Although we have gathered every Saturday at noon as a gesture of solidarity with the Palestinians subjected to Nazi-like genocide by the state of Israel, yesterday's turnout took place on International Holocaust Day.
This is a hugely symbolic date in the cultural calendar that serves to remind humanity of the millions of victims of Nazi atrocity. It would be untrue to assert - as Zionists often do - that the Holocaust was the worst crime ever committed in the history of humankind. The claim that the Holocaust is unrivalled in terms of atrocity is more a propagandist one than a statement of fact. Steven Pinker reminds us in his outstanding work The Better Angels Of Our Nature that genocide has more often been the norm of human history rather than the exception. In World War 2 the greatest crime committed was not the Holocaust but the war of extermination in the East, a phenomenon described as the complete annihilation of a state, a people or an ethnic minority through genocide. It claimed 27,000,000 victims.
The state of Israel manipulates the Holocaust for its own ends. It wilfully refuses to draw from the Holocaust the most powerful lesson it has to offer: that genocide must be abjured, never embraced. The Israeli state instead of respecting Holocaust victims emulates its Nazi perpetrators, all the while masking in the language of the Holocaust the genocide that it actively pursues.
Many Jews are inspired by the victims of the gas chambers. They set their faces like flint against any attempt to repeat genocide. Never Again is actually an authentic statement for them. Conversely, for its part the Israeli government is inspired by those Jews who became Kapos and helped put fellow Jews in the gas chambers. When it pursues genocide with Himmler-like intensity, the obvious comparison it invites is that with the Nazis.
This is what makes the view of the International Court of Justice so toxic for the Kapo state. The court in holding that it is plausible to believe that Israel is committing genocide has demonstrated that the Kapo use of the Holocaust is now being exposed and confronted. Up until now the Kapos could inflict atrocity with impunity, and smear as antisemitic anyone daring to point out the Nazi resemblance. There was always special pleading made on their behalf, that they were the descendants of victims of the Holocaust rather than their ancestors being those Jewish Kapos that helped inflict it. Now the ICJ has ushered in a damning logic that makes it absurd to shelter behind the Holocaust while perpetrating genocide. Medhi Hassan observes:
You can disagree with those who say there’s a genocide going on in Gaza. It’s a legal term/issue after all, open to interpretation & debate. What you can’t now do, thanks the ICJ today, is say that those who warn of genocide are being alarmist, dumb, dishonest, ‘meritless’, etc
Fantastic to hear the voices of lawyers, nurses and NGOs amongst the compassionate voices of activists and poets . . .
When we gather in opposition to Israeli genocide against Palestinians on International Holocaust Day we stand in solidarity with the Jews of the Death camps and implacably against the Kapos who helped put them there.
 |
| ⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre. |
To see the US, UK etc. defund aid for beleaguered Palestinians at the behest of Israel, immediately after the ICJ announcement, is honestly the most vile and disgusting thing I've ever seen.
ReplyDeleteThe West has no moral high ground now in lecturing the global south on Ukraine, which is a terrible shame for that country.
These few months will be remembered like Iraq in 2003 as another inflection point in the decline of the authority of the Western world.
Given that Israel has murdered more than one hundred UNRWA staff since the genocide began and the US, UK etc never blinked an eye, the decision to defund aid is nauseating. If employees of UNRWA were involved on October 7, (and it is an Israeli allegation which makes it pretty worthless) why punish an agency that has thousands of employees for the actions of a few that wee certainly not approved by those at the top of UNRWA? Must check out what the Tory second eleven have to say. Starmer and Lammy - the truly loyal opposition.
DeleteAs ever AM, thank you for your commentary.
ReplyDeleteAnd as thus far, I hope you'll allow my contrarian position.
I'm of the opinion that there's a Kapo, or even a Scappaticci, in every human. Of course, that aspect of personality does not always dominate. Some people would rather die than let it be so.
However reductionist and simplistic your analogy: that the Israeli State has become Kapo-like, is nonetheless well made. What's missing in your interpretation is an understanding of victims becoming persecutors.
To my mind, our discernment ought to be focused on the enablers and encouragers, the Western Powers. With that said, the recent ruling of the ICJ will hopefully curtail such avoidance.
It's less a contrarian point than it is an expansion on what has been said.
DeleteThis reminds me of what Bassem Youssef said when Piers Morgan asked him what he'd do if he was Israel: "I'd do exactly what Israel is doing because the rest of the world lets me do it."
ReplyDeleteI think we're witnessing the self-immolation of the Israeli state as we understand it. Maybe they'll oust Bibi and a new, less murderous regime will come in, but I don't know.
Cam comments
ReplyDeleteAnother no holds barred article.....excellent....they are extremely informative...keep it up...love your constant reference to Bibi and his cohorts as 'Kapos'...what a deserving insult👍👌.....Norman Finkelstein opened my eyes to the Kapos - he explained very succinctly from his parents experience that irrespective of the narrative of the Holocaust, there was no blanket grouping of Jews within the camps, it was everyone for themselves, French Jews, Dutch Jews, Italian, Russian, Ukrainian, had absolutely nothing in common. It would be like claiming that French Christians, Dutch Christians, Italian, Russian or Ukrainian, all stood as one within the camps...generally this is why those Jews who simply wanted to survive chose to become a Kapo....they had nothing in common with any of the other Jews who were incarcerated with them...unfortunately for them the Nazi's had a different take on the Kapo and exterminated them just as readily as the other prisoners.....after he explained all this I had a different view of the Kapo and was not just as quick to bitterly condemn them...his parents didn't speak of them with any great hatred, just pity....still, they were fuckers though😁
Kapo is a term I always associated with brutality and savagery. A state that commits genocide merits more of a Kapo comparator than one covering those Jews who were gassed but did not become Kapos.
DeleteI read about one Kapo saying to his prisoners "the only difference between you and me is that I'll die with a full belly"
ReplyDeleteKapo is the worst insult that can be directed at a Jew because of their collaborationist role in the Holocaust. It is a term often bandied about by far right Jewish nationalists to denigrate opponents of the Occupation and critics of the Gazan war. A particularly nasty iteration of self-hating Jew slur. Bomber Harris might be a more appropriate stigma.
ReplyDeleteKapo is the worst insult that can be directed at a Jew because of their collaborationist role in the Holocaust.
DeleteAnd a Jew who perpetrates genocide merits the description even when it is delivered as an insult.
My reason for using the term is that those who commit genocide or crimes against humanity have no ethical grounds for claiming lineage back to the victims of the Holocaust. Their monstrous acts give them a lineage back to the camps for sure - but to the Kapo section.
Superb article Anthony, very Poignant , heartbreaking that this genocide continues daily, countless lives being lost and it barely makes the news. I see Colum Eastwood will not attend St Patricks day celebrations in the white house. If Mary Lou and the shinners attend, what message will that send to the Palestinians who are being subject to this hell on earth
ReplyDeleteThank you VFP - Western democracy has been shown as a farce. I guess many people are willing to consider alternatives to it.
Delete