Looking Back In Anger
Anger, hopelessness, despair in the recognition that humans were, are and remain capable of descending to the core of the bestial within, then plunging beyond even that depraved degree, in visiting upon one another the vilest treatment that human imagination is capable of devising. That history reminds us, time and again, of our depths of twisted hate for one another, and that in sober moments of regret we vow never to allow ourselves to degrade our shared humanity in failing others, serves to temporarily assuage consciences.Yet humankind reverts to its primal, tribal exclusions at will, whenever events conspire to cause us unease, and we reform and regroup ourselves to return to the abyss of lost humanity. This day marks the United Nations "International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust", in reflection of the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwich death camp, by Allied and Russian forces, in 1945.
The Jewish mantra in remembrance of the partially successful resolve to annihilate world Jewry is "never to forget, never to forgive". As though Jews could forget, could ever forgive. The conscience-stricken world, with the knowledge that six million men, women and children were systematically and gruesomely murdered in an orgy of slaughter, agreed to the creation of a country of shelter for Jews. In tacit acknowledgement that shelter did not, does not exist elsewhere.
In Angola, Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, Bosnia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Philippines, the veneer of civil behaviour surrenders occasionally to tribal suspicion, anger, revenge, murder, torture, mass displacement in a ritual of ethnic cleansings. These world-shattering events that torment the world represent incendiary, spontaneous events of outraged loss of perceived entitlements. Leading to the malaise of shed humanity.
It is well over 60 years since Nazi Germany's embarkation on its grand achievement toward the establishment of the Thousand-Year Reich. Where a superior breed of uber-menchen would dominate the world order after destroying political opposition and any countries that stood in the way of their purpose. Fascism did its best to turn the first half of the 20th Century on its back.
A side issue of great significance to fascistic overlords was the planned annihilation of what they deemed to be the epitome of an inferior race. A race of people so inferior as to be compared to loathsome insects, besmirching the face of the earth with their presence; Jews, the scum of the earth.
There is no logic to searing hatred; this inferior race was also accused of too much world influence. Their bankers, scientists, news-gatherers-and-disseminators, their politicians and health professionals, artists and social engineers were in league with Lucifer, themselves representing the anti-Christ anxious to take over the world.
Those nonsensical, vicious slanders fell on ready ears, only too eager to take up the cause, to save the world from the predations of evil Jewry. In a country with a long and socially-accepted culture celebrating racist screeds - as in most of eastern Europe and beyond, these demonizing clarifications of what most people accepted as fact took easy root.
Enabling a government, its lawmakers, judiciary, security agents, and military to embark upon an ambitious enterprise to extinguish the presence of Jewish life and Jewish lives from all the Nazi-occupied countries of Europe. The vanquished countries, with the sole heroic exception of Denmark, lent themselves to the cleansing of Jews from their territories.
Anti-Semitism was no stranger to the western, democratic world either and the horrible plight of the Jews never a secret in government circles and within the social hierarchy - although the extent and the existential severity was not fully known at first - was given scant sympathy. These were, after all, a people apart, their iniquitous presence scarcely tolerated in most countries.
The ideology of racist "discrimination" may have elicited some dismay at the scope and manner of prosecution of the Final Solution, but it did not result in rescue attempts by Allied countries, even when limited rescue of some disparate groups of desperate refugees was possible. Including the potential to rescue the lives of hundreds of orphaned children.
Even within the Axis countries there were some people of determined humanity who stepped forward at peril of their own lives and those of their families, to do what they could to help and to save as many doomed Jews and their children as their efforts could manage. But those whose decisions determined the course of action to be taken through the Allied war effort made no response.
The world at large stood by. In their silent acceptance of a reality they well knew was destroying millions of innocent lives, they rendered the metaphorical shrug. In fascinated horror, but doing nothing. The Nazi interpretation was validation. Later to explain that credible information was inadequate; minds were on the prosecution of a war; hands were tied.
Today the world is asked to remember. To repent. To pledge themselves to attempting a better world. But the world can only reflect the values, interests and determinations of those who inhabit it. So tribal wars continue to wreak their horror on captured societies, incapable of coping with hatred of others. The incidence of anti-Semitic attacks are on the increase in the United States, Germany, Ukraine, Australia - and continue to be in stark, ubiquitous evidence elsewhere.
Within France and Great Britain anti-Semitic incidents have gained great ground, giving those countries the leading edge on prevalence. Twisted sociopaths will never be done with the issues of racial intolerance. Purveyors of the pathology of anti-Semitism, they exist to spread the pestilence of hatred against those 'others'; those outside the cultural, social, religious, traditional 'norms' of society.
Even when the targets of the hate they spew have taken pains to insert themselves into mainstream society through the acceptance and practise of cultural norms, while yet retaining those tenets of their faith, or traditions, or both. To no avail, in the diseased minds of their detractors. Little wonder that even young people in Israel fear the possibility of another Holocaust.
The Palestinian Authority's Fatah, ostensibly working toward a peace agreement with Israel daily airs a vicious anti-Jew campaign on their PA television station. A music video which exhorts Palestinians to fight to the death to rid the land of Jews with the assurance that they will prevail. Long-incubated hatred of Jews is regularly refreshed by the PA, to ensure the population does not lose sight of its goal; to eradicate the Jewish presence.
Entirely consistent with what is happening elsewhere within the Arab world. They are convinced their hatred has been well earned, by an occupier which arrived by stealth and managed to coerce Western powers through the auspices of the United Nations, post WWII, to advance the Jews into statehood, to the detriment of the Arab population. They re-write their own histories to suit their entitlements.
In so doing, pursuing a campaign for outside consumption, of co-operation and agreeableness to living in peace, two nations, side by side. While pursuing another agenda altogether within the confines of their own understanding of their firm intentions.
Looking forward in denial, anger, distrust, hatred and determination to succeed where others have failed.
Labels: Anti-Semitism, Israel, Political Realities
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, January 27, 2008
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