Words. Since the ending of the World War II many European governments have recognized, confronted themselves and attempted some form of moral restitution for the treatment of the Jews in the contemporary European era. In the late 1990’s there was once again a more emphatic tide of mea culpas and apologies extended to the Jews from European governmental, social and religious institutions [i]. The Germany government since the ending of World War II almost seem to make mea culpas on a yearly basis or at least with the change of each new federal government or governing coalition (the latest of which is the Merkel’s February 2006 statement that the ‘holocaust is a source of shame for Germany’. She also re-affirmed the high importance of Israel to Germany. In 1997 France also made public apology. And in 2000, Pope John Paul II, finally made the long overdue officially apology for the Catholic Church’s sins against the Jews. It is important to note that many of these apologies have not come forth without the active role of Jewish leaders and institutions such Israel’s Chief Rabbi Meir Lan and the World Jewish Congress, who have consistently demanded more. Thus the moral restitution debate continues unabated.
Currency. Financial and material restitution has been a consistent and much more pronounced form of European restitution to the Jews since the immediate post war period and intensifying in the current period. This process has been facilitated by European and international governmental frameworks such as the reparations conference in Paris 1945/46 (which led to the payment of $50 million, 90-90% of which went to the rehabilitation of Jewish refugees), the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (which led to the payment of $58 billion by Germany (as of 1997, to Israel, Jewish organizations and individuals [ii]), the Austrian Reconciliation fund, the Belgian Jewish Community Indemnification Commission etc. In the immediate post war period, in addition to the direct return of looted valuables by the Nazis and their collaborators, countries such as Sweden and Switzerland also made individual financial restitutions (50 million Swedish Krones and 20 million Swiss Frances, respectively to the Jewish people. The process of financial restitution has intensified in the 1990s and 2000’s with France (1997), Italy (thus far around $100 million), and the Swiss contribution of $1.25 billion (from private banks) to Jewish victims. In addition, the Swiss are expected to contribute 250 million Swiss Francs to the ‘Holocaust Fund’.
This flow of financial and material restitution to the Jews have been shepherded by a number of Jewish entities including the Jewish Claims Conference (JCC), the World Jewish Restitution Organization (1992) and the Israeli Parliamentary sub committee on Restitution.
Land. The creation of the State of Israel out of Arab land by the British, which partitioned Palestine into two unequal states has led to the most egregious act of injustice and externality perpetuated on a innocent third party in recent time. In 1948 the British evacuated Palestine and the Jews (most of whom were recent arrival and accounted for significant smaller percentage of the population) gained control and ownership over about 56% of Palestinian lands. This land grabbing has been supplemented by Israel’s expansionism since 1967 including the ongoing occupation of Gaza and other Palestine centers in the West Bank and culminating in the displacement of over 5 million Palestinian and the occupation of Shebaa Farms in Lebanon).
Blood. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian since 1948 with the massacre of approximately one hundred Palestinian villagers at Deir Yassin in West Jerusalem by Lehi (the Israeli Terrorist group) and Etzel, the National military organization). This shedding of Palestinian blood for land continued with the Intifada in 1988-1992 and 2000 to the present. The killing of Lebanese (1982 - 2006) has only added to the trail of bloodshed.
How much blood shed is enough to pay for Europe’s history of anti Semitisms--Europe’s guiltily? Apparently an endless amount of blood as long as it is not European blood.
Yet none of the mis- deeds of the past--the humiliation, subjugation and material dispossession of many Jewish people--not one iota of it has been committed by a single Palestinian or a single Lebanese. But yet Palestine and Lebanon continue to hemorrhage. The injustice of it all.
Now if there is anything good to come of all this recent carnage in Lebanon, it is one simply fact: the Jewish people and the state of Israel have been shown to be who they really are: Not special, not chosen by God, not especially victimized, not the most prosecuted people on earth. But simply people, human beings, and not especially exemplar human beings, but humans being who have the capacities and intentions to carry out the brutalities and barbarities in whatever forms is currently in vogue in a particular time period [iii]. They like human beings everywhere can be wicked, vindictive and aggressive victimizers. They like other human beings can be cruel and subjected to greed, and acquisition of land at all cost (including the bull dozing of Palestinian homes). They like other cultures can commit genocide and crimes against humanity when their senses of entitlement, greed and feelings of insecurity are enraged. They have the same capacity for good and evil; and, like others before them, today and in the future, they can choose to, with premeditation and malice of forethought, inflict pain, intimidate and attempt to impoverish or otherwise create havoc and destruction on the lives of the innocents.
The systematic humiliation and killing of the Palestinian people, a people who have committed no historic or present wrongs on the Jewish people or the Jewish state of Israel is not the act of a God-chosen people or one that is especially pre-occupied with their own humanity or that of others, nor with justice, democracy, human rights and all that stuff. Rather the actions of Israel that the world has witnessed and the Lebanese people, especially children have experienced since July 12th 2006 are horrendous and god-awful deeds—carefully thought out and well implemented with arrogance and racist zeal.
The disdain of the Israeli government for the lives of the Arab people it kills or maims is palpable. So is its total disregard for world public opinion. It uncompromising stance stems from the assumption that Israel can count on the silence and acquiescence of those whom they can easily cow into compliance or acceptance with one word: anti-Semitism. They also count on the cowing of Europe due to its responsibility for the historic discrimination, persecution of the Jewish culminating in the ultimate persecution the holocaust. This ensures little or no objections from the international community, Europe being the only wild card in this game as the US will predictably remain Israel’s running dog, as is convenient.
Unfortunately, for Israeli and the Jewish people, who support it unconditionally, their current round of aggression has lifted the shroud of victimhood that for too long has cloaked its relationship with the rest of the world. The so-called war with Lebanon has also lifted the myth of the invincibility of the Israel Defense Force, the Mossad and all the organs of terror that Israel has at its behest. For Israel has lost whatever shred of high moral ground that was tied to that long historical debt it has been carefully nurturing in Europe and America. Try as they might the Christian apologists in the US and the pragmatists in Europe can no longer hide behind the fig leaf of a besieged and beleaguered Israel defending itself or the American fig leaf of an Israel ensuring ‘peace and security’ in the Middle East region. More importantly, what passes for the ‘international community’ cannot conceal the brutality and ultimate barbarity of the Israel state being visited daily on the civilians of Lebanon in Israel’s attempt to, ‘remake (southern) Lebanon from the air’ in the interest of its own security. By no stretch of the imagination can this be conceived of as a just war or in keeping with the principle of proportionality.
Practically, ‘remaking Lebanon’, seems to mean Israel is attempting to devoid Lebanon of its of people and structures, particularly in Southern Lebanon and South Beirut. Prior to July 12th, the ‘Israel forces routinely terrorized the population of southern Lebanon, destroying properties and killing civilian in violation of the international rules governing its withdrawal from Lebanon’ (Strindberg, 2006, p.1). The bombing massacre of Qana and the deliberate murder of four UN peacekeepers were simply two more steps in Israel’s slipper slide into high tech barbarity that Israel has been indulging in for some time now, but especially with its ratcheting up of its taking of remaining Palestinian land.
No distortion and contortion can make right the wholesale destruction of Lebanon and the making of 20% of the Lebanese population (1in 5) into refuges in breach of international humanitarian law. Nothing will wash away the stench of death and destruction permeating Israel’s fanaticism with itself and the extreme measures it will take to advance its own expansionist desires.
The arrogance of the Israeli Prime Minister, Justice Minister and its Ambassador to the U.S. and their lack of empathy for the humanitarian crisis that it has created in Lebanon show the monster that the Israeli state has become [iv]. The killing of unarmed civilians, and the displacement of over 900,000 girls, boys, women and men by thousands of air strikes with precision-guided bunker busting bombs is not a justifiable defensive action but rather a cold premeditate strategy [v]. This Israel has done and will continue to do for as long as the international community and the U.S. allow it free reign to do so. It is simply an extension of its treatment of the poor and defenseless Palestinians under the cover of its internal security and expansionist agendas and away from the public glare of the global media.
Oh, the innocent blood that is willfully shed everyday (1000 in Lebanon and 140 in the Gaza part of Palestine over the last 23 days).
Yes, Condi Rice and Madelyn Albright have it only partly right. There is no moral equivalence.
Indeed, over their history as part of the human family, the Jewish people have been subjected to the kinds of injustice that only sentient beings can inflict on each other. But they are not the sole survivors, nor are they the most impacted by the barbarity of one human being to another. Countless other ethnic, racial and religiously identifiable groups of human beings have been subjected to persecution, enslavement and death as a result of the greed and voracious appetite for land, cheap labor and gold and minerals of other human beings. A few of the more contemporary evidence includes:
- Slavery, repression, the rape and ravage of Africa boy, girl, men and women and the African continent, itself, which continues unabated to the present days.
- Racism and discrimination inflicted on African Americans and Afro Europeans.
- The native and indigenous Indian peoples from all continents Australia, North and South America, Central America, the Caribbean, Asia, the Pacific can attest to the genocide, murder and oppression by individuals, secular and religious groups and states.
- Ethnic cleansing and religious prosecution are common currency for many in the recent years witness Bosnia, Serbia, Rwanda and today Darfur.
No moral equivalence. Certainly the situation in the Middle East is a complex mix of political, economic, social and cultural factors. But there is nothing complex about the wanton destruction of lives by a state simply because it can be done. Past injustices and injuries do not give any group, most especially a national government, the right to perpetuate violence, murder, collective punishment, torture and terror on civilians and citizens of another country. There is no moral equivalence in bombing people’s food (precision guided bombing of milk factories and a food factory, trucks carrying food etc) and water supply and ambulances and homes. There is no moral equivalence for state enforced assassination and area bombings of homes and apartment buildings. There is no moral equivalence in the daily subjugation of the Palestinian girl, boy, man, woman, mother, father, uncle, aunt and grandparents. There is no moral equivalence for the daily psychological and physical assault on the people of Lebanon.
It is time for Europe, the UN and the rest of the world to put a stop to this barbaric assault on Lebanon and Palestine. Europe can no longer hide its head in the stand. The time to step up and stop the atrocities is not in some distance future with mea culpa and half hearted words of apology but now while the carnage is raging. All good, peace loving and justice loving peoples and governments all over the world must say: Basta! Enough! NOW!
Sources
Patrick J. Buchanan, 2006 ‘The Moral Culpability for Qana’. August 1, 2006.
Shraga Elam, 1998. Jewish Restitution Campaigns. Accessed 8/5/2006
Tom Engelhardt 2006. ‘Barbarism from above’ July 29, 2006
Shirin Ebadi and Jody Williams, 2006. "A Collective Failure in the Middle East", August 1, 2006 by the International Herald Tribune
MADRE, ‘War on Civilian’
Anders Strindberg 2006. Hizbullah's attacks stem from Israeli incursions into Lebanon August 01, 2006 10:35 AM
(*) The author is an international economist committed to social and economic justice and peace.
[i]See for example, Pope John Paul II statement, March 12, 2000 www.bbc.co.uk/1/world/Eeruope/67446.stm for coverage of John Paul speech and the reaction of Rabbi Meir Lan who said he expected more. See also ‘France Confronts its Jews and itself,’ the New York Times; ‘Germany to Pay for Jewish victims of Nazis,’ NYT November 7, 1992 and October 19, 1997; and ‘Poland Faces and Ugly Truth and doesn’t Blink,’ NYT April 8, 2001.
[ii]By 2030 an additional $20 billion will be paid. Jewish Restitution Campaign by Shraga Elam.
[iii]See Tom Engelhardt ‘s ‘Barbarism from above’, July 29, 2006
[iv]"Everyone in southern Lebanon is a terrorist and is connected to Hezbollah," roared Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon on July 27. Verbatim from Buchanan, p.1.
"Every village from which a Katyusha is fired must be destroyed," bellowed an Israeli general in a quote bannered by the nation's largest newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth. As the war began, Ehud Olmert accused Lebanon, which had condemned Hezbollah for the killing and capture of the Israeli soldiers, of an "act of war." Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz publicly threatened "to turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years." Verbatim from Buchanan, p.1. Israel Ambassador Dan ‘Gillerman, at a pro-Israel rally in New York, thundered, "[T]o those countries who claim that we are using disproportionate force, I have only this to say: You're damn right we are."’ Buchanan p.1.
[v]Financed by the U.S. government (over $10 billion dollars 1996-2005 in US weapons and military equipment.
