We obsess over the guilt of the dead who actively or passively abetted the Holocaust in WW II and yet pity the people of Gaza, who are equally complicit in enabling, actively or passively, the genocide that Hamas is dedicated to visiting on modern Jews? It always requires greater moral courage to confront hate in real time than from the safe distance of three quarters of a century.
Because many don’t see the current goings on in the Middle East as a continuation of the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a uniquely evil event, whereas the Israel Palestine conflict is simply a long running feud over territory, albeit one split along religious lines. The Holocaust also had clearly defined victims and perpetrators, whereas the conflict in the Middle East has two sides seemingly as bad as each other.
In my opinion constantly evoking the Holocaust and trying to link it to current day events and skirmishes trivialises the unique evil of that time
In the first week of this conflict I read the news: “Israel bombs hospital, 500 dead”. I saw the footage of the smouldering ruins.
Then it transpired that it wasn’t an Israeli rocket that hit the hospital but an Islamic Jihad mortar.
Then it transpired that it didn’t hit the hospital but the hospital’s carpark.
Then it transpired there were no casualties as the carpark was empty at the time of impact.
The whole thing was a Hamas invention swallowed without question by the western media.
Then I decided to never believe another report on casualty figures or watch any footage.
It is oh-so easy to condemn the IDF for inflicting civilian casualties while battling an enemy who intentionally imbeds with the innocents. William T. Sherman knew something of winning wars, and this is what he had to say: “War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. … Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.”
Until you have faced bullets and buried your friends, you have no place to comment. Israel is accepting volunteers. You can go to Gaza and show us how it’s done.
How do you actually know 30K were killed, genius? you take the claims of terrorists known to lie and lie again, as gospel, and no doubt disbelieve what the Israelis say.
No, there’s an a additional ingredient in the Hamas Israel conflict, in that Hamas and the those citizens that tacitly support them (we can argue about numbers) want all Jews killed because they are Jews. It’s not fundamentally about territory.
I disagree. If Israel had been created in Europe after the war (which would have made more sense) then I don’t believe the Jews would be of any interest to the various sects in the Middle East. Hamas would today be busying themselves against the various Sunni factions instead
Israel wasn’t some magical gift to the Jewish people suddenly thought up by Westerners after the war. Jews began returning the land in waves, small at first, in 1882 — 65 years before independence and 35 years before the British decided to endorse the notion of a Jewish homeland. Ben Gurion has been in Palestine and working for a Jewish homeland for about 42 years already.
There has been murmurings beforehand obviously, but it was the horrors of the Holocaust that was the catalyst for the creation of the state, with Jewish emigration from Europe encouraged especially by the Americans. However it was good of those major powers to carve a chunk off the Palestinian land rather than give up anything of their own, very noble
Again, the Holocaust was not something disconnected from the Middle East. The Arab leadership of Palestine threw their lot in with Germany in the 1930s and 40s. Had they not been so vehemently opposed to Jewish migration to Palestine, millions may have been saved. And had Rommel been successful in North Africa, there should be no doubt what the fate of Palestine’s Jewish population would have been.
The Second World War was exactly that – a global war – and the formation of Israel was part of the reformation of nations and borders that took place in its aftermath, with tens of millions of people were displaced in Europe and South Asia alone. Israel was no magic gift. Zionists fought for their home and took in more than a million displaced Jews from both Europe and the Arab world, while about half that number of Arabs were displaced also when they refused to accept the existence of their Jewish neighbours.
The concept of a Jewish homeland within the region known as Palestine dates back to the 1897 (it was part of the Ottoman empire at that time), it was a lot more than murmurings. It is true that Britain in particular felt a degree of guilt as they prevented Jews from fleeing to Palestine at the start of the war.
However there is and never was “Palestinian” land as you describe it. The area that became known as Palestine has always had a mixed population and has been ruled over by one empire or another for thousands of years – there has never been a Palestine self ruled by a coherent and unified “Palestinian” people. The British were the last in a long line of empires to rule it (before that it was part of the Ottoman empire). At the time of the UN’s formation of Israel it was about 50% Jews and 50% Arabs. The Jews were awarded 55% of the land area because a lot of that area was useless dessert. The Arabs rejected the UN decision and immediately turned round and attacked the Jews. The Jews won even when neighbouring Arab states later piled in. Israel has since grown by being attacked and counter attacking effectively.
The ancient Romans pinned the name on the Land of Israel. In 135 CE, after stamping out the province of Judea’s second insurrection, the Romans renamed the province Syria Palaestina—that is, “Palestinian Syria.” They did so resentfully, as a punishment, to obliterate the link between the Jews (in Hebrew, Y’hudim and in Latin Judaei) and the province (the Hebrew name of which was Y’hudah). “Palaestina” referred to the Philistines, whose home base had been on the Mediterranean coast. cite
Even the name Palestine is a direct insult to Jews – who have been in that space for at least 2000 years.
Agreed that it trivialises the unique evil but so does the Israel Palestine conflict is simply a long running feud over territory,
A useful simplification for avoiding reality -feud doesn’t sound too bad does it-a bit like neighbours arguing over a fence rather than the barbaric invasion by psychopaths on 07/10 who then proceeded to slaughter & rape defenceless women & children without warning or reservation and then filmed it before taking hostages in contravention of all known international law.And rather contrary to Hamas’s founding charter and their stated intentions immediately after the attack.to keep doing it
Netanyahu and his cronies tacitly supported Hamas all the years because of their shared opposition to a two-state solution (look it up if this is still news, GIYF). So by your logic he was also complicit in the Gaza attack?!
That’s so stupid. Netanyahu’s supposed ‘support’ for Hamas is irrelevant. There is no logic to your ‘logic.’ Unless the word “complicit” has a new meaning, which might be possible, given how apparently even university presidents in the US are “complicit” in the so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
Martin Bollis
1 month ago
Faced with immoral rulers some of the population will fight, some will collaborate, the vast majority will keep their heads down and try to get on with life. It was ever thus.
Generations not faced with the same dilemmas (yet) signal their virtue by judging their forefathers.
Agree with you. This article contains no news. Dutch Jews better move to Israel. A conclusion drawn already years ago by Manfred Gerstenfeld and Frits Bolkenstein.
Mike Downing
1 month ago
Our defining characteristic as a species is not language but our propensity for storytelling; we tell stories about ourselves, our lives, our loves, our families, our friends, our countries, our history, our faiths and our civilisations.
Unsurprisingly since our memories are extremely malleable and nobody (apart from masochists) wants to beat themselves up, we forget things over time and embroider until we can often barely remember the starting point.
But that doesn’t stop the queasy feeling when a fact or two pops up and confronts us.
Paul Thompson
1 month ago
European antisemitism has increased as Muslim invaders have invaded. The entire problem is due to Muslim Jew-haters.
What an incredibly ignorant statement. Antisemitism is worse now than Germany under the Nazis? Hitler was a Muslim I suppose. And that is just one example. There were ghettos throughout Europe. Spanish Jews fled to Islamic north Africa after the Moors were driven out.
I usually think Islamophobia is a rubbish concept but it appears I was wrong in this case.
The only region in the world where an active Nazi was feted & celebrated after WWII, instead of standing trial or going into hiding, was the Middle East. Look up the Grand Mufti Husseini & how he was hailed as ‘the scourge of the Jews’ on arrival in Egypt. Then look at how Nazi propaganda throughout the war years was translated & disseminated throughout the Middle East & you might get closer to understanding the direct links between Nazism & today’s radical Islamists
True, but don’t overlook 2000 years of history that makes many Europeans, including those in power, blame the ‘collective jew’ ie israel for defending itself against murderous terrorists. The powers-that-be still consider the collective Jew untrustworthy and never worthy of the benefit of the doubt, as the vitriol from legions of Israel-haters and the recent actions of western governments confirm.
Alex Lekas
1 month ago
So what is it that today’s Dutch are supposed to do? Everything is so much more clear in hindsight, aided by the obnoxious habit of viewing the past through the lens of the present. We have the same thing in the US where people act as if slavery is still occurring and that this is the only country where it existed. Lay out the facts to the best of everyone’s ability. Then what? When the pro-Hamas people ‘turn nasty’ and Jews are again attacked by some in the populace, it appears that very little indeed was learned from history.
ruth novaczek
1 month ago
no mention of Steve McQueen’s Occupied City?
Ex Nihilo
1 month ago
It may appear a two-sided conflict to some but only because the Nazis were defeated and history stripped away the many apologists and sympathizers of their time who did their best to make it appear there were two sides. Back then it was National Socialism as a credible answer to Marxism. Fundamentalist radical Islam is every bit as evil as Naziism, every bit as genocidal, every bit as xenophobic, every bit as murderous. Thousands of acts of terrorism and multiple wars in the name of Islam around the world do not comprise “skirmishes”. ISIS, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Hamas, Hezbollah, Houtis, bombings of multiple embassies, train stations, concert halls, restaurants, airliners, ships, the World Trade Center, kidnappings, beheadings, major offensive wars against Israel by Islamic forces in 1947, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 2023, the Intifadas, and many, many more. To call this trivial is to be morally equivalent to a Holocaust denier.
Christopher Barclay
1 month ago
No mention that today’s Netherlands have a large Muslim population. How many of them celebrated the rape, torture and murder of Jews on October 7th?
Skink
1 month ago
A thoughtful article marred in the end by another leftie knee-jerkism: a jab at Geert Wilders.
El Uro
1 month ago
This reassessment is a function of a former colonial nation wrestling with its identity.
Without any connection to the content of article – When I hear the word “identity” …, I release the safety on my Browning!
They shove this word into everything from cesspools to palaces, much like Hollywood idiots telling you “you know”.
In the meantime, a daycare center in a town in Germany, named after Anne Frank, decided to rename late last year, because “children have hard time understanding this story” and the parents wanted “a message more focused on international diversity, hence the new name of World Explorers.” It was happening in the same time when there were anti-Israel protests in German towns were, in the country which devised the “final solution” people were shouting “gas the Jews”. But then, you will hear German and Dutch leftists politicians denouncing and sneering my country, Poland, publicly in the European Parliament, for being antisemitic and xenophobic: but I understand that it’s just a transfer of their own guilt.
We obsess over the guilt of the dead who actively or passively abetted the Holocaust in WW II and yet pity the people of Gaza, who are equally complicit in enabling, actively or passively, the genocide that Hamas is dedicated to visiting on modern Jews? It always requires greater moral courage to confront hate in real time than from the safe distance of three quarters of a century.
Because many don’t see the current goings on in the Middle East as a continuation of the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a uniquely evil event, whereas the Israel Palestine conflict is simply a long running feud over territory, albeit one split along religious lines. The Holocaust also had clearly defined victims and perpetrators, whereas the conflict in the Middle East has two sides seemingly as bad as each other.
In my opinion constantly evoking the Holocaust and trying to link it to current day events and skirmishes trivialises the unique evil of that time
I’m against whichever side films itself committing rape, dismemberment, beheadings, shootings, and suicide bonbings.
Both sides are deplorable in my opinion. Hamas are animals but I can’t ignore 30,000 killed either, a majority of which have been women and children
And how on earth do you come to the conclusion that a majority of the dead are women and children?
or that 30k were killed at all?
as opposed to Hamas fighters?Your source would be what?
In the first week of this conflict I read the news: “Israel bombs hospital, 500 dead”. I saw the footage of the smouldering ruins.
Then it transpired that it wasn’t an Israeli rocket that hit the hospital but an Islamic Jihad mortar.
Then it transpired that it didn’t hit the hospital but the hospital’s carpark.
Then it transpired there were no casualties as the carpark was empty at the time of impact.
The whole thing was a Hamas invention swallowed without question by the western media.
Then I decided to never believe another report on casualty figures or watch any footage.
His “source,” whose every word he takes as gospel, apparently, is Hamas.
It is oh-so easy to condemn the IDF for inflicting civilian casualties while battling an enemy who intentionally imbeds with the innocents. William T. Sherman knew something of winning wars, and this is what he had to say: “War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. … Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.”
Until you have faced bullets and buried your friends, you have no place to comment. Israel is accepting volunteers. You can go to Gaza and show us how it’s done.
organised war is always about taking resources from another, continuation of politics by another means.
You believe that. Why.?
How do you actually know 30K were killed, genius? you take the claims of terrorists known to lie and lie again, as gospel, and no doubt disbelieve what the Israelis say.
The majority of them were terrorists.
No, there’s an a additional ingredient in the Hamas Israel conflict, in that Hamas and the those citizens that tacitly support them (we can argue about numbers) want all Jews killed because they are Jews. It’s not fundamentally about territory.
I disagree. If Israel had been created in Europe after the war (which would have made more sense) then I don’t believe the Jews would be of any interest to the various sects in the Middle East. Hamas would today be busying themselves against the various Sunni factions instead
Israel wasn’t some magical gift to the Jewish people suddenly thought up by Westerners after the war. Jews began returning the land in waves, small at first, in 1882 — 65 years before independence and 35 years before the British decided to endorse the notion of a Jewish homeland. Ben Gurion has been in Palestine and working for a Jewish homeland for about 42 years already.
There has been murmurings beforehand obviously, but it was the horrors of the Holocaust that was the catalyst for the creation of the state, with Jewish emigration from Europe encouraged especially by the Americans. However it was good of those major powers to carve a chunk off the Palestinian land rather than give up anything of their own, very noble
Again, the Holocaust was not something disconnected from the Middle East. The Arab leadership of Palestine threw their lot in with Germany in the 1930s and 40s. Had they not been so vehemently opposed to Jewish migration to Palestine, millions may have been saved. And had Rommel been successful in North Africa, there should be no doubt what the fate of Palestine’s Jewish population would have been.
The Second World War was exactly that – a global war – and the formation of Israel was part of the reformation of nations and borders that took place in its aftermath, with tens of millions of people were displaced in Europe and South Asia alone. Israel was no magic gift. Zionists fought for their home and took in more than a million displaced Jews from both Europe and the Arab world, while about half that number of Arabs were displaced also when they refused to accept the existence of their Jewish neighbours.
The concept of a Jewish homeland within the region known as Palestine dates back to the 1897 (it was part of the Ottoman empire at that time), it was a lot more than murmurings. It is true that Britain in particular felt a degree of guilt as they prevented Jews from fleeing to Palestine at the start of the war.
However there is and never was “Palestinian” land as you describe it. The area that became known as Palestine has always had a mixed population and has been ruled over by one empire or another for thousands of years – there has never been a Palestine self ruled by a coherent and unified “Palestinian” people. The British were the last in a long line of empires to rule it (before that it was part of the Ottoman empire). At the time of the UN’s formation of Israel it was about 50% Jews and 50% Arabs. The Jews were awarded 55% of the land area because a lot of that area was useless dessert. The Arabs rejected the UN decision and immediately turned round and attacked the Jews. The Jews won even when neighbouring Arab states later piled in. Israel has since grown by being attacked and counter attacking effectively.
The ancient Romans pinned the name on the Land of Israel. In 135 CE, after stamping out the province of Judea’s second insurrection, the Romans renamed the province Syria Palaestina—that is, “Palestinian Syria.” They did so resentfully, as a punishment, to obliterate the link between the Jews (in Hebrew, Y’hudim and in Latin Judaei) and the province (the Hebrew name of which was Y’hudah). “Palaestina” referred to the Philistines, whose home base had been on the Mediterranean coast.
cite
Even the name Palestine is a direct insult to Jews – who have been in that space for at least 2000 years.
According to the Jewish Virtual Library (https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-and-non-jewish-population-of-israel-palestine-1517-present), at the time of the UN partition decision in 1947, Jews constituted 32% of Palestine’s population, Moslems and Christians 68%.
why should Israel have been created in Europe when thousands of years of history show the Jewish people being from where the country actually is?
Agreed that it trivialises the unique evil but so does
the Israel Palestine conflict is simply a long running feud over territory,
A useful simplification for avoiding reality -feud doesn’t sound too bad does it-a bit like neighbours arguing over a fence rather than the barbaric invasion by psychopaths on 07/10 who then proceeded to slaughter & rape defenceless women & children without warning or reservation and then filmed it before taking hostages in contravention of all known international law.And rather contrary to Hamas’s founding charter and their stated intentions immediately after the attack.to keep doing it
Netanyahu and his cronies tacitly supported Hamas all the years because of their shared opposition to a two-state solution (look it up if this is still news, GIYF). So by your logic he was also complicit in the Gaza attack?!
That’s so stupid. Netanyahu’s supposed ‘support’ for Hamas is irrelevant. There is no logic to your ‘logic.’ Unless the word “complicit” has a new meaning, which might be possible, given how apparently even university presidents in the US are “complicit” in the so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
Faced with immoral rulers some of the population will fight, some will collaborate, the vast majority will keep their heads down and try to get on with life. It was ever thus.
Generations not faced with the same dilemmas (yet) signal their virtue by judging their forefathers.
Don’t really see the point of this article.
You mean you don’t want to see it.
Agree with you. This article contains no news. Dutch Jews better move to Israel. A conclusion drawn already years ago by Manfred Gerstenfeld and Frits Bolkenstein.
Our defining characteristic as a species is not language but our propensity for storytelling; we tell stories about ourselves, our lives, our loves, our families, our friends, our countries, our history, our faiths and our civilisations.
Unsurprisingly since our memories are extremely malleable and nobody (apart from masochists) wants to beat themselves up, we forget things over time and embroider until we can often barely remember the starting point.
But that doesn’t stop the queasy feeling when a fact or two pops up and confronts us.
European antisemitism has increased as Muslim invaders have invaded. The entire problem is due to Muslim Jew-haters.
What an incredibly ignorant statement. Antisemitism is worse now than Germany under the Nazis? Hitler was a Muslim I suppose. And that is just one example. There were ghettos throughout Europe. Spanish Jews fled to Islamic north Africa after the Moors were driven out.
I usually think Islamophobia is a rubbish concept but it appears I was wrong in this case.
The only region in the world where an active Nazi was feted & celebrated after WWII, instead of standing trial or going into hiding, was the Middle East. Look up the Grand Mufti Husseini & how he was hailed as ‘the scourge of the Jews’ on arrival in Egypt. Then look at how Nazi propaganda throughout the war years was translated & disseminated throughout the Middle East & you might get closer to understanding the direct links between Nazism & today’s radical Islamists
True, but don’t overlook 2000 years of history that makes many Europeans, including those in power, blame the ‘collective jew’ ie israel for defending itself against murderous terrorists. The powers-that-be still consider the collective Jew untrustworthy and never worthy of the benefit of the doubt, as the vitriol from legions of Israel-haters and the recent actions of western governments confirm.
So what is it that today’s Dutch are supposed to do? Everything is so much more clear in hindsight, aided by the obnoxious habit of viewing the past through the lens of the present. We have the same thing in the US where people act as if slavery is still occurring and that this is the only country where it existed. Lay out the facts to the best of everyone’s ability. Then what? When the pro-Hamas people ‘turn nasty’ and Jews are again attacked by some in the populace, it appears that very little indeed was learned from history.
no mention of Steve McQueen’s Occupied City?
It may appear a two-sided conflict to some but only because the Nazis were defeated and history stripped away the many apologists and sympathizers of their time who did their best to make it appear there were two sides. Back then it was National Socialism as a credible answer to Marxism. Fundamentalist radical Islam is every bit as evil as Naziism, every bit as genocidal, every bit as xenophobic, every bit as murderous. Thousands of acts of terrorism and multiple wars in the name of Islam around the world do not comprise “skirmishes”. ISIS, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Hamas, Hezbollah, Houtis, bombings of multiple embassies, train stations, concert halls, restaurants, airliners, ships, the World Trade Center, kidnappings, beheadings, major offensive wars against Israel by Islamic forces in 1947, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 2023, the Intifadas, and many, many more. To call this trivial is to be morally equivalent to a Holocaust denier.
No mention that today’s Netherlands have a large Muslim population. How many of them celebrated the rape, torture and murder of Jews on October 7th?
A thoughtful article marred in the end by another leftie knee-jerkism: a jab at Geert Wilders.
This reassessment is a function of a former colonial nation wrestling with its identity.
Without any connection to the content of article –
When I hear the word “identity” …, I release the safety on my Browning!
They shove this word into everything from cesspools to palaces, much like Hollywood idiots telling you “you know”.
Odd to write all this and make no mention of the Dutch SS units. Largest one detailed here…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_Legion_Netherlands
Or the fact the Germans deliberately tried to starve the Dutch population in 1944/45, in revenge for broad Dutch support of the western allies during Operation Market Garden (See, “A bridge too far”.)
PS: A better link about the Dutch SS…
https://www.historynet.com/in-the-uniform-of-the-enemy/
In the meantime, a daycare center in a town in Germany, named after Anne Frank, decided to rename late last year, because “children have hard time understanding this story” and the parents wanted “a message more focused on international diversity, hence the new name of World Explorers.” It was happening in the same time when there were anti-Israel protests in German towns were, in the country which devised the “final solution” people were shouting “gas the Jews”. But then, you will hear German and Dutch leftists politicians denouncing and sneering my country, Poland, publicly in the European Parliament, for being antisemitic and xenophobic: but I understand that it’s just a transfer of their own guilt.
The Germans….ashamed? Really?