That U.S. military personnel — and their superiors — supported the torture of enemy combatants elicits disturbingly little outrage among most voters. Human beings seldom torture those they regard as like themselves. Humans need and crave community, but throughout history narrow definitions of community and exaggerated claims on its behalf have occasioned grave injustices.
Clayton Thomas-Müller,
March/April 2008,
Canadian Dimension magazine
Tar Sands: Environment justice, treaty rights and Indigenous Peoples
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The application of treaty rights as a legal strategy implemented by the First Nations themselves must be the key focus in efforts to challenge Big Oil in Alberta. Resources and effort must be placed into building the knowledge and capacity amongst First Nations and Métis leadership, including grassroots, elders and youth, to engage in both an indigenous-led corporate-finance campaign and in decision-making processes on environment, energy, climate and economic policies related to halting the tar-sands expansion. Canadian policy makers need to understand that there is an inextricable link between indigenous rights and energy and climate impacts.
The US Holocaust Museum explains what happened:
On November 9, 1938, the Nazis unleashed a wave of pogroms against Germany’s Jews. In the space of a few hours, thousands of synagogues and Jewish businesses and homes were damaged or destroyed. This event came to be called Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glass”) for the shattered store windowpanes that carpeted German streets.
The pretext for this violence was the November 7 assassination of a German diplomat in Paris, Ernst vom Rath, by Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish teenager whose parents, along with 17,000 other Polish Jews, had been recently expelled from the Reich. Though portrayed as spontaneous outbursts of popular outrage, these pogroms were calculated acts of retaliation carried out by the SA, SS, and local Nazi party organizations.
Stormtroopers killed at least 91 Jews and injured many others. For the first time, Jews were arrested on a massive scale Click to enlarge and transported to Nazi concentration camps. About 30,000 Jews were sent to Buchenwald, Dachau, and Sachsenhausen, where hundreds died within weeks of arrival. Release came only after the prisoners arranged to emigrate and agreed to transfer their property to “Aryans.”
Kristallnacht culminated the escalating violence against Jews that began during the incorporation of Austria into the Reich in March 1938. It also signaled the fateful transfer of responsibility for “solving” the “Jewish Question” to the SS.
Lorenz C. Schmuhl Papers, USHMM Archives
The previous words are from the web site of the US Museum of the Holocaust.
Source: http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/kristallnacht/
Now George takes up the horror.
No need to ask “What caused Kristallnacht?” Two thousand years of Christian antisemitism caused it.
And yet, “antisemitism” is an inadequate word for organized terror. Take St. Augustine for example. (Yes, take him. I don’t want him.) Good old Augustine was a 5th century intellectual hippy who dumped the woman he had lived with for fifteen years as well as his son, Adeodatus. Shortly after that he got religion. Hey, that’s forgivable, you say? Sure. But wait. He preached the gospel like this: ” The true image of the Hebrew is Judas Iscariot, who sells the Lord for silver. The Jew can never understand the Scriptures and forever will bear the guilt for the death of Jesus.” Augustine told people studying to become Christians, “The Jews killed Jesus.” He didn’t want all the Jews killed in any one generation so there could always be some available to torture and kill. He advocated genocide against all heretics and pagans. (Sounds like the Crusades and the Inquisition. Dawkins has so much evidence for the evils that Christians have unleashed on the world.) Antisemitism? Let’s call it Christo-fascism.
All churches dedicated to this vampire, Augustine, should have a large sign outside proving their rejection of his teaching. Any church that has a statue of him should put a dunce cap on his head every November 9th.
Of course he was not alone. The sources below quote the hateful words of many “saints” we celebrate on All Saints’ Day. How few of the great saints even lifted a finger to help Jewish victims who suffered 20 centuries of Christian rape and murder.
Some did risk their lives to help — although not many Christian leaders are known to have risked anything. Politics plays it safe. Here’s a list of those honored by the Anti-Defamation League for rescuing Jews during the holocaust:
Martha and Waitstill Sharp, Leitz II, Mefail and Njazi Bicaku, Hiram Bingham IV, Sir Nicholas Winton, Konstantin Koslovsky, Jan and Miep Gies, Aristides De Sousa Mendes, Jan Karski, Selahattin Ulkumen, Chiune Sugihara, the French town of Le Chambon-Sur-Lignon, Emilie and Oskar Schindler, The Partisans of Riccione, Italy and Johanna Vos. What beautiful people. Very rare on this earth.
Kristallnacht? Just business as usual. As usual? Well no, the same business but more organized than usual.
James Alison’s latest book, “Undergoing God,” compares two kinds of worship: the Christian mass and a Nazi Nuremberg rally. “The liturgical organizers of the Nuremberg rallies knew exactly what they were doing, and did it remarkably well. You bring people together and you unite them in worship. You provide regular, rhythmic music, and marching. You enable them to see lots of people in uniform, people who have already lost a certain individuality and become symbols. You inflame them with tales of past woe and reminders of past confusion, when they were caused to suffer by some shame being imposed upon them. Then, after the build up, the Fuhrer appears. With a few deft words he points to the huge gathering which is a sign of a new unity [against] enemies from afar and, more important, by readily identifiable enemies who are much closer at hand. [When they get home] they will look at the Jew from across the road in a different light. They will [turn] a blind eye to his disappearance, agreeing that old Mr. Silverstein the cobbler is indeed a threat to society.” (Page 35-36)
The Nuremberg rally convinced the Germans that they were victimized by history and by the”other” in their midst, the Jews. Like helpless “worms” the Germans were slowly turned into willing supporters of genocide.
Fortunately there are some Christians who understand how we have victimized so many dear people throughout history. James Alison has a refreshing understanding of the mass, the meal of Jesus broken body and bloodlike wine. As a victim of military, political and religious torture, Jesus identifies himself with all victims. And after Life raised Jesus from death back to life, he comes to us in the mass. He comes to us who know that WE are the victimizers. Unlike Nuremberg the evil we remember was not done TO us. It was done BY us. And this beautiful loving Jesus, a victim among all our victims, comes to say, “Peace. Don’t be afraid. I forgive you. I love you. Stop victimizing. Spread this love.”
Kristallnacht forever?
In the late 1960′s I moved to Kansas City. The first day we arrived I met my neighbor across the street. We talked for maybe 5 minutes. He was the German consul in Kansas City. He was a businessman who represented his country without pay. I probably had my priest uniform on — a black suit with a white collar. In the course of this brief meeting my new neighbor said, “Hitler didn’t finish the job.” I did not know how to reply at all. I didn’t have the decency to tell him that he was full of hatred and evil. When he dropped dead of a heart attack that week I thought the earth was a better place. It was sad for his wife and little children. But still a better place.
In the dining car on the Ghan, a beautiful train in Australia, I sat across from another passenger going from Sydney to Alice Springs. Australia was then having real problems with its currency. Its value against the dollar dropped every day. I was in ordinary clothes this time, having been a busker making music for tips at the Olympics in Sydney. I asked the stranger across the table what was causing the currency problem for Australia. “Everybody knows that,” he said. “It’s the Jews.” I wish I could report that I responded accurately to those words. As I recollect, I was stunned and said nothing.
God help us
http://www.kimel.net/antisem.html
http://www.sullivan-county.com/identity/jew_haters.htm
http://www.adl.org/PresRele/HolNa_52/5167_52.htm
Britain’s Treasury and the Pears Foundation, a major contributor to education and civil rights causes in the UK and abroad, will each contribute £250,000 a year for three years to the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET) to train instructors to teach the Holocaust, British Chancellor Gordon Brown announced Tuesday.
Brown’s announcement seemed to quash recent rumors that Holocaust studies were being dropped from nation’s school curriculum.
“The Holocaust will remain on the curriculum, now and in the future. Future generations will always need to remember this defining episode in 20th century history, about man’s inhumanity to man. It is crucially important that young people learn about our history and heed the warnings from our past,” Brown declared.
Brown thanked the Pears Foundation for its “magnificent support” of the teacher training initiative, which, he said, would ensure that instructors were “adequately equipped” to deal with difficult subject matter.
Tuesday’s announcement reaffirmed the British government’s support for Holocaust education. Last year, the government sponsored HET’s Lessons from Auschwitz program, which takes two 11th and 12th-grade pupils from every UK school to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.
Officials in HET, which works in schools, universities and communities to educate young people from every ethnic background about the Holocaust and its lessons, expressed delight over the groundbreaking Holocaust education training fund. Karen Pollock, chief executive of HET, said that the “groundbreaking commitment to Holocaust education by the government and the Pears Foundation will enable HET to administer a broad program of teacher training.”
“We look forward to working with partner organizations on this important initiative,” Pollock added.
Lord Greville Janner, chairman of the HET, said he was delighted and grateful for the “wonderful follow-up” to Lessons in Auschwitz – a program launched in 2006 with initial Treasury funding of £1.5m.
Brown said Tuesday that he had been proud to announce last year’s initiative, and emphasized that the gift would allow more than 6,000 pupils to see the death camp.
“Our response to…anti-Semitism is strong and forceful. It is, I believe, supported by all parties and by Parliament. It is an issue that I will keep a close eye on,” Brown said.
The HET also released a statement refuting reports that Holocaust studies were being dropped at some UK schools so as not to offend Muslims. Pollock said that these reports would be investigated, but that the HET’s clear understanding was that the Holocaust would continue to be taught in all UK schools.
Source: CLICK HERE
This May Be From Katrina
Today, Congress has the opportunity to help thousands of New Orleans
residents come back home. The Gulf Coast Hurricane Housing Recovery
Act of 2007 would re-open desperately needed public housing units and
make sure there is no loss of affordable public housing in New
Orleans.
The bill quickly passed the House of Representatives, but the two
people who should be leading the charge in the Senate–Louisiana
Senators Landrieu and Vitter–are stalling, and without their support,
the bill will go nowhere. I’ve signed on with ColorofChange.org to
call on Senators Landrieu and Vitter to stop dragging their feet, and
lead on this important legislation, now. Will you join us?
http://www.colorofchange.org/hr1227/?id=2157-153822
Preserving Affordable Housing in New Orleans
Since Hurricane Katrina hit, public housing residents have been
fighting to return home. Unfortunately, HUD (Department of Housing
and Urban Development) is planning to demolish most of the available
public housing units–apartments that were minimally damaged by the
storm–and replace them with far fewer units of affordable public
housing.
In response to residents’ protests, Congresswoman Maxine Waters held
hearings in New Orleans, giving residents a chance to voice their
concerns to Congress. Around the same time, Governor Blanco met with
Congressman Barney Frank–head of the committee that oversees HUD–to
discuss the need to re-open housing not damaged by the storm. The
result of these meetings was H.R. 1227, The Gulf Coast Hurricane
Recovery Act of 2007.
H.R. 1227 honors the right to return of all New Orleans public housing
residents and takes steps to preserve affordable housing in New
Orleans. It requires the reopening of at least 3,000 public housing
units and ensures that there is no net loss of units available and
affordable to public housing residents. The bill swiftly passed the
House of Representatives, but it won’t pass the Senate unless
Louisiana senators take the lead.
Why haven’t Senators Landrieu and Vitter stepped up?
Race and class seem to explain Landrieu and Vitter’s refusal to step
up. Some have expressed a desire to see a “richer” and “Whiter” post-
Katrina New Orleans, and many of them have a great deal of political
influence. From what we can tell, Senator Vitter is playing to those
interests by ignoring this legislation–but as a senator for all
Louisiana residents, it’s his responsibility to ensure that everyone
who wants to come home can–not the just the wealthy, privileged,
and White. Insiders tell us that Senator Landrieu is being cautious
for the same reason: that she doesn’t want to offend “moderate”
supporters who have a similar vision for New Orleans.
The Gulf Coast Hurricane Housing Recovery Act is the last great hope
for New Orleans public housing residents who want to come home. By
urging the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs to
take up H.R. 1227, Senators Landrieu and Vitter can make it a reality.
But if the senators from Louisiana don’t lead on this issue, others
simply won’t follow.
It’s time to do what’s right for New Orleans public housing residents
and pass this bill in the Senate. Will you join us and demand that
Senator Landrieus and Vitter support H.R. 1227.
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently travelled through the Middle East, making visits with Israelis and Palestinians, bringing with her, many have speculated, little more than another round of optimism.
This familiar aura of hard-to-pin-down optimism was also found following the statements Secretary Rice delivered in her keynote address at the American Task Force on Palestine Inaugural Gala in Washington DC in October 2006.
In these statements, Dr Rice gave a strong endorsement of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and reiterated phrases from President Bush’s United Nations General Assembly speech in September regarding ending the “daily humiliation of occupation” and establishing a Palestinian state with “territorial integrity.” But what garnered the most praise was the statement of her “personal commitment” to the goal of a “Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel.”
Whatever sense of anticipation one might draw from such statements, it is predictably shattered when confronted with the worsening situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In a recent report, for example, UN human rights expert John Dugard observed that the human rights situation here continues to deteriorate and called the conditions “intolerable, appalling, and tragic for ordinary Palestinians.”
And in an article titled ‘Israelis adopt what South Africa dropped,’ Dugard made striking parallels between the situation in the Occupied Territories and his home country of South Africa under apartheid, going so far as to say: “Many aspects of Israel’s occupation surpass those of the apartheid regime. Israel’s large-scale destruction of Palestinian homes, leveling of agricultural lands, military incursions and targeted assassinations of Palestinians far exceed any similar practices in apartheid South Africa” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 29 Nov 2006).
The situation in Gaza, with a poverty level approaching 80 per cent and Israel’s ongoing siege that has, since late June of last year, claimed the lives of over 400 Palestinians there, leaving over 5,000 injured and Gaza’s children severely traumatized, is just one example of how bleak the situation is. Palestinian dispossession due to Israeli colonization and the construction of the separation barrier or Wall that continues unabated is another sad indicator, one that Dugard, again speaking of South Africa during apartheid, points out “No wall was ever built to separate blacks and whites.”
Unfortunately, the construction of this 430-mile or 700-kilometer Wall is just one more chapter in a long history of Palestinian dispossession. Whether it is more land being expropriated for the construction of this separation barrier, the dramatic growth of illegal settlements, including in and around Jerusalem, the proliferation of a closure system of checkpoints and roadblocks that obstruct mobility, the demolition of homes and other forms of collective punishment, the one-big-prison-status of Gaza, or the continuing state of dispossession of seven million Palestinians refugees worldwide, Palestinian livelihoods are devastated by military occupation and their experience of dispossession continues unabated. Not a very optimistic scenario.
Yet optimism persists. It is in the context of such experiences of dispossession and occupation that Secretary Rice’s comments over her “personal commitment” to the goal of a “Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel” need to be examined.
To the extent to which these words echo past commitments, especially from US officials, one cannot help but feel disappointed. The first question that comes to mind is similar to the one Palestinians, upon whom demands are placed to recognize the state of Israel, voice — namely: “Which Israel are we to recognize? Israel within the borders of the Green Line or Israel with a colonizing presence in and absolute control over Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem?”
In that same vein one might ask Secretary of State Rice, or any representative of the ‘quartet’ for that matter: “Which Palestinian state are you committed to? Is it a state secure on all territory occupied by Israel since 1967, including East Jerusalem, or a cantonized joke of a state with Palestinians isolated in large open-air prisons?”
Regardless of where one stands in the “one-state solution” versus “two-state solution” debate, what is important to see is what the language of “two-states” has come actually to mean on the ground, and what its consequences will be for Palestinians.
Due to what many identify as the dynamics of power, what matters at this point in the conversation is the meaning that the state of Israel gives to the language of “two states.” This has been articulated by Prime Minister Olmert in his goal to unilaterally set the borders of Israel by 2010 — which will also, to speak to another language problem, essentially “end the occupation” in a manner not unlike that one used to describe the situation in Gaza post-“disengagement,” described by many as the largest open-air prison in the world.
In this version of the language of “two states,” “the state of Israel” essentially equals formally annexing all major colonies in the West Bank, including “greater Jerusalem” and the Jordan Valley, with control over all of historical Palestine (fulfilling the vision of Ariel Sharon, et al, of “maximum territory, minimum Arabs”). Subsequently, “the state of Palestine” essentially equals several isolated islands of land on roughly 40 to 50 per cent of the occupied West Bank with Palestinians confined to these “reservations,” or, evoking South Africa under apartheid, “Bantustans,” which will be rendered “contiguous” by a network of tunnels controlled by the Israeli military—completely unrealistic, completely unviable, and completely lacking any sense of human security for the people here.
A recent report from the Foundation for Middle East Peace, (http://www.fmep.org/), paints an even more depressing picture in which as little as 30 per cent of the West Bank will remain for Palestinian autonomous regions.
The fact that it is Israel’s understanding of what “two states” means that truly matters was emphasized by comments emerging from the US State Department following Olmert’s declarations last year, affirming his vision of Israeli unilateralism. Though still trying to keep the ‘Road Map’ and its understanding of negotiations afloat, Secretary Rice then voiced acquiescence.
Dr Rice was reported to have said: “I wouldn’t on the face of it just say absolutely we don’t think there’s any value in what the Israelis are talking about.” The BBC pointed out that this was “the first time the US appears to have dropped its insistence that the conflict must be solved bilaterally.”
In this context, it is difficult to find anything terribly comforting about Secretary’s Rice’s comments on a Palestinian state until they are backed up by tangible actions on the part of Israel and the United States. But looking back on how the US has postured itself in the past regarding moves Israel has made, there is little that indicates any movement away from a trajectory that will lead to the concretizing of apartheid in this land.
Dr Rice’s visit to Palestine/Israel leaves many wondering what exactly she is doing here. She herself has recognized that she has nothing new to offer except another round of cheap optimism. Some have speculated that she intended to discuss the idea of a “Palestinian state” with provisional borders, defined by the path of the Wall, with Palestinian Authority President Abbas, who has rejected this outright. Indeed, recent reports that the US State Department may go ahead and recognize such a state with provisional borders by the end of 2007.
It is this lack of a realistic perspective of events that clouds the language of “two states,” and which only makes the hope for a legitimate “two-state solution” to this terrible conflict seem all but lost.
And it is about the persistence of such dangerously misplaced optimism — the “too many mendacious statements of optimism from George W Bush or Tony Blair or Condoleezza Rice” — that veteran British journalist Robert Fisk continuously warns his readers. It is what he calls the “reluctance to confront unpleasant truths” that must concern us when we reflect on our efforts at advocacy.
How do we speak a word of hope that is not a “cheap hope” veiled in dangerously misplaced optimism? How should advocates for justice, peace and real security for Palestinians and Israelis respond to this current reality?
One point for us to consider might be to move beyond the conceptual bind of “statehood” — whether Palestinian or Israeli. Our concern and advocacy for a just and lasting peace should not ultimately be concerned with whether or not a Palestinian state comes into being because statehood, from a Christian perspective, is not an end in itself.
Rather, what is a good in and of itself is the well-being of all who inhabit “Mandate Palestine” — that is, present-day Israel, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. If current realities have indeed rendered a two-state solution unfeasible, then those who care about the well-being and security of Palestinians and Israelis must imagine new ways for Palestinians and Israelis to live side by side in justice, freedom, and equality.
A much-discussed and controversial alternative to consider might be that of one bi-national state. The struggle in this scenario would become one against an apartheid reality in the Occupied Territories and for equal citizenship in a binational state, in which Palestinians and Israelis are equal citizens before the law, in all of Mandate Palestine.
This vision of one bi-national state poses several challenges to those who would advocate a just peace in this land, both in terms of discerning the on-the-ground meanings behind the language of “two states” as well as moving beyond that language to which we have become so wedded.
But what is more challenging is the necessary theological reckoning with Zionism that this vision would require of Christians, a reckoning that would lead to a confrontation with the question of whether the creation of a state which denies Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes and insists on maintaining a “Jewish demographic majority” is a theological, let alone moral or legal, good.
However one chooses to confront these unpleasant truths and challenging questions, recognizing that statehood is not an end in itself, begins with the confession that from a Christian perspective, we are called first and foremost to practice and witness for a politics of jubilee, one which brings liberty to the oppressed and a secure existence in the land (Luke 4; Leviticus 25) and to work for the day when each will sit under vine and fig tree without fear (Micah 4.4) — a vision that cannot be confined to our notions of “one state” or “two states.”
Despite the declarations of personal commitments, the “facts on the ground” largely remain the same. Palestinians and Israelis know more than anyone else that “peace” talk is cheap, and that rhetoric meant to foster such an optimism is dangerous, serving as a distraction and hindrance to genuine and sincere efforts to struggle for a just peace in this broken land.
Timothy Seidel is a peace development worker with Mennonite Central Committee in the Occupied Palestinian Territories where he has lived for the past two and a half years.