Kapos Kill Jewish Hostages

Anthony McIntyre ☠ When the IDF murdered three unarmed Jewish hostages in Gaza, it was following a well trodden path laid down in the Nazi death camps of World War 2.

Drogheda 23-12-2023

There, under SS tutelage, the Kapos ruled the roost. Themselves Jewish prisoners, they murdered tortured and brutalised fellow Jewish inmates often with gusto and glee, either at will or on command of their Nazi captors. On occasion their violence was met in kind. Enraged Jews, facing the gas chamber, would kill them when the opportunity presented itself.

Himmler considered this a good thing: if a Kapo was not brutal enough he would be sent to live in the same huts as those he tormented. The next morning he would be found hanging or beaten to death.

A Kapo gets special privileges. The minute we are not satisfied with him he stops being a Kapo and goes back to sleeping with others. He knows only too well that they will kill him on the first night.

Their viciousness was renowned and would later lead to a flurry of prosecutions in Israel between 1958 and 1972. In what became known as the Kapo Trials, a number of Holocaust survivors found themselves in the dock, accused of being Nazi collaborators. While Primo Levi took a less harsh view, Kapo became the "worst insult a Jew can give another Jew."

To those familiar with the type and who might have read Bitter Reckoning: Israel Tries Holocaust Survivors as Nazi Collaborators, the murders by the IDF of Yotam Haim, Samar Talalka, and Alon Shamriz as they demonstrably tried to surrender in Hebrew while waving white flags is hardly shocking. Killing defenceless Jews is what Kapos have always done and, as Gaza shows, continue to do.

The Kapo troops in Gaza could murder Jews with impunity because they were told by their superiors that they could kill any Palestinian they wished to. And when the victims turned out not to be Palestinian civilians but Jewish hostages, the killers would be covered for. It was a war criminal's bonanza. Kill whoever you like.

It was this ruthless, supremacist, merciless mindset towards other human beings that saw us once again take to the streets of Drogheda on Saturday. Speakers drawn from the assembled gathering hit out at the genocide the Kapo state, enabled by the US, continues to perpetrate in Gaza. The voice of a nurse, Rosie Condra - who said she had no need for a loudhailer - boomed passionately and angrily throughout West Street against the horrendous conditions being endured by the Gazan population as its health care system is decimated by Israeli bombs. A young girl of around 11 or 12, passionately spoke up in defence of her fellow children being exterminated in the Israeli blitzkrieg. I later shook her hand. While other children are excited by the thought of Christmas a mere two days away, here was a youngster deeply concerned about the children of Gaza. There were other speakers, authentic in their anger, some shaking with rage at the slaughter of the innocent.

Two days later, on Christmas morning the Kapos attacked Bethlehem.

Primo Levi observed:

It is naïve, absurd, and historically false to believe that an infernal system such as National Socialism sanctifies its victims: on the contrary it degrades them, it makes them resemble itself.

Little else needs said.

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