Here’s the definition of genocide from the US Holocaust museum memorial.
- Killing members of the group
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
All of the bullet points except possibly No. 5 apply to what Israel is doing and has been doing to the Palestinians under its control. It is tragically ironic that the group famous for “never again” have become the genociders. When I visited Vad Yashem several years ago, I was struck by the same thing – how many of the stories could be read as if they came from Palestinian victims rather than Jewish ones. Here are a few quotes from the exhibits there that I had jotted down at the time.
“In Western Europe the Nazis did not establish ghettos for the Jews, but rathe reinforced racist legislation and a policy of Arayanization and discrimination. The anti-Jewish policy was applied gradually taking into account the attitudes of the local population.”
“I decided I would be a predator in order to survive.” Testimony from the film, Culture without walls
“They wanted to make the lives of the Jews so unbearable that they simply would want to leave.” Narration from an exhibit
“In eastern Europe, the Germans incarcerated the Jews in severely overcorowded ghettos behind fences and wall. They cut the Jews off from their surroundings and their sources of livelihood and condemned them to a life of humiliation, degeneration, poverty and death.” From a placard on an exhibit
The only way that anyone who considers themselves left leaning or liberal can condone Israel’s Zionist structure, and particularly what Israel is doing in Gaza now requires turning an absolutely blind eye to the plight of Palestinians. Otherwise, the cognitive dissonance is just too overwhelming.
kksjournal 