Monday, January 12, 2009

When did this start happening then?

This morning, as I walked out of High street Kensington station there were a number of posters and placards lying on the floor from what was obviously the pro-Palestinian rally yestedray that was attended - according to reports - by far fewer people than the pro-Israel one.

However, what leapt out at me was what one of the posters said. It read "Stop the Holocaust in Gaza". I didn't realise that the Israelis were rounding up all the the Palestinians, making them wear arm bands and then transporting them to concentration camps where they were killing them in their millions in gas chambers.

33 comments:

Anonymous said...

You’re not the only one to notice this whoring of the holocaust. Such comparisons are a deeply cynical perversion of history, an attempt to guilt-trip the Israelis with the past – to throw their own terrible history back in their faces, perhaps in the hope that such emotional blackmail will substitute for serious, difficult thinking about the conflict in the Middle East. How have we come to dismiss, and therefore accept the debasement of such terms and historical illiteracy of the highest – or perhaps the lowest – order?

Unknown said...

No they are not gassing then they are just shooting women and children on the pretect that they are stopping rockets. 900 killed in the last two weeks. Do you honestly believe this is just?

dizzy said...

Did I say that I did believe it was just?

Letters From A Tory said...

The situation is Gaza is different from the Middle East in terms of the methods of persecution - that much is sure.

The point of comparison lies in the containment, starvation and brutality aimed at Palestinians, which is nothing new.

Boo said...

You have also missed the Genocide in Gaza, where the population has doubled in the past years.

The Isrealis really suck at ethnic cleansing

Robert said...

Yes starvation is as bad as gassing, the problem is death is death be it gas bullet bomb and Israel has become a master of it, Hamas needs to think before it bombs but in the end unless something is done these killing will go on and on.

Anonymous said...

How ironic - the Zionist lobby wouldn't countenance the word holocaust in relation to the earlier Armenian 'issue'.

Churchill use the term in for that situation in the 1920', and Hitler is supposed to have said when warned about the PR dangers 'who remembers the Armenians?'.

Either way, there are innocents being slaughtered because of warped minds on both sides. Such a shame

Anonymous said...

What I can't understand is, surely the Isrealis have an anti-missile system? I am sure their Navy ships have some form or other. If so, why were they not deployed?

Curbishly said...

900 killed in the last two weeks.

And where do the UNHCR ICRC and all the others get their statistics from?

Why it's Hamas. Now there's a thing.

Lord Blagger said...

So what's the difference between the Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza?

jailhouselawyer said...

"I didn't realise that the Israelis were rounding up all the the Palestinians, making them wear arm bands and then transporting them to concentration camps where they were killing them in their millions in gas chambers".

I have already blogged that I see no difference between the deliberate targeting of a UN school in which Palestinian refugees sought sanctuary, and the Israelis putting Palestinian refugees into a so-called safe-house and then blowing the hell out of them, with the Nazis building shower blocks which were actually gas chambers.

It's not how they do it so much as what they do. Face it Dizzy, Israel has committed war crimes under the Geneva Convention. So did the Nazis. The comparison is valid even if uncomfortable for the pro-Israel lobby.

Croydonian said...

Given that an awful lot of Hamas fellow travellers are full-on Shoah deniers, there is an added piquancy there.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 11:30

I wondered about that. These rockets are ballistic; surely they could be intercepted? For close defence you could use gatling guns; the USN use them on carriers for last ditch defence.

Anonymous said...

dizzy this is a really interesting subject. thew comparisons were initially with warsaw ghettos etc. you can see that gaza is a ghetto. then they expanded to the more evocative, instantly recognisable holocaust label and the historical metaphor suddenly collapses.

Linda said...

Hard to see any comparsion at all.

They are just being dramatic or they haven't read their history books properly!

................................. said...

Anyone believing you can stop Kaytusha rockets with gattling guns and naval anti-missile systems are truly thicker than thick.

Interesting to see the amount of anti-Jewish pro-Islamo facsist sentiment around, though.

Lord Blagger said...


Interesting to see the amount of anti-Jewish pro-Islamo facsist sentiment around, though.


Don't confuse those who are anti-Israeli with being antisemitic.

Don't think either that because you're against Israel bombing civilians, that your pro Islam either

Anonymous said...

sorry guys it is happening. I have palestinian colleagues,who are losing their relatives.
I work on a floor of 30 with 7 palestinians and there have been 5 deaths among relatives.
Isreal has the right to self defence, but from an humanitarian perspective the number of deaths by weapons and future deaths caused by hunger and illness ( no utilities etc. does seem disproportionate.

Alex said...

hol·o·caust  (hl-kôst, hl-)
n.
1. Great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life, especially by fire.
2. A massive slaughter.
3. A sacrificial offering that is consumed entirely by flames.
[Middle English, burnt offering, from Old French holocauste, from Latin holocaustum, from Greek holokauston, from neuter of holokaustos, burnt whole : holo-, holo- + kaustos, burnt (from kaiein, to burn).]

The word was in use long bfore WWII.

JuliaM said...

"Hamas needs to think before it bombs..."

So long as it stops to think, it can then go right ahead and bomb, can it...?

EstherD said...

Israel is not persecuting the Palestinians. Israel is committed to not allowing a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. In the period of the ceasefire
from July to October, on average of 4,000 trucks of aid per month passed into Gaza from Israel.
Throughout this campaign Israel has allowed aid in. A major impediment to the transfer of aid is
the security threat to the crossings themselves.
Israel allows hundreds of medical patients into Israel from Gaza each month.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for that Niccolo. I am not anti Jewish or even thick. For a Nation/Country that exports weaponry logistics to America, some sort of anti-missile defence system would not be too far from the imagination. The rockets on one side are a token resistance and taken by the other an excuse to push the people of Gaza even further into misery.
No death is justifiable in any way.

Anonymous said...

@Nick 16:55
me too

One land ..several claim's ... be only one winner ....
Blairs now on the case during an intermission of serious $ pocket lining ................ "Hallelujah"
Must be a bit wary of Obama putting in someone who will make a bit of an effort ..like a few days per month and actually visit Gaza.

I gave up after the Yom Kippur , ones as bad as the other ...

Sell them weapons equally , make a bit of dosh ...and let them get on with it ...
Isn't that the status quo
not arsed

The only thing missing in Gaza are the gas chambers ! ..............Hamas should twin town it with Warsaw ...

school swops and all that !

PS ..did anyone see miliband in the UN or wherever ? How utterly irrelevant on the world stage we have become .....

Anonymous said...

"It's a tragedy that the Israelis - a people who must understand better than almost anybody the horrors of oppression - are now acting as oppressors. As the great Jewish writer Primo Levi once remarked "Everybody has their Jews, and for the Israelis it's the Palestinians". By creating a middle Eastern version of the Warsaw ghetto they are recapitulating their own history as though they've forgotten it. And by trying to paint an equivalence between the Palestinians - with their homemade rockets and stone-throwing teenagers - and themselves - with one of the most sophisticated military machines in the world - they sacrifice all credibility.

The Israelis are a gifted and resourceful people who fully deserve the right to live in peace, but who seem intent on squandering every chance to allow that to happen. It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that this conflict serves the political and economic purposes of Israel so well that they have every interest in maintaining it. While there is fighting they can continue to build illegal settlements. While there is fighting they continue to receive huge quantities of military aid from the United States. And while there is fighting they can avoid looking candidly at themselves and the ruthlessness into which they are descending.

Gaza is now an experiment in provocation. Stuff one and a half million people into a tiny space, stifle their access to water, electricity, food and medical treatment, destroy their livelihoods, and humiliate them regularly...and, surprise, surprise - they turn hostile. Now why would you want to make that experiment?

Because the hostility you provoke is the whole point. Now 'under attack' you can cast yourself as the victim, and call out the helicopter gunships and the F16 attack fighters and the heavy tanks and the guided missiles, and destroy yet more of the pathetic remains of infrastructure that the Palestinian state still has left. And then you can point to it as a hopeless case, unfit to govern itself, a terrorist state, a state with which you couldn't possibly reach an accommodation.

And then you can carry on with business as usual, quietly stealing their homeland."

Brian Eno is a musician and music producer. Artists+ Musicians speak up against Israel's war crimes

JOIN BRIAN ENO IN CONDEMNING ISRAEL'S DESTRUCTION OF CIVIL LIFE IN GAZA on Facebook.

Calfy said...

Hmm. They Israelis are, though, rounding them up, making them carry coloured cards, and forcing them into an area surrounded by a 5 metre high security wall patrolled by armed guards, into which they occasionally send poisonous gas which kills men, women and children regardless.

The figures of murdered Palestinians aren't quite as high as those of murdered Jews, but it must come close to the amounts of blacks, gypsies (200,000?) and homosexuals, etc., that were murdered in the Holocaust, and would the Holocaust have been any less horrific had it been only a few hundred thousand Jews killed? Once the figures reach such high numbers the tragedy is unimaginable.

Reading your post has made me consider the comparison to be a very apt one.

Anonymous said...

The Holocaust thing came about from Germany I believe, used there by the fascist left as a dog whistle to generate the usual Pavlovian response to keep the middle class kiddies on the case.

It's a bit like a junkie needing more of the stuff every time to get their kick, think 'the Propaganda and the Damage done..'

Question is, what will be the next tall tale? Remember, they have to get taller over time, or people will get bored instead of outraged...

My bet is that we'll be hearing from assorted truthers... with the 'facts' that actually, the entirety of Israel is all descended from pure-bred Aryan German Nazis who fled there after the war to be safe from the Nuremburg trials, having stolen all the Jewish identies for themselves.

(which of course explains the new Holocaust and the Gaza KZ...)

Giles Marshall said...

The word 'holocaust' has been cheapened over years of misuse. But then, that's entirely predictable in a culture which has long ceased to care about the language it uses to describe events and actions. Headlines and stories scream 'crisis', 'unacceptable behaviour', 'evil' at us all the time until we have little appreciation of their real meaning. Welcome to the media culture!

And am I right in understanding that violence only accompanied one of the mid-east demos this weekend? Which one was it?

Andrew Allison said...

If rockets were being fired into Britain on a daily basis, I wonder what some would say then?

Curly said...

Oh, it's happening everywhere these days Dizzy, even in South Shields (follow the link to Rossinisbird's post too)

Martin S said...

And the reason they could not be bothered to clean up after themselves was... what, exactly?

And I do hope the local Green Party gave them a good telling off for damaging the environment!

Oh. They didn't? What a surprise.

Lord Blagger said...

If rockets were being fired into Britain on a daily basis, I wonder what some would say then?



Well, if we were invaded and kicked out of our homes, we would be using rockets back

Anonymous said...

"Well, if we were invaded and kicked out of our homes, we would be using rockets back"


But that isn't the case is it?

How many of the people living in Gaza have ever lived in Israel, or ever left homes there?

It is very simple the people of Gaza could have had peace, could have built a great society based on the huge hand outs they have been given. They have chosen not to.

Almost as soon as Gaza became Jew free 3 years ago Hamas and it's associates have been firing rockets and mortars into Israel. Israel has tried all sorts of peaceful means in the last three years, but now that Hamas have long ranged rockets, this had to be stopped.

And don't bring up that old canard about Israel being stolen Arab land, it isn't. Israel was founded by the UN on former ottoman empire land. It was an ottoman province that was to be split between Arabs and Jews as decided by the league of nations. The Arabs got most of it, as it included Jordan and parts of Syria as well as Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.

Don't forget there has never been a Palestinian state in the history of the world.

Lord Blagger said...


And don't bring up that old canard about Israel being stolen Arab land, it isn't. Israel was founded by the UN on former ottoman empire land. It was an ottoman province that was to be split between Arabs and Jews as decided by the league of nations. The Arabs got most of it, as it included Jordan and parts of Syria as well as Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.


So Israel is going to go back to its 1947 borders in exchange for peace?

Just fucking forget it. Israel is after lebensraum, and colonising what its taken by force.

twat