victimhood

Respect Yourself (2)

The archetype of the Hero slaying the dragon of inner and outer chaos
St George on Horseback, 1505, engraving, Albrecht Durer

Reading time: 15 mins

The four instinct / survival archetypes

C.G. Jung’s mandala from The Red Book

The idea of archetypes is very useful as a metaphorical tool in relation to healing and clawing back some self-respect – indeed to understand all of the 31 suggestions we’ll eventually explore. This might be a long way round the block to arrive at self-respect, but bear with me, you’ll see how it all comes back to this quality by the end.

Firstly, what are archetypes?

The concept of archetypes goes back to Plato who called them “forms” which he believed were reflected in the material world. But the basic concept is probably as old as human evolution itself. This theory was further advanced to a considerable degree by the swiss psychologist Carl Jung who called the source of these accumulated blueprints archetypes which fuelled the little “I”s or “psychic complexes” within the human mind.

Archetypal images, iconography and literary themes are sourced from universal patterns or motifs which in turn, are accessed from what is known as the collective unconscious, and closely connected (if not the same) as the akashic records mentioned in theosophical and anthroposophical literature. Think of it like a psycho-spiritual reservoir of ancestral experience, containing both the darkness and light of collective wisdom spanning possibly hundreds of thousands of years of human interaction with social groups and the environment.

This accumulated energy has a direct connection to personal unconscious and has defined the content of mythologies, legends and fairy tales of global cultures. It is the soul’s software, if you will, and a source of great teaching. Archetypes are psychic blueprints of emotion and instinct that lie in the triune system of the brain (reptilian, limbic and neo-cortex) as a psychic and structural template to primordial nature. They have a positive and negative aspect, the latter known as “The Shadow” which has been discussed frequently throughout this blog. The idea is that through confronting and then integrating these dark elements which have been denied and locked away we can dissolve the negative impact which would otherwise surely have occurred.

They are dualistic in nature and operate according to the nature of the unconscious which economises and conserves energy whilst also remaining highly adaptable. New personal narratives containing these archetypes appeal to the its adaptive processses and lay down new neural pathways from intense learning carried out in the present and overlaying the now defunct patterns of the past. The personal reservoir of the unconscious has a creative, tailor-made version of archetypes which are a unique product of your own stored life experiences. Along side this personal source is the collective or universal unconscious. Our intention is like an upload to that resources which responds in kind offering an automatic download which we access through our dreams. The images, motifs and mythical themes are identical for all.

(more…)

2. Respect Yourself (1)

By M.K. Styllinski

“Above all things, one should maintain his self-respect, and there is
but one way to do that, and that is to live in accordance with
your highest ideal.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

Reading time: 15 -18 mins

“He doesn’t respect himself much if he can carry on like that.”

Did you see her last night? She’s got no self-respect.”

Have some respect for yourself for God’s sake!

Such judgements and admonishments are unlikely to install the kind of respect those persons are looking for. The very notion of self-respect is highly subjective. One man’s accusation of poor hygiene, grungy dreadlocks and disrespect for authority is another man’s expression of a “free spirit”. What matters however, is whether you have the kind of respect for yourself that makes your life worthwhile and makes you a pleasure to be around.

It reminds me of my time as a bewildered twenty-something who gave an air of self-control and ease but was struggling to make sense of life. The recurring theme of that period was a battle between dissociation and reality, creativity and sexuality, perfectionism and surrender. When one has the feeling of persecution and guilt embedded in one’s very being it means that making a mistake is the end of the world whereby great horror, ridicule and even annihilation awaits should you err in the slightest way. Way over the top of course, and a form of compensatory narcissism that makes you retreat into a smaller and smaller bubble that you deem navigable, where everything is micro-managed to shield oneself from anymore pressure. Ironically, that only makes such a bubble more prone to bursting, since embracing objective reality becomes a threat to that congealed mass of ego-masks built to protect, yet a barrier to growth. Bloody conflict ensues between one’s fears and the promise of change. Thankfully, I did break that conflict, but not without cost, which is as it should be.

Self-respect never arrives when we shield ourselves from life and do everything we can to avoid failure. The latter is how we learn and there is no other way to build success – be it in business, relationships or the growth of self-awareness. You will err, you will fail and that’s okay. The information that led you to failure offers knowledge for next time. And provided you don’t give up, then such bad experiences become useful for the future you wish to create – they are needed grist for the mill.

Without self-respect it is hard to achieve what we desire. It is even harder to sustain any success should we manage to block out that doubting voice which is intimately linked to self-sabotage and victimhood. “Better to scuttle one’s ship now and face an even bigger disaster” says that voice, Better to protect myself from that kind of pain and suffering.” Yet, it is precisely this fixation with future “disaster” and the debilitating voice of unreason that is asking to be analysed and thereby integrated. (see no. 1 Heal Your Past).

(more…)

1. Heal Your Past (1)

By M.K. Styllinski

“I’ve always thought that we are what we remember, and the less we
remember, the less we are.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafon, author

—————-

“The paradox of trauma is that it has both the power to destroy and the
power to transform and resurrect.”

— author and creator of somatic experiencing, Peter A. Levine

Reading time: 25 mins

The above photo illustrates well the relationship to healing and the mind-body complex. We often place useless band-aids over the wall we have erected within ourselves and the promise of a more fulfilling life. Trauma, hurt and an array of psychic wounds are bricked up and plastered over so that we might pretend all is well and struggle on regardless. After all, it can be frightening to address deep-seated issues we know are holding us back. It can be even more disruptive to acknowledge we need help or that we need to go beyond just surviving. (Assuming that is, that such a wall hasn’t blocked out any awareness that there is a problem).

The triumph of the spirit over adversity resonates to everyone because we admire and relate to the person who has faced seemingly insurmountable odds and returned from the Dark Night Of the Soul to offer healing redemption for all. They become beacons of guidance that lights the way on our own path so that we may learn from and thereby transcend the trials and tribulations which emerge in our own lives. When someone is not only victorious but shows how we can be the same, they become an example.

One of the very first things we must do to obtain a more fulfilling and meaningful life is to heal the past. It is our accmululation of knowledge which allows us to “anticipate, protect and know ourselves.” ^[1]The will to survive and those survival mechanisms – our in-built means of protection against the threat of death – can then be placed in proper context so that they do not overwhelm us; where our views of the world are not violated through a lack of knowledge and adaptation. We can reduce the propensity for trauma in this trauma-inducing world. Without understanding this we cannot move ahead. Without seeing challenges as opportunities to grow and develop a creative complexity that enriches life. We must simplify our lives so that greater complexity can eventually arrive when we have the character to handle it. The “bliss” of chosen ignorance numbs the pain but stagnates potential.

The nature of trauma is a complex one. It is not just children who suffered from abuse or grew up in dysfunctional families that take on post-traumatic stress and the continuance of dissociation in adult life. There are many incidences in the lives of young children which induce trauma purely due to the fact that they are here, existing in this beautiful and horror-laden material world. Parents are often entirely clueless that their children have even suffered trauma that has overwhelmed any capacity to cope and laid down potential problems for the future. What’s more, infants and children do not have the mental or emotional maturity to mak sense of or communicate what has happened to them. At a certain age, they must stew in the juices of trauma and survive as best they can.

Take these imaginary examples:

Jenny is four-years-old. She has had an operation the evening before to remove her tonsils and has woken up in a strange room all alone. She vaguely remembers something about an operation and her parents reassuring faces that it would all be okay. But it’s dark and an odd blue glow envelops the room. Alien noises come from the large window to her right and a low hum to her left. It smells like the bathroom, and when she’d cut her knee her mother would put a plaster on it. She is scared and her throat is very, VERY painful. Such pain is entirely new to her and she feels a rising panic. Why is she alone? Where are Mummy and Daddy? Her heart rate rises. She hears voices outside and sees a yellow-orange glow spilling through the bottom of the door. She doesn’t recognise the people. Why is he alone in a strange room? Why isn’t the light on? Shadows leap and twist and turn in the corners. Her heart beats faster still. She tries to move but she can’t. The blankets and sheets are so tight and he feels so weak. Tears begin to stream from the corner of her eyes and he starts to sweat. Maybe he was naughty too many times and didn’t pay attention to what Mummy said. Maybe they decided to leave her here? She would be a good girl in future…She would be good…If only they would come back…She tries to cry out but only soft gurgle escapes.

After twenty minutes Jenny is beside herself soaked in sweat and salty tears and the pain-killers administered by the nurse on duty have worn off. It is only when the nurse arrives to check on Jenny at the allocated time that she calls the parents in. Amidst the jolly, cheerful atmosphere of relief and the complete ignorance of this little girl’s hour and a half of emotional and physical trauma goes unrecognised. Her mother mentions that her daughter’s face and hair is damp, her eyes red and that she looks very hot. The nurse takes her temperature and finds it a little above normal. “No worries. It’s all good. I’ll top up her pain relief and she can go home before lunch.” The nurse adjusts the drip and strokes Jenny’s forehead. Her parents sit on either side of the bed holding her hands. The father stares at his daughter. “She seems very quiet. Are you sure she’s okay? Jenny? You all right sweetie? On her way out the nurse responds: “She’s bound to be a bit groggy and spaced out. She’ll be fine.” Jenny stares ahead, pale, glassy-eyed, unresponsive … and traumatised. Where once distant voices seemed reassuring they would now signify loneliness, pain and abandonment.

***

Six-year-old Jonah and his parents are visiting Auntie Janet and Uncle Bob on their dairy farm in the country. Since they live in the city this is a trip Jonah has been looking forward to. He loves the countryside and his Aunt and Uncle. He has been mucking around with his cousin Jimmy who is 12 years old – much older than him. Jonah had never felt very comfortable around Jimmy and he was always so rude to his parents. He didn’t understand why Jimmy was always so mean. Jimmy has been told by his parents to show Jonah around the farm, very much against his will. Reluctantly he takes his cousin along who follows behind struggling to keep up.

They look at the tractors and all the farm equipment and he shows Jonah the cows in the milking stands and a warehouse full of corn feed. Then Jimmy has an idea. “Want to see the hay-loft?”

“Sure!” Jonah replies, trying to appear enthusiastic and unafraid.

Jimmy takes him to an old barn and stands in front of a long ladder attached to the facing wall stretching up about 15 ft up into loft full of sweet-smelling hay. From Jonah’s perspective, the ladder might as well reach to mars.

“Get up there”. Jimmy suddenly barks.

Hmmm?

“Get up that ladder!”

“I — I can’t climb up there.”

Jimmy draws closer. “Chicken. You’re just a weak little chicken. Get up that ladder NOW! If you don’t I swear to God…” He shoves his fist in front of the little boy’s face. Jonah’s eyes widen. He is shocked at the anger from his cousin seemingly from nowhere. Why is he being like this? He hesitantly places his hands on the ladder and slowly begins to climb, his fear rising at each step. Jimmy is behind him. “Faster!” he bellows. By the time Jonah reaches half way his mouth is dry and he is shaking with fear. He has never felt this fear before, his whole body shivering like he is very, very cold. But he doesn’t want to show Jimmy he is so afraid. He can’t show his fear. When they reach the top. Jonah unbuttons his blue duffle coat and sits on a hay bale. Jimmy sits on another opposite and fixes him with a malevolent gaze. Jonah looks at the floor and tries to recover. Jimmy produces a knife from his pocket and turns it over in his hands.

“I could kill you up here and no one would ever know.”

Jonah feels cold and stares at his cousin incredulously. Jimmy suddenly throws the knife just to one side of his leg and it sticks in the hay-bale with a “thunk”. Jonah feels the world shrinking, he can hear the blood rushing in his ears and his heart beating as if it would break through his rib-cage. Then he begins to feel nothing. He is numb, switched off and nothing matters anymore. He can hear Jimmy yabbering obscenities but he, Jonah has gone somewhere else. Soon, Jimmy forces him down the ladder again, and this time, though Jonah is afraid and he begins to sweat, something has broken inside and he doesn’t really care if he lives or dies. Jonah manages to tell his parents what happened. But it doesn’t come out right, sounding like a mischevious game. When he tells them about the knife however, their smiles disappear. They call for Jimmy but he is nowhere to be found. By the time they have reached home they have forgotten the incident. Jonah realises that his parents don’t consider it important enough to follow up, so Jonah convinces himself it didn’t mean anything. He would never mention it again. He goes to bed early that night feeling very tired and lays in a fetal position under the covers. The little boy doesn’t know that he is traumatised the effects of which will remain in his unconscious and locked into his body for decades.

***

Sarah is four-years-old and its her first time on the school mini-bus. She started kindergarten this morning and is on her way home. She has a backpack and an extra sandwich provided by her mother whom she knows that she will be there to pick her up. He mother told her it would be a very short trip and that she would have picked her up if she’d had a car but there was no other way around it. Sarah didn’t like to be away from her mother and would rather be playing with her toys in her comfy, cosy bedroom. Tears were just below the surface. She is surrounded by a lot of big, noisy school children and she is afraid. Everything is so loud! She looks out of the window and thinks about Alfie her dog and his big pink tongue. She wished he was here with her – he would make it all right. It isn’t long before the bus judders to a halt and everyone piles out in a mass of shouting, bustling bodies. Sarah remains in her seat not sure if she should follow. Her heart begins to thump and she wanders down to the driver and pulls on his sleeve.

Hey, sweet-pea, this your stop?

Sarah stares at him wide-eyed. She nods…”Mom’s coming to pick me up.”

Well, okay then, you better get out here. You don’t want to be going into town.”

She nods again, brushes the hair from her eyes and adjusts her Power Rangers backpack. Turning to the doors she gingerly clambers down the steps and onto the warm pavement. The mini-bus pulls away. The other children have departed and there is not a soul to be seen. Sarah find herself alone.

Her heart begins to thump faster and her breathes become shorter. Sarah wanders over to the bus shelter and waits. She sits on the long plastic seat her legs straight out in front of her. Her mother will be here soon and the the thought calms her down. She bobs her shiny shoes up and down as if in happy confirmation. Sarah absently looks at the occasional passer-by hoping that the person is her mom. Each time, it is a stranger and each time she is disappointed she becomes more agitated. After half an hour Sarah’s chin begins to wobble and she calls for her Mom. She breathes rapidly looking around wildly in the vain hope if spotting her mother. Everything looks so strange. She doesn’t recognise anything or anyone. She frowns and screws up her face and begins to cry punctuated by cries for Mom. After one hour Sarah is calling her mother’s name only occasionally and plaintively between wracking sobs. But still no one comes. The street is empty.

She goes and sits on the side of the pavement as the sun begins to go down in the hope that someone – anyone will take her to her home. She sees a man walk hurriedly past on the other side of the street and is trapped between desperate wish for him to help her and her equally desperate fear of a stranger. She looks at all the homes and doesn’t even consider knocking on someone’s door. Everything is alien and therefore threatening. After an hour and a half, Sarah has cried herself dry. She is fiddling with her backpack and tracing her finger around the stitching repeating the process again and again. She barely looks up when her mom arrives and gathers her up weeping with relief. Sarah has been collected at last but this little girl has transported her mind somewhere else. There are no tears and not much recognition. She is in a state of detachment and drowsy acceptance of her fate. She is traumatised. The next morning Sarah will appear much better but the trauma of that event will have etched its itself into her mind and body with repercussions for the future.

These examples illustrate how precarious and vulnerable children are to the everyday trials of life growing up. It is impossible to avoid negative events as they are simply a part of what makes us human. But what we can do is build our knowledge base so that these inevitable challenges do not define us in later life, where traumatic experiences lie undetected and unresolved, keeping us unnecessarily locked in within the confines of the traumatic memory that claimed us through no fault of our own.

The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE)

Fully remembering our personal history can be a painful process – almost unbearable for some. But it must be done to bring us back to ourselves. As that wise old bird Hippocrates noted: “Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.” Depending on the level of repression/suppression of emotions, time may heal. But trauma and adversity may just “freeze” the system in complex ways. As co-director of the The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE) Vincent Felitti MD notes: “Contrary to conventional belief, time does not heal all wounds, since humans convert traumatic emotional experiences in childhood into organic disease later in life.” ^[2]

Donna Jackson Nakazawa’s book Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal is an excellent place to start in discovering how to evaluate ACE and to implement the solutions provided. The studies and their questionnaire scaling shows, with surprising accuracy, that the number of Adverse Childhood Experiences an individual had, predicted the amount of medical care that person would require as an adult:

Individuals who had faced 4 or more categories of ACEs were twice as likely to be diagnosed with cancer as individuals who hadn’t experienced childhood adversity.
For each ACE Score a woman had, her risk of being hospitalized with an autoimmune disease rose by 20 percent.
Someone with an ACE Score of 4 was 460 percent more likely to suffer from depression than someone with an ACE Score of 0.
An ACE Score greater than or equal to 6 shortened an individual’s lifespan by almost 20 years. ^[3]

So, why such dramatic results?

(more…)

Why Young Lives are Losing Meaning and Purpose II: The Big Three and 11 Factors

Photo by Dmitry Ratushny | unsplash.com

“Community connectedness is not just about warm fuzzy tales of civic triumph. In measurable and well-documented ways, social capital makes an enormous difference in our lives…Social capital makes us smarter, healthier, safer, richer, and better able to govern a just and stable democracy.”

~ Robert D. Putnam

Reading time: 20-25 mins

In the last post I looked at the decrease in meaning and purpose parallel to the increase in loneliness and isolation for today’s millennial and Z generations. Sociologists, economists and psychologists generally all agree that the key to developing and holding on to meaning, purpose and well-being is sufficient social interaction with a core group of friends and family that define one’s support. This is not the same as an extended family that usually arises from enforced socio-economic factors, but one that naturally evolves based around shared vision of support and nourishment because it is both practical and sustainable, offering real world benefits.

John F. Helliwell, a prominent expert in the economics of happiness believes the quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives at the deepest levels. And the quality of those relationships is reflected in how well we have activated our response-ability and activities that offer a form of service to the community – whatever form that might be. This is what creates and deepens ties with others: constructive actions alongside key initiatory ideas. Helliwell draws his work from very large data sets called the World Values Survey which has accrued answers from people in over 150 countries about life satisfaction along with other socio-economic information. When Helliwell crunched the data he and other researchers found that there were six reliable and consistent factors which accounted for well-being:

Social support
generosity
trust
freedom
income per capita
healthy life expectancy ^[1]

Four from the list are connected with social interaction within a community. The other factors are relational and occur as a response to, or as a natural property of social support. So a stratum of support covering all aspects of human aspiration is a really big deal, the lack of which will play a large part in the development of our social ills.

The Big Three

It seems to me, the development of meaning and purpose is rooted in three foundational products of social interaction which, if healthy, underpin a successful society, the constituents of which all operate symbiotically and grow parallel to each other. Thus, the creation of an individual emerges and is informed by:

Parents
Family
Community

Obvious perhaps, but in crisis nonetheless. These three make up the strata in the soil of society/culture which is dependent on the level of access to community (should it even exist) a solid connection to nature and the quality of the environment upon which all three rest. ^[2]Similarly, the healthy functioning of the three will have within them poor psycho-spiritual “nutrients”, or a rich, fertile ground that is self-sustaining and therefore community-sustaining. The presence of Helliwell’s six factors will be informed by the quality of the Big Three.

(more…)

The Hissy Fit Generation and the Loss of Free Speech VII: The Subversion of Social Justice (2)

Courtesy of Susan Duclos of All News PipeLine| Click on image for larger version

“Since the 1990s, there’s been a change. The most scared thing at a university is the victim. Not in all departments and not in the sciences, but in the social sciences, especially in the humanities, the victim is the most sacred thing”

“The net effect [of safe spaces] is that the very people you are trying to help are rendered weaker and they become morally dependent.”

— Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist

In the last post we explored the landscape of social justice and the influence of the Social Justice Warrior (SJW) mindset expressed in particular through activism in universities and through rules and laws in education. We’ll be doing more of the same in this post with particular emphasis on racism and sexism in schools and universities.

In the Alice in Wonderland worldview of the SJW, racism, sexism and the accusation that anyone who is a straight, white and male and happens to disagree is immediately on the wrong side of the SJW contingent and opening themselves up to an array of derogatory labels. We become right wing provocateurs; “privileged” and misogynist; white supremacists and “——-phobic” (fill in the blank). Critics must feel terminally guilty and contrite for being borne into a racial demographic that in the past presided over genocide and institutional racism, pre-civil rights era. Not withstanding the irony that comes from the inherent privilege of students and academics, there is no evidence it exists now on the scale touted by these terminally offended young minds.

True racism is someone who expresses distaste or hatred for someone, simply due to their race. This form of ignorance is still around, but hurling abuse at anyone who is conservative, white, not a member of a minority or whose sexual orientation happens to be heterosexual (how passé) is displaying the exact same sexism/racism in reverse. This is the same contradiction that claims intolerance by enforcing tolerance.

In fact, SJW ideology is predicated on the most hackneyed contradictions sourced from its postmodern philosophical roots and which are sometimes so obvious it’s almost comical. Almost.

When feelings are facts, sexism, mis-gendering – whatever suits the hysterical SJW’s purpose – then literally anything can be twisted into an excuse to virtue-signal for a standardized “equality” > conformity. Unfortunately, this unhealthy mix of unthinking ideology and emotional histrionics (which is even more apparent with young women who appear to make up the majority of the SJW camp) results in a deepening of inequality, and empowering only the vampiric nature of victimhood identity. It creates new tears in the fabric of an already traumatised and infantilised society by accentuating social divisions and intense resentment.

This radicalism has not only emerged through left-liberal progressivism but thrives on the emotional drama of “us and them” and the subsequent promotion of violence and vindictiveness. Despite the default enemy of the alt. and ultra right, even moderate liberals and conservatives (in fact anyone who doesn’t agree) become the demonised “other” simply because they represent an alternative view. One only has to look at Facebook rants and Twitter storms to how this righteous indignation can go viral in a very short space of time.

For all those young activists who are actually prepared to make the effort to read, research, contemplate and to observe themselves in relation to the world, this hijacking of peaceful civil disobedience is a most dangerous dynamic to be unleashed. It is dangerous because it is sourced not from the love of Truth but the love of conflict as a salve to a troubled self. This phenomenon neuters the creative power of conscience in the young; their hope, their ideals and their potential to provide solutions and by subverting it into nothing more than a tool for the maladjusted it therefore proves useful as another tool for the Establishment. When protest feeds on fear and toxic emotions it can be maneuvered to where it can be of best use, in much the same way coloured revolutions can be fomented for regime change in any given country.

(Expect the SJW to be triggered by the term “coloured” revolutions. This is not a joke – that’s the level this craziness has reached).

Thanks to SJWs and their enablers, the United States and parts of Europe must now cope with a culture war designed to irrevocably confuse millennials about their sexuality, ethics, morals and values, which results in greater ethnic and political divides and turns us away from Establishment culpability. Most importantly, it ensures that young minds identify with extremes of mob rule or suffer from being sandwiched between two poles of pathological hypocrisy.

(more…)

The Hissy Fit Generation and The Loss Of Free Speech II: Microaggressions and Trigger Warnings (2)

“Trigger warnings might also communicate to people that they’re fragile, and coax them [to] interpret ordinary emotional responses as extraordinary signals of danger.”

— ‘Trigger warnings do little to reduce people’s distress, research shows’

The New Lexicon of “Offence” and Para-Morality

In the West, we are already suffering from information overload and a loss of quality communication. It seems people are more afraid of exchanging pleasantries with a stranger than ever before thanks to an overemphasis on negative news in the media as well as the addiction to our smart phones. If you simply want to say “hi” to an attractive man or woman; to chat with someone you don’t know over the deli counter, the gas station or in the street while waiting for a bus… there will increasingly be this niggling thought of saying the wrong thing and offending someone through a cultural programming that is changing our language as well as restricting it. We have a very real collective fear of saying the wrong thing that is causing a conformity to a flawed consensus that doesn’t exist, except in the minds of those who get paid to push this agenda. The Orwellian Offence Police are active in entertainment, universities, the work place and in government, with numerous examples of the most insane persecution imaginable.

The following phrases are in most left-liberal academic and social justice warrior’s lexicon wrapped up in the desire to virtue signal – that now overused phrase from the right – used to dismiss the logic of free speech advocates and ordinary people in their daily lives.

Trigger Warnings – According to the Oxford English Dictionary a trigger warning is: “A statement at the start of a piece of writing, video, etc. alerting the reader or viewer to the fact that it contains potentially distressing material (often used to introduce a description of such content)”. This is a very convenient way for the Establishment to make sure that its population self-censors. Trigger warnings were originally developed by psychologists for war veterans, victims of sexual abuse or common trauma as a means to flag content which might stimulate a re-run of painful memories. Unfortunately, this has now been extended to the university campuses and the arts & entertainment industry (which is perhaps less of an issue given the state of graphic sex and violence on TV) and is now used to provide protection from words and opinions this precious generation doesn’t like; any discomfort at all in fact, a far cry from the preventative measures designed for genuine victims of war, violence and/or sexual abuse.

This postmodern paranoia has infiltrated minorities and student life with a vengeance. Sex, race and politics are all foci for trigger warnings causing protests, demonstrations, self-important letters with lists of demands for faculty members and even their removal due to perceived bias, sexism, racism or the violation of their hallowed safe spaces. ^[1]

Trigger warnings have been imposed in many university curricula due to students’ demands. The control of university policy – whether it is ethnic minority students feeling victimised or screaming young feminists demanding attention – any kind of encroachment of reality and therefore distress has led to warnings on such books as Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald, and The Merchant of Venice. Yes, now Shakespeare is deemed threatening, a trend that is also taking place in Britain, with Cambridge University picking up the PC gaunlet. ^[2]

To pander to this inner health and safety zone one student offered his university faculty tips on how to proceed: “For instance, one trigger warning for “The Great Gatsby” might be: (TW: “suicide,” “domestic abuse” and “graphic violence.”) […] Thanks to the vague tags within the warning, readers and unaffected students alike can approach a narrative without the plot being spoiled. Yet, at the same time, students who are unfamiliar with these works can immediately learn whether courses will discuss traumatic content. […] Professors can also dissect a narrative’s passage, warning their students which sections or volumes of a book possess triggering material and which are safer to read. This allows students to tackle passages that are not triggering but return to triggering passages when they are fully comfortable.” ^[3]

(more…)

The Z Factor XV: Inglorious Human Rights

“Ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized,…”

– UNICEF, Children in Israeli Military Detention: Observations and Recommendations (2013).

Israeli West Bank Barrier otherwise known as “The Wall”| Photo from the cover of UNICEF’s 2013 report Children in Israeli Military Detention: Observations and Recommendations (2013).

Jewish cultivation of victimhood and the mythologising of certain events in history have been used to affect a form of thought control that confers a mighty buffer to criticism. This serves to prop up a lasting deference and preferential treatment at both the socio-cultural and political level. But what of vengeance? Does the atrocious human rights record by Israelis have anything to do with Amalekian revenge and their association with Arabs as the New Nazis in waiting, should they be given power and equal rights?

Inglorius Barsterds, a 2009 film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino goes some way in explaining the perceptions of some of in the global Jewish community regarding the ideas of revenge and victimisation. Producer Lawrence Bender, after reading the first draft of the film script exclaimed: “… as a member of the Jewish tribe, I thank you, … because this movie is a fucking Jewish wet dream.” The film’s executive producers Harvey and Bob Weinstein, also reportedly “… enjoyed the film’s theme of Jewish revenge.” ^{^[1]}

I bet they did.

The film is set in Nazi-occupied France during World War II and follows the exploits of a group of Jewish-American soldiers known as ‘The Basterds’ as they go about inflicting various forms of Tarantino-esque revenge upon the Third Reich while going under cover to assassinate high-ranking Nazi officials. It is a nicely crafted film, musically rich, inventive, and visually powerful; chock full of comic-book humour and film culture references. As we’ve come to expect from Tarantino, it is also gratuitously violent and patently immoral.

Represented as cathartic “kosher porn” according to one of the Jewish actors who had a leading role, the film quite literally exorcised the Jewish archetypes of passivity and victimhood into an unbridled blood lust of revenge. While Tarantino revels in his own pornographic love of violence in a war-time setting, it perversely delves into some very dark arenas of Jewish lore with somewhat disturbing results. In attempting to come up triumphant by dramatically reversing Jewish guilt, passivity and victimhood, it merely creates their nemeses. Nevertheless, Jewish influence in the entertainment industry and our Official Culture being as it is, we can’t be too surprise that it was deemed a resounding success by most critics and audiences.

However, a few were not convinced including author and critic Daniel Mendelsohn who found the portrayal of Jewish-American soldiers mimicking German atrocities done to European Jews disturbing and went to the heart of the matter He when he stated: “ … Tarantino indulges this taste for vengeful violence by—well, by turning Jews into Nazis.” ^{^[2]} The Jewish press, summed up Tarantino’s style of film making as lacking any kind of depth or subtle understanding and when faced with Nazis and Jewish retribution it was inevitable that audiences would be served with an: “… alternative to reality, a magical and Manichean world where we needn’t worry about the complexities of morality, where violence solves everything, and where the Third Reich is always just a film reel and a lit match away from cartoonish defeat.” ^{^[3]} To which Tarantino would probably say, is exactly the point.

It’s only “entertainment” right?

Promotional Posters for Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds (2009)

The fact that the film not only went down a storm in Israel only serves to reinforce the idea that most Israelis and Jewish-Americans seem to be happy with the fact that Jews exacting revenge by using the same methods of destruction is without any moral ambiguity: “The ‘chapters’ of the movie showing Nazi-scalping, baseball bat-wielding Jews instilling fear into the hearts of the German army (and Hitler), as well as the bloodbath finale where Nazi elite are all burned alive, elicited cheers and hearty rounds of applause, while the man himself won a standing ovation as the end credits rolled.” ^{^[4]}Such gleeful bloodletting and burning alive of Nazis is comfortably explained away by the right of victimhood while simultaneously fuelling Nazi-like behaviour that is not only deemed just and appropriate, but natural. It was indeed a “wet dream” for Jewish movie moguls trumped only by Tarantino’s blatant and cynical pandering to the same, making sure he’ll always be welcome in Hollywood for a long time to come.

***

What makes this such an interesting mirror for the Israeli-Arab conflict is the current and appalling human rights abuse we see inflicted on Palestinians. It makes this “Jewish Fantasy” a far more disturbing and topical piece of propaganda than it first appears.

46811_157072180975064_155832537765695_550634_7658175_n

So, let’s have a look at some cold hard reality:

From September 29, 2000 to the present (March 2012) 125 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians and 1,471 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis ^{^[5]}
1,092 Israelis and at least 6,537 Palestinians have been killed; ^{^[6]}
9,226 Israelis and 45,041 Palestinians have been injured; ^{^[7]}
0 Israelis are being held prisoner by Palestinians, while 5,300 Palestinians are currently imprisoned by Israel; ^{^[8]}
no Israeli homes have been demolished by Palestinians and 24,813 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel since 1967. ^{^[9]}
The Israeli unemployment rate is 6.4 per cent, while the Palestinian unemployment in the West Bank is 16.5 per cent and 40 per cent in Gaza; ^{^[10]}
Israel currently has 236 Jewish-only settlements and ‘outposts’ built on confiscated Palestinian land. ^{^[11]}

Persistent violations of the Geneva Convention underlie these statistics with the Israeli military as the primary source for these atrocities. moreover, the brunt of these attacks have been borne by Palestinian children. It is not hard to see that much of these human rights violations and deaths are sourced from beliefs that see Palestinians as not only unwelcome but less than human, a belief that has been instilled into socio-political consciousness of Israel for a very long time.

In 1973 Rabbi A. Avidan gave some religious “inspiration” for Israeli soldiers and subsequently published by the Central Regional Command of the Israeli Army. Although no other Rabbi or military personnel criticised the memo it was eventually taken out of circulation presumably due to conflict in the chains of command. It stated: “When our forces come across civilians during a war or in hot pursuit or in a raid, so long as there is no certainty that these civilians are incapable of harming our forces, then according to the Halakhah [Jewish religious law] they may and even should be killed … In a war, when our forces storm the enemy, they are allowed and even enjoined by the Halakhah to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians who are ostensibly good.” ^{^[12]}

This “guidance” for the military feeds the parallels with Nazism and ethnic cleansing in general and brings the history of Biblical Jewish conquest into focus but also explains some of the brutality currently experienced by Palestinians, most notably children. A standard mantra for abrogating responsibility and to cover a probable shoot-to-kill policy is the following statement when the Israeli military killed yet another 3 year-old girl in her home: “A spokesman for the Israeli military justified the girl’s killing, saying that soldiers thought that Palestinian resistance fighters were somewhere in the neighborhood.” ^{^[13]}This has remarkable mileage when you’d like to see the demise of a population. So, let’s review just a few of the many indiscriminate attacks against Palestinians under occupation.

In 2002, Palestinian Mohammad Abu Kweik, 8, his two sisters, Bara, 14, Aziza, 16, and their mother Bushra Kweik, 38, were killed when their Mitsubishi pick-up truck they were travelling in was bombed by Israeli forces in the West Bank Palestinian ghetto of Ramallah, she had picked them up from school. A car following the family was also hit killing two Palestinian children aged 4 and 16. Apparently, they were attempting to assassinate a man who was not in either vehicle. ^{^[14]}

In July of the same year 11-year-old Khalil Ibrahim, was shot in the head in Rafah a part of the Gaza ghetto as he in a playground with his friends, two of whom were wounded. “The children were gunned down by Israeli soldiers from a Jewish guard tower as they were playing.” ^{^[15]}In May 7, 2001 Israelis shelled homes in the Khan Yunis Refugee Camp and fired large-calibre machine guns which killed 4-month-old Iman Hijo, “shrapnel tearing a hole into the infant’s back.” The attack also wounded 24 civilians, he girl’s 19-year-old mother, as well as three brothers and sisters, were among the wounded, “including 18-month-old Mahmoud Hijo, [who] was in intensive care at Nasser Hospital with shrapnel wounds, doctors said.” … “Israeli troops also fired on the refugee camp’s Khaldieh School in the West Bank, killing a Palestinian school-teacher.” ^{^[16]}

Indiscriminate airstrikes (not Hezbollah’s or Hama’s shielding as claimed by Israeli officials) and violations of human rights were most evident in Gaza offensives by Israeli army between 2006 – 2009 causing a large spike in civilian casualties, the most brutal of which was the massacre of Palestinian women and children in Israel’s “Cloud of Autumn.” ^{^[17]}When you grow up with state-mandated violence, hatred and poverty it is little wonder so-called resistance groups like Hamas and Hezbollah have formed. What needs to be borne in mind is that these are people who simply want to lead normal, ordinary lives with some dignity and respect for even the most basic human rights. According to American Educational Trust: “The majority of these [Palestinian] children were killed and injured while going about normal daily activities, such as going to school, playing, shopping, or simply being in their homes. Sixty-four per cent of children killed during the first six months of 2003 died as a result of Israeli air and ground attacks, or from indiscriminate fire from Israeli soldiers.” ^{^[18]}

One report from Hebron describes the case of two year-old Burhan Sidir who was blown apart by Israeli mortar fire. His legs and head were found in the street and had to be retrieved by relatives. Can we even imagine the shock, grief and horror at having to pick up your son’s head from the street and carry on with your life?

Just think about that for moment when we become irritated that we’ve missed the last episode of Game of Thrones. Palestinians live with this kind oppression every day of their lives. everyone knows someone who has lost a son, daughter, mother, father, sister or brother.

Total disregard for Palestinian lives has given Israel numerous warnings for war crimes. ^{^[19]}Palestinian inter-factional fighting between particularly between Hamas and Fatah on top of a fluctuating humanitarian crisis creates intolerable conditions for the young and old alike in the occupied territories. Worse still, is the spectre of targeted killings of children and teenagers by the Israeli military. Though it may not be official policy it appears to be a reality nonetheless, with higher level officers sometimes giving the order to shoot commensurate with reflexive actions of Israeli soldiers as whole which belie “a culture of impunity.” Many recent reports confirm what Palestinians have been living with for decades, namely that a Palestinian life – even a child – means nothing for many in the Israeli military and that an apparent unlawful death is like a fine for a parking ticket at around 100 or 200 shekel [$US22 or $US44]. Mandating a collective punishment on the Palestinian people is drawn from an ever-present emotion of revenge as Israeli soldiers explain:

In May 2004, Israeli forces launched an operation in southern Gaza that resulted in the expulsion of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, and the deaths of 50 Palestinians, up to half of whom were civilians Rafi, an officer in an elite unit connected to the air force, told how the entire mission was about revenge. “The commanders said kill as many people as possible,’ he said. Orders were also given to kill anyone seen on the rooftops of homes, irrespective of what they were doing or whether they were armed. Among the casualties were Asma Moghayyer, aged 16, and her brother Ahmed, 13, who were shot as they were collecting clothes from their rooftop washing line. Rafi described how his impression of the operation was ‘chaos’ and the ‘indiscriminate use of force’. ‘Gaza was considered a playground for sharpshooters,’ he said. ^{^[20]}

The explanations that issue forth to justify attacks by Israeli Defence Forces hold less and less validity when such an unspoken policy exists as well as the numerous occasions of attacks in the refugee camps. When teenagers and children have been killed the Israeli military issues standard denials that anything untoward has taken place. How tragically ironic it surely is to see another kind holocaust going on in the occupied territories.

“(The Palestinians) would be crushed like grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls.”

— Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988

The baby in the photo (right) was killed by a bullet to the head during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. He is of one of thousands over the years, yet Israel is still considered a democracy.

What if it were your little niece or nephew?

Your baby son or daughter?
Asma, 16, and her younger brother Ahmed, are typical examples of more “collateral.” They were both shot through the head by an Israeli soldier: “as they fed their pigeons and collected the laundry from the roof of their home in Rafah refugee camp.” Yet, just hours after the deaths Israeli officials were busy blaming Palestinians suggesting that the children had been planting bombs or killed accidentally by other external factors despite clear evidence to the contrary:

Dr Ahmed Abu Nkaria, who pronounced the Mughayar children dead, insists on proving the manner of their killing. He pulls Asma’s body from the mortuary’s refrigeration unit and fumbles through the teenager’s hair to reveal the hole where the bullet entered above one ear and ripped a much larger wound as it emerged above the other.

“The Israeli propaganda is that they were killed in a work accident. These are the kinds of lies they tell all the time,” he says. “They say all the dead are fighters. They say they do not deliberately kill children, but about a quarter of the dead from the first day of shooting are children. The evidence is here in the morgue. Does this girl look as if she was blown up by a bomb?” […]

Ahmed lies with 14 other bodies … He was a small boy who could not easily be mistaken for a man.

Dr Nkaria rolls the child over to show a tiny round hole in his forehead, just above his fringe. There is a much larger hole at the back of the head where the bullet came out. Neither Asma nor Ahmed show signs of any other injuries, particularly of the kind that might be expected from a blast, such as shrapnel spread across the body, burns, or mutilation.

“This is what the Israelis claim is a ‘work accident’,” Dr Nkaria says ….”This is Ibrahim Alqun. He is 14 years old. He was shot in the back of the head. The bullet came out of his right eye,” he says. The child’s face is badly mutilated by the wound. The bodies of the children continued to pile up in the mortuary yesterday.

Saber Abu Libda, 13, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers after he left his home in Tel al-Sultan in the morning to find water for his family. Dr Nkaria’s finger probes a tiny hole in the small child’s back which masks the devastation done to his heart as the bullet shot through it. “No one can say this child was a fighter. Look at the size of him and look where they shoot him – in the back, not coming to attack someone,” the doctor says. ^{^[21]}

A Palestinian rescue worker carries the body of a child from the al-Dallu family into the hospital in Gaza City on November 18, 2012, after seven members of theal-Dallu family, including four children, were among nine people killed when an Israeli missile struck a family home in Gaza City, the health ministry said. AFP PHOTO/MOHAMMED ABED

The cases of children and teenagers being shot in cold-blood are numerous and amount to daily executions. A climate of fear is a constant part of Palestinian lives in the occupied territories and refugee camps.

Take the 2004 case of 13 year-old Iman walking to school and who accidentally found herself in Israeli army’s “forbidden zone” at the bottom of her street. It was broad daylight; she was carrying her satchel and wearing her school uniform. Only a few minutes later “the short, slight child was pumped with bullets. Doctors counted at least 17 wounds and said much of her head was destroyed.”

Standard denials followed from the military unit responsible for killing the school-girl. This was followed by an initial army investigation that cleared the commander of the unit of any wrong doing, despite his own soldiers accusing him of “… giving the order to shoot knowing the target was a young girl, and of then emptying the clip of his automatic rifle into her.”

Some Palestinian witnesses gave detailed descriptions as to what happened to Iman. Basim Breaka saw the killing from his living room: “Some soldiers were lying on the ground and shooting very heavily toward her,” …Then one of the soldiers walked to her and emptied his clip into her. For sure, she died on the second or third bullet. I could see her lying on the ground, not moving. I can’t imagine why that soldier wanted to shoot her after she was dead.” ^{^[22]}

A prosecution case was brought by the family of Iman Darweesh al-Hams due to the lightness of the charges brought against the commander who was “reprimanded in custody.” Not one month later a tape surfaced showing exactly what happened to Iman and who was responsible. The whole Israeli unit continued firing at Iman well after she had been identified as a “frightened child,” and illustrated that both the unit and the commander were culpable. In the recorded exchanges someone in the operations room asks:

Iman Al Hams was a 13-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israel Defense Forces fire near a military observation post in a “no-man’s” zone near the Philadelphi Route on 5 October 2004, in Rafah in the Gaza Strip. (wikipedia)

“Are we talking about a girl under the age of 10?” The observation post, housed in a watchtower, replies: “It’s a little girl. She’s running defensively eastwards, a girl of about 10. She’s behind the embankment, scared to death.”

Not until four minutes later was it reported that the girl had been hit and had fallen. The observation post reports: “Receive, I think that one of the positions took her out.” … Operations room: “What, she fell?” Observation post: “She’s not moving right now.”

The tape records the commander as telling his men, after firing at the girl with an automatic weapon and declaring he has “confirmed” the killing: “Anyone who’s mobile, moving in the zone, even if it’s a three-year-old, needs to be killed.”

The soldiers said that the commander had fired two shots at the girl from close range as she lay on the ground before withdrawing, turning and “emptying his magazine” by firing some 10 bullets at her body. This account is broadly confirmed by the terms of the indictment issued this week. ^{^[23]}

The Commander, “Captain R.” was subsequently acquitted and within a few months promoted to the rank of major. To further compound the misery of the al-Hams family the former Captain received “82,000 New Israel Shekels (roughly $17,000) to compensate him for his defense expenditures and time spent in jail.” ^{^{[24] [25]}}

The family’s lawyer summed their feelings in a statement to the press believing that “… the commanders and the soldiers who fired should all have been charged with murder.”

A homeless Palestinian girl stands in a burnt classroom at a United Nations school after it was hit by Israeli shelling on January 17, 2009 in Beit Lahia. | Photo: UNRWA photographer Iyad El-Baba/Electronic Intifada

In the summer of the same year Israeli soldiers killed a 13-year-old Palestinian girl as she was playing football near her home in southern Gaza. “Medics said teenager Sara Mahmud Zurub was shot in the chest in an outlying neighbourhood of the city of Khan Yunis on Monday and died on the way to the hospital.” The report also lists a separate incident where soldiers “soldiers shot dead a 50-year-old Palestinian woman in the south of the territory. The army claimed it had fired towards a site where mortars were allegedly fired from.” ^{^[26]}

4 year-old Raghda al-Assar died in September 2004 of wounds she sustained two weeks before. She had been shot in the head by Israeli soldiers while sitting at her desk at elementary UNRWA school, in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis: “The shooting began when Palestinian militants who oppose the Israeli occupation of Gaza launched a series of missiles at a nearby Jewish settlement. The UN says that the soldiers shot indiscriminately into the crowded refugee camp for more than half an hour.” “Headmistress Um Khalid says the incident has caused a lot of fear among her pupils, with some crying uncontrollably and others too afraid to come to school.” ^{^[27]}

On the same day in Rafah, a 16-year-old Palestinian Mahmud Said Qishta, was playing outside his home in Rafah “when he inadvertently stepped on an explosive device left behind by the Israeli army.” He later died of his wounds. ^{^[28]} Nor is this “careless” use of explosives exceptional. On Nov. 22, 2001, five Palestinian school boys ages 7 to 14 were on their way to classes in the Gaza strip when they were killed by a bomb planted by Israeli forces Palestinian children bid farewell to their deceased playmates, killed by a booby-trapped bomb planted on the path to their school by the child-killing Israeli army. ^{^[29]}

While in March of 2008 in the Jabalya refugee camp 12 year-old Sami Abu Salem was killed by an Israeli sniper bullet. “An ambulance tried to reach her but Israeli soldiers opened fire at it, wounding a paramedic and causing the tires to lose air, and so she bled to death three hours after she was wounded.” ^{^[30]}

Palestinian doctors and paramedics have been considered as targets by the Israeli military when attempting to rescue victims. In March 4, 2001 57-year-old Dr. Khalil Suleiman was killed while Israeli military opened fire on the ambulance attending to victims in the Jenin refugee camp. Three paramedics including a 9-year-old girl were wounded. ^{^[31]}Tragedies and atrocities frequently occur at check-point crossing reminiscent of Nazi Germany: “An ill, one-year-old Palestinian baby died in his father’s arms on Sunday after the pair passed several hours under baking sun waiting to cross from the Gaza Strip into Israel, medics said. Ibrahim Abu Nahel and his father arrived at the Erez border crossing between Gaza and Israel at 8 a.m. on Sunday.” ^{^[32]}

In 2008 Ramallah, an Israeli soldier received only 28 days confinement for causing the death of a Palestinian pre-term baby at a Hawara checkpoint near Nablus city. Israeli troops at the checkpoint “… prevented him and his pregnant wife from crossing the point in order to go to hospital despite the fact that his wife was bleeding. “… as they were waiting, his wife gave birth to their son Zaid who lived just for a few moments and after one hour and a half Palestinian paramedics arrived at the checkpoint and completed the birth process to save the life of his wife.” ^{^[33]}

Palestinian girls traumatised at funerals of relatives and siblings | AFP

Harassment by Israeli border guards and airport security officials also takes place in the jolly land of Palestinian occupied rule. Israeli officials have been strip-searching girls as young as seven inflicting humiliation and indignity upon Muslims and Christians under the amused gaze of Israeli armed guards. Like so much Israeli unofficial policy it serves as another tool of psychological torture that pressures Palestinians not to return to Palestine.

One example comes from Oregon attorney Hala Gores from a Palestinian Christian family in Nazareth who had to leave due to Israeli discrimination and was strip-searched at just 10 years-old: “Gores has never returned to her family’s ancestral home in Nazareth, she says, in part because she does not want to repeat the experience of having no control over what is done to her. The Israeli policy appears to target only Christian and Muslim children, and is equally applied to those with Israeli citizenship and citizenship in other countries, including native-born Americans. There are no reports of Jewish children being strip-searched.” ^{^[34]}

Perhaps one of the worst years for children murdered in the operations mounted by the Israeli military in Gaza was from June – September, 2006. Figures from the Palestinian Centre of Human Rights (PCHR) ^{^[35]} put’s the whole tragic mess into perspective:

Bara Nasser Habib, 3 (hit by shrapnel to the head and body, Gaza City, 26 July)

Shahed Saleh Al-Sheikh Eid, 3 days old (bled to death after airstrike, Al-Shouka, 4 August)

Rajaa Salam Abu Shaban, 3 (died of fractured skull in air raid, Gaza City, 9 August)

Jihad Selmi Abu Snaima, 14 (killed by a shell, Al-Shoukha, 10 september)

Khaled Nidal Wahba, 15 months (died of wounds from an airstrike, 10 July)

Rawan Farid Hajjaj, 6 (killed with his mother and sister in an airstrike, Gaza City, 8 July)

Anwar Ismail Abdul Ghani Atallah, 12 (shot in the head, Erez, 5 July)

Shadi Yousef Omar 16 (shot in the chest by IDF, Beit Lahya, 7 July)

Mahfouth Farid Nuseir, 16 (killed by missile while playing football, Beit Hanoun, 11 July)

Ahmad Ghalib Abu Amsha, 16, (killed by missile while playing football, Beit Hanoun, 11 July)

Ahmad Fathi Shabat, 16 (killed by missile while playing football, Beit Hanoun, 11 July)

Walid Mahmoud El-Zeinati, 12 (died of shrapnel wounds, Gaza City, 11 July)

Basma Salmeya, 16 (killed in Israeli airstrike, 12 July, Jabalia)

Somaya Salmeya, 17 (killed in Israeli airstrike, 12 July, Jabalia)

Aya Salmeya, 9 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)

Yehya Salmeya, 10 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)

Nasr Salmeya, 7 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)

Huda Salmeya, 13 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)

Eman Salmeya, 12 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)

Raji Omar Jaber Daifallah, 16 (died of shrapnel wounds from missile, Gaza City, 13 July)

Ali Kamel Al-Najjar, 16 (killed by Israeli tank shell, Al-Maghazi refugee camp, 19 July)

Ahmed Ali Al-Na’ami, 16 (killed by Israeli tank shell, Al-Maghazi refugee camp, 19 July)

Ahmed Rawhi Abu Abdu, 14 (killed by drone missile, Al Nusairat refugee camp, 19 July)

Mohammed ‘awad Muhra, 14 (killed by Israeli bullet to the chest, Al-Maghazi refugee camp, 20 July)

Fadwa Faisal Al-‘arrouqi, 13 (died from shrapnel wounds, Gaza City, 20 July)

Saleh Ibrahim Nasser, 14 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 24 July)

Khitam Mohammed Rebhi Tayeh, 11 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 24 July)

Ashraf ‘abdullah ‘awad Abu Zaher, 14 (shot in the back, Khan Younis, 25 July)

Nahid Mohammed Fawzi Al-Shanbari, 16 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 31 July)

‘aaref Ahmed Abu Qaida, 14 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 1 August)

Anis Salem Abu Awad, 12 (killed by airstike, Al-Shouka, 2 August)

Ammar Rajaa Al-Natour, 17 (killed by drone missile, Al Shouka, 5 August)

Kifah Rajaa Al-Natour, 15 (killed by drone missile, Al Shouka, 5 August)

Ibrahim Suleiman Al-Rumailat, 13 (killed by drone missile, Al Shouka, 5 August)

Ahmed Yousef ‘abed ‘Aashour, 13 (killed by missile fire, Beit Hanoun, 14 August)

Mohammed ‘Abdullah Al-Ziq, 14 (killed by drone missile, Gaza City, 29 August)

Nidal ‘abdul ‘aziz Al-Dahdouh, 14 (killed by rifle fire, Gaza City, 30 August)

Jihad Selmi Abu Snaima, 14 (killed by artillery fire, Rafah, 10 September

Not content in assassinating Palestinian youth the Zionist state imprisons children they do not kill. Human rights violations and forced labour form the basis of life inside prisons. From the authors of Stolen Youth: The Politics of Israel’s Detention of Palestinian Children prison is not only a central feature of Palestinian life, but part of Israel’s system of control “permeating every aspect of Palestinian life. It is a system backed by legal, political, economic, cultural and psychological structures, and designed to keep more than 3 million people under submission,” 600,000 Palestinians of whom have spent time in prison since 1967. ^{^[36]}

The expertly researched book records the daily horrors of Palestinian children who are arrested: “… at checkpoints, on the street, or at their homes by heavily armed Israeli soldiers in the middle of the night. The soldiers take them to detention centres in Israeli settlements or military camps… the children are interrogated. This almost always involves some form of torture or abuse, including sleep and food deprivation, threatening language, beatings with heavy batons, being punched and kicked, as well as being tied in painful and contorted positions for long periods of time …” ^{^[37]}

Astonishingly, a police state applies to Palestinians who are under military law whilst Israelis enjoy the privileges of their own civil law. Interrogation is then followed by a military court or virtual Star Chamber that decides the fate of children designed to try adults. This is due to “The [Israeli military] court’s definition of a child [being] a person who hasn’t yet reached the age of 14. A child between 14 and 16 ‘is a big child’ and if more than 16, an adult.” ^{^[38]} Despite the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, defining a “child” as any individual under the age of eighteen years, for the Israeli military court system, this can be discarded according to their own whims and preferences. This means that a child of fourteen who has thrown stones at armoured tanks or soldiers equipped with riot gear and weapons with live rounds can be plucked from his bed at night, face a pseudo-military court, be tortured and abused and while absent for his or her trial, face many months in jail.

Children a Rahfar border refugee camp – “the largest concentration camp”

Children often find themselves signing confession forms which are either entirely fictitious or distorted. In effect, these children are duped into signing false confessions along with a hefty fine rather than a release form. As all legal documents are in Hebrew as well as being terrified out of their wits it is little wonder that they end up part of the prison population rather than back with their families. Once the children are under prison control the absence of freedom exercised by Israeli military police even extends to bodily functions since “detainees are not allowed to use the toilet and are forced to relieve themselves while fully clothed in the presence of others.” ^{^[39]}

Pretty much standard protocol in the use of torture.

Describing the pattern of invasive tactics that lead to detention, Murad Abu Judeh, a seventeen-year-old male resident of al-Arroub refugee camp in Hebron district, recalls:

We heard a very loud knock on the door … fifteen soldiers entered the house, three of them were masked and wearing civilian clothes. One of the masked soldiers asked me my name and for my ID card. I went to my room in order to bring the ID and one of the soldiers followed me. When I bent over to get the key for my drawer he kicked me on my back six times, pushing me to the ground. He searched my drawer, then grabbed me by my neck and took me back to the main room where I found the soldiers had upturned our furniture. The masked soldier whispered in my ear, “We’ll rape you one by one.” ^{^[40]}

It is not just Palestinian children who have died in the continuing conflict that defines Arab-Israeli relations. Israeli children too have to shelter from the constant threat of Hamas fired missiles. Ambushes by Palestinian militants also occur though attacks on Israeli civilians are relatively uncommon by comparison. However, in one particularly brutal incident condemned by Amnesty international as a crime against humanity a pregnant mother of eight months and her four children were executed by a militant Palestinian group. ^{^[41]}Atrocities will happen when people have known nothing but violence and oppression since birth and when the total disregard for life is simply mirrored back to the perpetrators of the daily crimes from the Zionist state.

So, you see, maybe some Israelis and some Jews can celebrate in the confines of the cinema and enjoy the shedding of Nazi blood in cathartic kosher-porn of gore. But when victims rule by perpetrating genocide upon their Arab neighbours who are in reality their brothers and sisters … Then it makes a mockery of remembrance; with Yahweh laughing down through the ages at the success of his child sacrifice. For some a promised land is worth thousands of children’s lives as long as they’re mostly Palestinian.

This post is dedicated to all those Israelis, Jews and Palestinians who join together to resist evil and work for peace.

“Little Handala”

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s major sources of instability. Americans are directly connected to this conflict, and increasingly imperiled by its devastation. It is the goal of If Americans Knew to provide full and accurate information on this critical issue, and on our power – and duty – to bring a resolution. Please click on any statistic for the source and more information. Statistics Last Updated: March 5, 2014 Israeli and Palestinian Children Killed September 29, 2000 – Present
129 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians and 1,523 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000. (View Sources & More Information)

Israelis and Palestinians Killed September 29, 2000 – Present
	1,109 Israelis and at least 6,862 Palestinians have been killed since September 29, 2000. (View Sources & More Information)

Israelis and Palestinians Injured September 29, 2000 – Present
8,550 Israelis and 54,761 Palestinians have been injured since September 29, 2000. (View Sources & More Information.)

Daily U.S. Military Aid to Israel and the Palestinians Fiscal Year 2013
	During Fiscal Year 2013, the U.S. is providing Israel with at least $8.5 million per day in military aid and $0 in military aid to the Palestinians. (View Sources & More Information)

UN Resolutions Targeting Israel and the Palestinians 1955 – 1992
Israel has been targeted by at least 77 UN resolutions and the Palestinians have been targeted by 1. (View Sources & More Information)

Current Number of Political Prisoners and Detainees
	0 Israelis are being held prisoner by Palestinians, while 5,023 Palestinians are currently imprisoned by Israel. (View Sources & More Information)

Demolitions of Israeli and Palestinian Homes 1967 – Present
0 Israeli homes have been demolished by Palestinians and at least 27,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel since 1967. (View Sources & More Information)

Israeli and Palestinian Unemployment Rates
	The Israeli unemployment rate is 6.8%, while the Palestinian unemployment in the West Bank is 22.5% and 22.5% in Gaza. (View Sources & More Information)

Current Illegal Settlements on the Other’s Land
Israel currently has 262 Jewish-only settlements and ‘outposts’ built on confiscated Palestinian land. Palestinians do not have any settlements on Israeli land. (View Sources & More Information)

The Z Factor XIII: Holocaustomania?

“The Maxim that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it applies to those Jews who refuse to come to terms with the Jewish past: they have become its slaves and are repeating it in Zionist and Israeli policies. The State of Israel now fulfils towards the oppressed peasants of many countries – not only in the Middle East but also far beyond it – a role not unlike that of the Jews in pre-1795 Poland: that of a bailiff to the imperial oppressor.”

– Israel Shahak, The Causes of Hostility Towards Jews: An Historical Overview

For seeking the truth about any controversial subject we must surely have the freedom to question everything without fear of reprisal from cherished beliefs. Otherwise, ignorance and chaos multiply instead of courageous soul-searching which promotes knowledge and awareness for all. However, getting past those beliefs so often wired in by trauma and political expediency is a huge challenge indeed…

Contrary to accusations of anti-Semitism and the label of “holocaust denier” Historian Mark Weber disputes both of these labels acknowledging the catastrophe that was visited upon Jews by Hitler. He does not deny that the holocaust took place, rather he questions the evidence of an official extermination program which admittedly has little documented evidence and when set against an historical predisposition for propaganda that has traditionally paid dividends, demands a rigorous investigation. While questions should always be asked about the beliefs and predispositions of revisionists, the vast majority do not deny the Holocaust or harbour admiration for the Nazi Third Reich, but place the onus on rigorous research which must have a place in holocaust studies without the reflex accusations of “anti-Semite!”. The facts, after all, should speak for themselves.

Professor Norman G. Finkelstein illustrated deep awareness on this matter when he commented on David Irving, historian and Holocaust revisionist: “Irving, notorious as an admirer of Hitler and sympathiser with German National Socialism, has nevertheless made an ‘indispensable’ contribution to our knowledge of World War II.” ^{^{^{^[1]}}}

One of the most shocking and tragic events of the 20^th Century was the holocaust perpetrated by Germany’s Nazi Third Reich from 1933–1945. Up to six million Jews were said to have been murdered by the regime. It was a powerful mythological event in Jewish consciousness which has continued to play a part in defining their identity as a “chosen people”. Yet, it is also true that there were Soviet prisoners of war, homosexuals, Romani gypsies, Slavic, Polish and Soviet civilians that were intentionally murdered by the Nazi regime with estimates reaching ten to eleven million. This is quite apart from millions of lives lost during the War as a whole. Therefore, it begs the question: why has this been eclipsed in favour of a strictly Jewish and Zionist historical narrative?

The birth of Israel in 1948 led to the joining at the hip of the nation State and holocaust victims – a loss and a legendary gain. Many commentators draw our attention to the fact that as a matter of historic record, the Zionists were more than happy to sacrifice millions of Jews as long as the creation of Israel could be guaranteed. (That part of history doesn’t generally get taught in History classes yet gives ample opportunity to make a distinction between the ordinary Jew and the extremism of Revisionist Zionism). In the intervening post war years, shock and grief still held sway and the Jewish battle lines to create the mantle of “sole sufferers” would develop over the following decades. As Professor of History at Indiana University, Edward T. Lilenthal observed: “what came to be known as the Holocaust was often indistinguishable, in the immediate post-war years, from the millions of non-combatant casualties due to terror bombings of civilian populations, epidemic illness, or starvation. It was considered by most as simply part of the horror of war.” The holocaust was barely talked about and remained a marginal topic of interest in part due to a “war-weary American public” and the understandable wishes of those who witnessed the concentration camp horrors to put it all behind them. ^{^[2]}

The fusing of the holocaust and the modern state of Israel served to nourish a new and negative Jewish identity, of the martyr grafted onto an already potent ancestral legacy of fear, anger, guilt and revenge; where Jewish tribalism would once more become clearly defined. At the same time, holocaust survivors were uncomfortable in Israel since they were reminders of the depths of Nazi evil as well as the possible shame and guilt that settled upon Jewish consciousness when faced with accusations of no resistance, thus conforming to the stereotypes of passive Jews. Much of Israel did not extend sympathy to holocaust survivors, the results of which are still felt to this day. ^{^[3]}By the time the victory of the1967 Arab war had been achieved a new Jewish confidence and historical identity was born anew but the industry of victimhood and its myth-making machine would continue apace at the political level.

One of Hitler’s avowed aims was to turn Eastern Europe into part of greater Germany as Slavs and Poles were seen as ethnically inferior and deemed eminently expendable for the Nazi New World Order. The issue of collaboration has had a distinctly Jewish precedent in World War II unlike many other non-Jewish prisoners of war.^{^[4]} It was not an isolated dynamic but a common phenomenon which makes the pernicious attacks from Zionists that Christians, ethnic Poles and the allies did not do enough to save Jews somewhat diluted. Polish people were treated by the Nazis as equally deserving of annihilation with up to 2.8 million ethnic, non-Jewish poles perishing throughout World War II. ^{^[5]}It seems many Jewish people still harbour a hostile perception of Poles and Slavs as somehow competing for the trophy of who suffered more. Their plight has largely been forgotten as Mark Weber notes:

“… there are no American memorials, ‘study centers,’ or annual observances for the victims of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, even though it is well established that Stalin’s victims vastly outnumber Hitler’s … The Holocaust has become both a flourishing business and even a kind of new religion for many Jews.

While we are endlessly told that the Germans murdered six million European Jews during the Second World War… the public is kept largely ignorant of the conflict’s non-Jewish victims. If you ask an average, reasonably educated American: ‘How many European Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War II?’ the almost automatic answer is, of course, six million. But if you ask that same person: How many Americans lost their lives in the Second World War, or, for that matter, how many British, or Chinese, or Germans, died, the response is usually an admission of ignorance.” ^{^[6]}

Israel Shahak in a letter to an editor explains how reality regarding Jewish involvement in the Second World War has been systematically ignored and obscured by myth. As a survivor of both the Warsaw ghetto in Poland and then in Bergen-Belsen, he offers: “an immediate example of the total ignorance of daily life during the Holocaust: In the Warsaw ghetto, even during the period of the first massive extermination (June to October 1943), one saw almost no German soldiers.”

Shahak continues:

Nearly all the work of administration, and later the work of transporting hundreds of thousands of Jews to their deaths, was carried out by Jewish collaborators.

Before the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (the planning of which only started after the extermination of the majority of Jews in Warsaw), the Jewish underground killed, with perfect justification, every Jewish collaborator they could find. If they had not done so the Uprising could never have started.

The majority of the population of the Ghetto hated the collaborators far more than the German Nazis. Every Jewish child was taught, and this saved the lives of some them “if you enter a square from which there are three exits, one guarded by a German SS man, one by an Ukrainian and one by a Jewish policeman, then you should first try to pass the German, and then maybe the Ukrainian, but never the Jew”. […]

It is clear that such events were not exclusive to the Jews, the entire Nazi success in easy and continued rule over millions of people stemmed from the subtle and diabolical use of collaborators, who did most of the dirty work for them. But does anybody now know about this?

This, and not what is ‘instilled’ was the reality. […]

Therefore, if we knew a little of the truth about the Holocaust, we would at least understand (with or without agreeing) why the Palestinians are now eliminating their collaborators. That is the only means they have if they wish to continue to struggle against our limb-breaking regime. ^{^[7]}

There are revisionist historians who have some interesting, if not compelling arguments regarding the statistics, numbers and logistical evidence concerning the methods of extermination that call into question a number of previously consensual conclusions. Even the existence of gas chambers and their quota of alleged deaths has been questioned not just by those whose pro-Hitler bias and right wing credentials are obvious, but by those simply interested in uncovering the truth. Professor Norman Cohn in his historical account of the Jewish Holocaust, Warrant for Genocide noted: “Only about a third of the civilians killed by the Nazis and their accomplices were Jews … Other peoples were marked out for decimation, subjugation, and enslavement, and the civilian losses of some of these [countries] amounted to 11 per cent to 12 per cent of the total population.” Other respected Jewish scholars have arrived at similar figures. ^[8]

This does not mean that mass extermination took place but exaggeration, distortion and even habitual deception on this issue determines the outcome of how well the mythology of victimhood stays alive.^{^[9]} This does not help anyone – least of all Jewish people.

But it does prove useful for Zionists.

More and more Jewish and non-Jewish academics are beginning to see that the Holocaust has become a lucrative industry of the most cynical kind where private mourning and genuine loss has been coerced towards a public spectacle of exploitation. How are we to challenge this distortion when our cultures are saturated in a exclusively Jewish rendering of World War II and the holocaust? As James Young so eloquently phrased it: “Instead of learning about the Holocaust through the large lens of Jewish history, many Jews and non-Jews in America now learn the whole of Jewish history through the lens of the Holocaust.”^{^[10]}

“There is no way a non-Jew could say what I did in “The Holocaust Industry” without being labeled a holocaust denier. I am labeled a holocaust denier too.” – Norman G. Finkelstein

Professor Norman G. Finkelstein’s 2000 bestseller The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering bravely addresses this very fact. Unsurprisingly, it created a firestorm of controversy on its publication which, along with his other books on Zionism and Israeli policy, led to the loss of his job at Hunter College and the denial of his tenure at Depaul University in 2007. In 2008, the Israeli government deported Finkelstein and banned him from entering the Jewish state for ten years. ^{^[11]}

The professor remains a thorn in the side of Jewish extremism due to his impeachable credentials. Though his parents survived the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps, every other member of his family on both sides was exterminated by the Nazis. When his book was published in 2000 The Guardian with uncharacteristic boldness ran two lengthy extracts from the introduction.

Finkelstein opined that:

… too many public and private resources have been invested in memorialising the Nazi genocide. Most of the output is worthless, a tribute not to Jewish suffering but to Jewish aggrandisement. The Holocaust has proven to be an indispensable ideological weapon. Through its deployment, one of the world’s most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, has cast itself as a ‘victim’ state, and the most successful ethnic group in the US has likewise acquired victim status. Considerable dividends accrue from this specious victimhood – in particular, immunity to criticism, however justified.

The time is long past to open our hearts to the rest of humanity’s sufferings. This was the main lesson my mother imparted. I never once heard her say: ‘Do not compare.’ My mother always compared. In the face of the sufferings of African-Americans, Vietnamese and Palestinians, my mother’s credo always was: ‘We are all holocaust victims.’” ^{^[12]}

Finkelstein outlines a number of disturbing patterns in the exploitation of suffering, one of which is the pattern of corruption and embezzlement of Holocaust victims’ financial reparations. One particular chapter of his book which caused international outrage (mostly from those who stood to lose from being exposed) was the documentation of the holocaust industry’s blackmail of European governments for supposed holocaust victims. Threats and intimidation of holocaust victims by Jewish organisations were reported, who then proceeded to purloin the “Holocaust compensation” monies. ^{^[13]}

A typical example of the kind of mass programming regarding Jewish victimhood was in evidence from a video recording of a lecture given by Finkelstein in 2010 at the University of Waterloo where he was taken to task by his “offensive” remarks. The video can be viewed here and a transcript of this instructive exchange follows:

STUDENT: During your speech you made a lot of references to Jewish people as well as certain people in the audience, not Jewish people in general, but especially in the audience – to Nazis. [Begins to cry] That is extremely offensive to certain people who are German and also extremely offensive who actually suffered under Nazi war…

FINKELSTEIN: I don’t respect that any more, I really don’t. I don’t like and I don’t respect the crocodile tears … (interruptions)… the crocodile tears … (clapping and cries from audience) … listen sir, allow me to finish … I don’t like to play to a foreign audience the Holocaust card but since now I feel compelled to – my late father was in Auschwitz, my late mother … please shut-up (applause)… My late father was in Auschwitz my late mother was in Mgdonevice concentration camp – every single member of my family on both sides were exterminated, both my parents were in the Warsaw Ghetto. They taught me and my two siblings that I will not be silenced by Israel over their crimes against Palestinians. I consider nothing more despicable than to use their suffering and their martyrdom to try to justify the torture, the brutalization and the demolition of homes committed against the Palestinians. I refuse any more to be intimidated, to be browbeaten by the tears. If you had any heart in you, you would be crying for the Palestinians. ^{^[14]}

Over 65 million people died in World War II and it is said, up to six million Jews were killed by the Nazis, a number which is still disputed. Whether 10,000, 500,000, one million or three million – it’s an obscenity, the results of psychopaths allowed to cluster into groups and hijack the population. The point to remember is that although the persecution of the Jews by the Third Reich is a fact of history yet so too, is the appropriation of victims and the suffering of non-Jews implying that “Gentiles” deaths are somehow less significant. What about the Stalinist and Maoist, genocides that far outnumber any Jewish Holocaust deaths? Where are the multi-million dollar monuments to all those people who died?

More disturbingly, the parallels of Nazi racial supremacy and Jewish supremacy are exactly the same – both see themselves as redeemers of the world tragically mirroring each other’s fundamentalist worldview and both have proved themselves to be adept in mass propaganda by setting themselves apart from others; elevating their race and destiny to romantic, metaphysical and fascistic dimensions while asserting unassailable claims of divine rights. The root mind-set in Zionist, Jewish Fundamentalism and Nazi ideology follow the same authoritarian and racist dynamic and the consequences that stem from these psychological extremes. Could there even be the slightest possibility that there may be something in Zionism, Judaism and the direction of the Jewish race that predisposes them to acts of persecution?

The French Zionist Bernard Lazare was also exploring these questions way back in 1894 before the Nazi persecutions and the modern mythologising that has been so pervasive in the 20th century.

He candidly observed:

Wherever the Jews settled [in their Diaspora] one observes the development of anti-Semitism, or rather anti-Judaism … If this hostility, this repugnance had been shown towards the Jews at one time or in one country only, it would be easy to account for the local cause of this sentiment. But this race has been the object of hatred with all nations amidst whom it settled. Inasmuch as the enemies of Jews belonged to diverse races, as they dwelled far apart from one another, were ruled by different laws and governed by opposite principles; as they had not the same customs and differed in spirit from one another, so that they could not possibly judge alike of any subject, it must needs be that the general causes of anti-Semitism have always resided in [the people of] Israel itself, and not in those who antagonized it. ^{^[15]}

If that is even partially true, expressed by a Zionist, no less, liberating insights for the Jewish collective destiny could perhaps be achieved from a psychotherapeutically-based exploration of the Jewish psyche in this context. Many Jewish academics are doing precisely this, but nowhere near enough. This would naturally enrich not just Jewish and Israeli society but indirectly, the lives of us all. Untold tragedy and its victims could be truly honoured through re-enchantment and integrative self-empowerment rather than self-deception and cynical manipulation.

I think we may have a while to wait for that one.

Notes

[1] ‘The Great Taboo Broken’ by Haim. Breseeth, Reflections on the Israeli Reception of Schindler’s List -From Spielberg’s Holocaust: Critical Perspectives on Schindler’s List edited by Yoshefa Loshitsky.Indiana University Press, 1997 | ’40 percent of Holocaust survivors in Israel live below poverty line’, Haaretz, December 29, 2005.
[2] p.5; Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust Museum By Edward T Linenthal. Published by Colombia University Press, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0231124074.
[3] op. cit. Piotrowski.
[4]AFP/Expatica, Polish experts lower nation’s WWII death toll, expatica.com, 30 August 2009.
[5] ‘Debating the Undebatable: The Weber-Shermer Clash Exchanging Views on the Holocaust’ The Journal of Historical Review, Jan-Feb. 1996 (Vol. 16, No. 1), pages 23-34.
[6] ‘The business of death’ By Norman Finkelstein The Guardian, 12 July 2000.
[7] ‘Falsification of the Holocaust’ by Prof. Israel Shahak, published on 19 May 1989 in Kol Ha’ir, Jerusalem.

[8] p.15; Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion by Norman Cohn, Published by Harper and Rowe, 1966.
[9] ‘Wiesenthal Re-Confirms: ‘No Extermination Camps on German Soil’’ Institute of Historical Review: “…official claims of extermination and gassing at camps in Germany proper persisted until August 1960, when Dr. Martin Broszat of Germany’s semi-official Institute for Contemporary History acknowledged in a letter published in the Hamburg weekly Die Zeit that such allegations were not true. In doing so, Broszat implicitly also conceded that the “evidence” presented at Nuremberg and elsewhere for extermination and gassings in those camps is bogus.Here is a translation of the complete text of Broszat’s letter: “Neither in Dachau nor in Bergen-Belsen nor in Buchenwald were Jews or other prisoners gassed. The gas chamber in Dachau was never entirely finished or put “into operation.” Hundreds of thousands of prisoners who perished in Dachau and other concentration camps in the Old Reich [that is, Germany in its borders of 1937] were victims, above all, of the catastrophic hygienic and provisioning conditions: according to official SS statistics, during the twelve months from July 1942 through June 1943 alone, 110,812 persons died of disease and hunger in all of the concentration camps of the Reich. The mass extermination of the Jews by gassing began in 1941-1942 and occurred exclusively in a few facilities selected and equipped with appropriate technical installations, above all in the occupied Polish territory (but at no place in the Old Reich): in Auschwitz-Birkenau, in Sobibor on the Bug [river], in Treblinka, Chelmno and Belzec.
It is at those places, but not in Bergen-Belsen, Dachau or Buchenwald, where the mass extermination facilities, spoken of in your article [in an earlier issue of Die Zeit], were built and disguised as shower baths or disinfection rooms. This necessary differentiation does not, of course, change anything regarding the criminal character of the facility that was the concentration camp. However, it may perhaps help eliminate the annoying confusion that arises from the fact that some ineducable people make use of a few arguments that, while correct, are polemically torn from the context, and that, rushing to respond to them are other people who, although they have the correct overall view, rely upon false or mistaken information. – Dr. M. Broszat, Institute for Contemporary History, Munich.
[10] p. 307; The U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Memory and the Politics of Identity by James Young.
[11] ‘US academic deported and banned for criticising Israel’ by Toni O’Loughlin, The Guardian, 26 May 2008.
[12] op. cit. Finkelstein, Guardian article 2000.
[13] p.79; The Holocaust industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering by Norman G. Finkelstein, second edition, published by Verso Books. 2003 | ISBN: 185-984-488-X.
[14] ‘Responding to Zionist Propaganda: Dr. Norman Finkelstein on Holocaust exploitation at the University of Waterloo’ 2010.wwwpalestineremembered.com.

[15] Anti-Semitism, Its History and Causes by Bernard Lazare, Britons Publishing Co., London, 1967.

INFRAKSHUN

Commentary on The Shadowsphere

victimhood

Respect Yourself (2)

2. Respect Yourself (1)

“Above all things, one should maintain his self-respect, and there is
but one way to do that, and that is to live in accordance with
your highest ideal.”

1. Heal Your Past (1)

“I’ve always thought that we are what we remember, and the less we
remember, the less we are.”

“The paradox of trauma is that it has both the power to destroy and the
power to transform and resurrect.”

Please click on any statistic for the source and more information.

Israeli and Palestinian Children Killed
September 29, 2000 – Present

129 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians and 1,523 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000. (View Sources & More Information)

Israelis and Palestinians Killed
September 29, 2000 – Present

1,109 Israelis and at least 6,862 Palestinians have been killed since September 29, 2000. (View Sources & More Information)

Israelis and Palestinians Injured
September 29, 2000 – Present

8,550 Israelis and 54,761 Palestinians have been injured since September 29, 2000. (View Sources & More Information.)

Daily U.S. Military Aid to Israel and the Palestinians
Fiscal Year 2013

During Fiscal Year 2013, the U.S. is providing Israel with at least $8.5 million per day in military aid and $0 in military aid to the Palestinians. (View Sources & More Information)

UN Resolutions Targeting Israel and the Palestinians
1955 – 1992

Israel has been targeted by at least 77 UN resolutions and the Palestinians have been targeted by 1. (View Sources & More Information)

Current Number of Political Prisoners and Detainees

0 Israelis are being held prisoner by Palestinians, while 5,023 Palestinians are currently imprisoned by Israel. (View Sources & More Information)

Demolitions of Israeli and Palestinian Homes
1967 – Present

0 Israeli homes have been demolished by Palestinians and at least 27,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel since 1967. (View Sources & More Information)

Israeli and Palestinian Unemployment Rates

The Israeli unemployment rate is 6.8%, while the Palestinian unemployment in the West Bank is 22.5% and 22.5% in Gaza. (View Sources & More Information)

Current Illegal Settlements on the Other’s Land

Israel currently has 262 Jewish-only settlements and ‘outposts’ built on confiscated Palestinian land. Palestinians do not have any settlements on Israeli land. (View Sources & More Information)

Share this:

Like this:

“Above all things, one should maintain his self-respect, and there is but one way to do that, and that is to live in accordance with your highest ideal.”

Share this:

Like this:

“I’ve always thought that we are what we remember, and the less we remember, the less we are.”

“The paradox of trauma is that it has both the power to destroy and the power to transform and resurrect.”

Share this:

Like this:

“Community connectedness is not just about warm fuzzy tales of civic triumph. In measurable and well-documented ways, social capital makes an enormous difference in our lives…Social capital makes us smarter, healthier, safer, richer, and better able to govern a just and stable democracy.”

Share this:

Like this:

“Since the 1990s, there’s been a change. The most scared thing at a university is the victim. Not in all departments and not in the sciences, but in the social sciences, especially in the humanities, the victim is the most sacred thing”

“The net effect [of safe spaces] is that the very people you are trying to help are rendered weaker and they become morally dependent.”

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

See also: Rogue state: Declassified Israeli docs spell out 60-year-long strategy to ethnically cleanse Arabs

Please click on any statistic for the source and more information.

129 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians and 1,523 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000. (View Sources & More Information)

1,109 Israelis and at least 6,862 Palestinians have been killed since September 29, 2000. (View Sources & More Information)

8,550 Israelis and 54,761 Palestinians have been injured since September 29, 2000. (View Sources & More Information.)

During Fiscal Year 2013, the U.S. is providing Israel with at least $8.5 million per day in military aid and $0 in military aid to the Palestinians. (View Sources & More Information)

Israel has been targeted by at least 77 UN resolutions and the Palestinians have been targeted by 1. (View Sources & More Information)

0 Israelis are being held prisoner by Palestinians, while 5,023 Palestinians are currently imprisoned by Israel. (View Sources & More Information)

0 Israeli homes have been demolished by Palestinians and at least 27,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel since 1967. (View Sources & More Information)

The Israeli unemployment rate is 6.8%, while the Palestinian unemployment in the West Bank is 22.5% and 22.5% in Gaza. (View Sources & More Information)

Israel currently has 262 Jewish-only settlements and ‘outposts’ built on confiscated Palestinian land. Palestinians do not have any settlements on Israeli land. (View Sources & More Information)

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

“Above all things, one should maintain his self-respect, and there is
but one way to do that, and that is to live in accordance with
your highest ideal.”

“I’ve always thought that we are what we remember, and the less we
remember, the less we are.”

“The paradox of trauma is that it has both the power to destroy and the
power to transform and resurrect.”