempt for the educational aspirations of the subjugated native population.
The ‘Death Camps and their objective of mass extermination of all Jews in Europe was not an initial aim of the Nazis, but developed during the course of the war. That is no way lowers the inhuman nature of Nazi ideology from my perspective. Yet they originally wanted their removal from the new expanded Third Reich. They of course being racists had no compulsion in carrying out mass killings in the process as the actions of the Einzsatzgruppen showed during the early days of the Nazi invasion.
You say the “...views of some racist Israeli politicians are are not the defining characteristic of Israel...”. I beg to differ as major politicians such as Sharon greatly influenced the state of Israel (& the occupied territories) as it now exists. Sharon in the 1970s successfully promoted the large scale colonization of the West Bank.
You use quotes from some Zionist leaders to contradict mine. So we could go on for many pages using Zionist comments to justify stances. Let me just say that my quotes were made by the people named and gave concrete logic to the contemporary and subsequent end-results of Zionist colonization. Your attempts to define the expulsions as a consequence of ‘war’ or ‘security concerns’ as opposed to ‘racism’ & ‘colonisation’ for expulsions do not stand up to the facts of history- every aggressor seems to defend their expansionist actions by the age old excuse of ‘security’ and ‘defense’.
To compare the statement of Jack McConnell with that of Sharon is quite unbelievable. Unlike the former and his protégés, the latter was not going to make land available for Scot-Canadians by requisitioning the lands of Scottish inhabitants.
Sharon, as we all know, intended these French settler if they came to be settled in the West Bank, and continue these illegal settlements that he had been promoting openly since the 1970s
The United Nations and most countries in the world recognise Israel’s occupation and colonialisation of the West Bank, Golan Heights (& its continued presence in Gaza) as illegal. It is time for Israel to initiate total withdrawal. Sad to day the present Israeli government this week sanctioned further expansion of the colonial settlements
Regards
Brendan
Brendan,
1) “Destruction of the Polish elite was a war aim of the Nazi occupation from day one. I never said otherwise. Interestingly, the Israeli closure of Palestinian colleges at various times of their occupation also shows the occupiers contempt for the educational aspirations of the subjugated native population.”
You are comparing the killing of thousands of Polish elites with the oppression of the Palestinian academics under Israeli occupation. These are two very different crimes. Essentially you see closure as the same as outright massacre. You are fogging up reality for the sake of a political agenda.
2) “The ‘Death Camps and their objective of mass extermination of all Jews in Europe was not an initial aim of the Nazis, but developed during the course of the war.”
Himmler ordered the building of Auschwitz in 1940. And as I highlighted earlier, Heydrich sent a directive to Einsatzgruppens referring to some sort of final aim that meant not just resettlement but extermination. Further, a serious flaw in your argument is that you ignore what actually happened to the Jews in that period. If you were sent to one of those Ghettos, I think it would be quite clear from the conditions that the Nazis were intent on your death.
3) “Your attempts to define the expulsions as a consequence of ‘war’ or ‘security concerns’ as opposed to ‘racism’ & ‘colonisation’ for expulsions do not stand up to the facts of history- every aggressor seems to defend their expansionist actions by the age old excuse of ‘security’ and ‘defense’.”
You brush aside any security dilemmas the Zionists may have been in and imply that they were only bent on expulsion of an inferior people. In essence, you are saying that Zionism is inherently racist. It’s perplexing how you can argue that I ignore the facts of history while you systematically ignore the objective conditions on the ground in 1948. You need to consider the entire picture of a complex time. You may want to re-read the quotes by Zionist leaders your provided earlier.
In regards to the defining characteristic of racist Israeli politicians, we were talking about mass transfer not colonization. You continue to muddle up your point with your political opinions on what Israel needs to do. And its also convenient that the Israeli public voted in Olmert on a platform of further disengagements. You ignore this.
“Sharon, as we all know, intended these French settler if they came to be settled in the West Bank, and continue these illegal settlements that he had been promoting openly since the 1970s”
In Sharon’s quote, where exactly does he refer to the West Bank or Gaza? You argument only stands up if you put words in his mouth or continue to place his statement within your own political worldview. Sharon only said for these Jews to return to Israel which is quite comparable to what the Scottish leader said - minus the criticism. Both are asking the people they consider to be a part of their nation to return to “home.”
It seems clear that the Nazi-Israel comparison is built on exaggeration and politicization.
1. David, you say “…In Sharon’s quote, where exactly does he refer to the West Bank or Gaza?…”
Well, as the politician that did more than anyone else to promote the modern Jewish colonisation of the West bank, you don’t honestly think that Sharon was asking the French Jews to go anywhere else?!!
2. You also state “….you are saying that Zionism is inherently racist…”
Yes.
3. “…You are comparing the killing of thousands of Polish elites with the oppression of the Palestinian academics under Israeli occupation. These are two very different crimes…”
Serious crimes none the less and an attempt by an occupying force to lower the educational standards of a people that they see as inferior. Both are racist policies.
4. You say”…Himmler ordered the building of Auschwitz in 1940. And as I highlighted earlier, Heydrich sent a directive to Einsatzgruppens referring to some sort of final aim that meant not just resettlement but extermination…a serious flaw in your argument…”
David, your facts about Auschwitz are historically incorrect
According to the official Auschwitz museum website, “…The camp was established in mid-1940, more than a year before the Germans embarked upon the “Endlösung der Judenfrage” (Final Solution of the Jewish Question) - the plan, systematically carried out, to murder all the Jews living in the countries occupied by the Third Reich. The direct reason for the establishment of the camp was the fact that mass arrests of Poles were increasing beyond the capacity of existing “local” prisons. Initially, Auschwitz was to be one more concentration camp…”
5. Also David, gas- Zyklon B- was not used as a killing agent in Auschwitz unil September 1941 when it was used against Russian POWs. Then the plans begun to turn Auschwitz from a ‘concentration camp’ into a’Death camp’.
6. With regard to overall Nazi policy in Poland, their campaign against both Gentile and Jewish Poles was racist and colonialist. It was ‘Germanisation of the East’.
Hope these facts help you.
Regards
Brendan
Now David you are contradicting yourself.
For instance you made out that Auschwitz was a ‘Death Camp’ from the time that it was set up in your attempt to undermine my original analogy between early Nazi policy in Poland and Israeli policies of expansionism, colonialisation and oppression of native peoples. When I proved to you from official sources that it was not an ‘extermination’ camp, then you made the astonishing statement that “…the official classification of Auschwitz is irrelevant…”
The official Auschwitz museum classification is critical to understanding the shift in Nazi policy towards their decision in the second half of WW2 to build industrial extermination complexes and implement the Holocaust.
Thereby you are losing the thread of your argument and of this discussion.
I am a person that believes in what one of my countrymen Jonathan Swift said many years ago, “We have enough religion to learn how to hate, but not enough to learn how to love”. All fundamentalist religionists- from Islam, Judaism and Christianity- have this inherent intolerance that metaphorizes into racism and sectarianism.
So David, we will agree to disagree.
But let me just summarise my views as I previously outlined in my original article:
-that there will never be peace in the Middle East until Israel withdraws totally from the West Bank (& Golan Hts, Gaza)
-that the European Union should implement a boycott of Israel until it adhers to UN Resolution 242
-that by the USA and Europe allowing themselves to become hostages to the whims of the militaristic expansionist policies of Israeli governments, the world will remain in a state of crisis.
Cheers! Brendan
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