Uh-oh: once again, public opinion should be against the man whose policies caused the deaths of untold thousands of benefit claimants.
After his persecution of people who are sick, disabled and unemployed at the Department for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith simply has no right to criticise other nations for causing deaths.
He has criticised the decision to invite the Chinese government to the Queen’s funeral, saying it was “extraordinary” that the “architects” of genocide against the Uyghur minority had been invited.
But there is a strong diplomatic reason to do so. Here’s Professor Tim Wilson:
Prof Wilson thinks Vladimir Putin should be invited as well, and it’s a good idea; get him here and we can quietly suggest face-saving ways to end the war in Ukraine, for example.
Now Boris Johnson is no longer in charge and is unable to derail peace proposals, we might actually make some progress.
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Justifying the unacceptable: as always, Priti Patel has shown herself to be callous, immoral and possibly homicidal.
Priti Patel has announced a “cruel and inhumane” deal to transport asylum seekers crossing the English Channel to Rwanda – a country where her own government has expressed concern about “extrajudicial killings, deaths in custody, enforced disappearances and torture”.
Patel praised the record of the east African country on human rights. It was the site of the genocide of 800,000 people, exactly 28 years ago in 1994, in which members of the minority Tutsi group were murdered by the majority Hutus.
The genocide was carried out with shocking efficiency. Lists of Hutu government opponents were handed out to militias who killed them, along with all of their families. ID cards bored details of people’s ethnic group, so militias set up roadblocks where Tutsis were slaughtered. Thousands of Tutsi women were forced to become sex slaves.
The slaughter ended after 100 days, when the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front when a military victory against the Hutu government. The country is currently a dictatorship run by the RPF.
Critics of current president Paul Kagame have been murdered – or suffered assassination attempts – and concerns have been raised about the conviction on terrorism charges of Paul Rusesabagina, subject of Hollywood film Hotel Rwanda about his role saving more than 1,000 people during the genocide.
Only last year, the UK government – of which Priti Patel is Home Secretary – expressed serious concerns to the United Nations over “continued restrictions to civil and political rights and media freedom” in Rwanda, and called for independent investigations into those “allegations of extrajudicial killings, deaths in custody, enforced disappearances and torture”.
And now Patel wants to send vulnerable refugees, who may have been victims of atrocity and torture, to this country. Perhaps she considers Rwanda’s record to be mild in comparison with her own views on what should happen to asylum-seekers.
It is – and always has been – a bizarre pose from the daughter of economic migrants from Uganda (originally of Indian origin). If she thinks the current wave of asylum seekers should not be allowed to stay in the UK, why haven’t she and all her family packed themselves off back to Uganda?
And is this really about solving the UK’s illegal immigration problem – or about saving ‘Big Dog’ Boris Johnson’s bacon?
He has been named by the Metropolitan Police as a criminal for attending illegal parties in Downing Street during Covid-19 lockdown.
According to the Telegraph, he’s facing a second fine over former communication chief Lee Cain’s leaving party, where he is understood to have made a speech and remained in attendance for a considerable amount of time.
🔴 EXCLUSIVE: Boris Johnson facing second ‘partygate’ fine over aide’s leaving eventhttps://t.co/tlfucezRv5
The knock-on effect is that he has lied to Parliament – an offence for which there is only one penalty: He must resign as prime minister.
But the overprivileged, entitled criminal and liar doesn’t want to go, so it seems he is looking for a way to distract us from his crimes.
So suddenly he’s on our TV’s appealing to NIMBYs (people who say Not In My Back Yard to particular events or plans) across the UK to support what he called a “shared humanitarian impulse” with a nation whose human rights record is, let’s be honest – terrifying.
This Writer hopes it’s a grave miscalculation.
People don’t want to be overcome by waves of refugees seeking to settle in the UK in response to the foreign adventures of Tory (and other) governments who have merrily bombed their own countries into rubble, but there is an obvious answer to that: stop bombing their countries.
The excuse that asylum seekers are encouraging and enriching people smugglers is a lie. In fact, Johnson’s government – and especially Patel herself – is encouraging people smugglers by closing off all legal routes into the UK.
He says they should only take such legal routes, but that is impossible when they don’t exist!
So I hope the people of the UK see through this transparent attempt to whitewash a dirty, corrupt politician by scapegoating people who only want to be able to live in peace, in a peaceful country.
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‘Let the bodies pile high’: we still don’t know whether Boris Johnson actually said it but we know that he agrees with the sentiment because, in the UK, due to Covid-19, the bodies have. Now he is attacking another world leader for causing similar carnage. Hypocrisy?
Are you finding this as hard to swallow as I am?
According to the BBC, Boris Johnson – the man who allegedly expressed his own comfort with the deaths of thousands of people in the UK – wants you to think he is appalled at the alleged mass deaths of civilians in Ukraine:
Mr Johnson has said the UK “will not stand by whilst this indiscriminate and unforgivable slaughter takes place”.
He added: “We are working to ensure those responsible are held to account. We will not rest until justice is done.”
What is he saying, then?
That it is all right to make decisions that result in the deaths of thousands of people – if those people are fellow citizens of your country – but it’s wrong if they’re foreigners?
Call me picky if you like, but I tend to think that any leader who makes decisions that kill thousands of people (and let’s remember that Boris Johnson absolutely and certainly falls into that category) has failed in their most fundamental duty.
We already knew Johnson was a hypocrite, but this is genocidal hypocrisy.
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Keir Starmer: from his speech, he’d love to don a uniform and shoot anybody who isn’t an Israel-supporting Zionist.
What a speech. If Labour Party grassroots members weren’t scrambling to find a way to oust Keir Starmer as leader before, This Writer certainly hopes that’s what they are doing now.
Starmer made his alarming revelations at a speech to Labour Friends of Israel, where he and other party bigwigs who should have known better shared a platform with Tzipi Hotovely, the Israeli Ambassador best-known for being a murderous, genocidal racist.
As someone of mixed heritage it breaks my heart to see the Labour leader extend his solidarity to someone, Tzipi Hotovely, who thinks that’s wrong. Does @Keir_Starmer agree with her? You’d hope not.
Britain will only move ever further right as Labour embraces such poison.
The uncritical, even celebrated, platforming of Hotovely at the LFI event, an event the party leader also spoke at, is perhaps the most depressing sign yet of how the Labour party views the world. This is not a party of universal human rights.
— Kicked into the shredded duck 🦜 (@himoveryonder) November 16, 2021
Went and did some other stuff and still just blown away at Starmer giving a speech alongside Hotolevy and to a crowd including undeniable racists. I just can't believe the total lack of interest in even pretending the past few years was ever about 'anti-racism'.
Britain is such an absurd country that a lifelong anti-racism campaigner got endlessly smeared as a racist, and the blackface guy from the 90s is now being feted as a leading authority on anti-racism!
It should be possible for a Labour leader to take antisemitism seriously, which is important, without suggesting Black people or other people of colour are privileged when it comes to racism. https://t.co/Lxvci6dOgw
Keir Starmer's reference to "anti-Zionist antisemitism" as denying me a "self-determination" achieved by ethnically cleansing others, in a speech to a settler Ambassador who believes in racial purity, was not just wrong. It was deeply, deeply racist. Colonial thinking lives.
73 years after Israel was born the majority of Jews still choose the Diaspora as the venue for their self-determination, whether in London, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Warsaw… and more and more progressive Israelis condemn the Zionist practice of Jewish supremacy. 5/6
Terra nullius stuff from @Keir_Starmer speech today. A land without people for a people without land. Except Palestine had people – it wasn't just a desert.
These discourses and ideas are the basis of British colonisation spanning multiple continents. Quite sickening really. pic.twitter.com/PPahOOi2Dy
Keir Starmer is a virulent anti-Palestinian racist and an enemy to be defeated, nothing less. No one who even entertains the idea of making this man Prime Minister can be seen to be pro-Palestine. https://t.co/v7a3sJUfzj
If a political party, say @UKLabour for arguments sake, expelled more Jewish members in 18months than the party had previously expelled in its entire lifetime merely because the leader disagreed with how those members viewed their Jewishness. What would one call that?
Yes. Starmer is persecuting leftwing Jews and not a squeak about it from the Establishment Jewish press or the BBC or the Guardian or anyone else in the mainstream media
Why is campaigning for sanctions (BDS) against a state (Israel) that is illegally occupying the territory of another state (Palestine) in defiance of numerous UN resolutions holding it to a standard to which no other country is subjected?
According Sir Keir Starmer, who is the @UKLabour leader apparently, opposing a racist settler colonial ideology, which expresses itself by defying international law, engaging in genocide and committing war crimes is the "antithesis of the Labour tradition". Who knew? https://t.co/eKQKNmwSvk
That was the message Starmer was transmitting in his speech.
He opposes universal human rights. He opposes self-determination for persecuted people – in particular, Palestinians. He stands alongside apartheid Israel in opposing international law.
He supports racism – particularly anti-Palestinian racism, but also racism against black people, other people of colour, and Muslims. He supports apartheid. He supports the Zionist doctrine of racial supremacy over others. He supports ethnic cleansing – especially of Palestinians from their own homeland, wrongly seized from them by apartheid Israel. He supports war crimes. He supports genocide.
Historically, Labour has supported the things Starmer opposes, and opposed those that he supports. Labour members have fought – literally, in some cases – to prevent them from taking hold.
Those of us who are here today have a duty to the memory of those who went before, never to let the likes of Starmer pervert their dream of the future into the nightmarish distopia he feverishly desires.
So, Labour members, I ask again: what are you doing about it?
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Hypocritical flag-waver: Keir Starmer speaks to the cameras in praise of our Armed Forces who have fought race hate and genocide – but he also supports a genocidal racist, and has said nothing against racist moves to unseat black female MPs in his own party.
Was anybody fooled by Keir Starmers display of commemoration and humility in memory of those in our Armed Forces who fought, among other things, against race hate and genocide?
Here’s his message:
Today, we say thank you to everyone who has served, and continues to serve, in our armed forces.
And here’s another message by Keir Starmer, sent on the previous day, supporting genocidal racist Tzipi Hotovely and condemning the peaceful protesters who told her she was not welcome on their college campus:
The demonstration was peaceful. It is Hotovely who demands violence against people who do not belong to her own ethnic group – a group to which Starmer belongs by marriage and supports in his business dealings and political activities.
The message is clear:
Keir Starmer sent a clear message tonight. The same one he sent during BLM. If you are a student or anyone for that matter who is brave enough to stand up and confront injustice and racism when you see it normalised, he is not on your side.
… and that includes anybody who has served in the Armed Forces, fighting race hate and genocide.
Now, that race hate and intolerance are making themselves clear within the ranks of the Parliamentary Labour Party, as it seems Starmer is planning to deselect four sitting MPs – for the crime of being black:
It seems the claim is that some in local party groups are stirring up unrest on the basis that some of the named black women were selected as supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, rather than as representatives of the people in the constituencies.
Among those facing deselection is Zarah Sultana, who is widely accepted to have been one of the most effective MPs in a Labour Party that has been rendered toothless by Starmer’s leadership:
The witch hunt has turned its ire towards Zarah Sultana – the best new MP in the whole of parliament. She is effective, compassionate, hard working and on the right side of history – and those are the reasons the apartheid supporting members of Labour Party can't stomach her.
She recently highlighted the racist abuse she receives from members of the public, posting on Twitter an email she received on her return from bereavement leave after the death of her grandmother:
Having spent a couple of days away on bereavement leave, I came back to my emails today. This is what I found. Muslim women in politics shouldn't have to tolerate this. pic.twitter.com/KFQ0zVVkER
What has Starmer done to support his MP in the face of this racism?
Nothing.
I’ll say it again:
He has done nothing.
He supports genocidal racists and he undermines people of colour in his own organisation – while pretending to be pious for the cameras.
What a verminous, racist hypocrite.
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‘Demand better’: That’s what the sign says on the wall behind Vince Cable and that’s what you need to do – demand better than him.
Apparently certain people are making a fuss because former Liberal Democrat minister Vince Cable said the Uighurs haven’t suffered genocide under China.
He did this while having a pint with swivel-eyed goon Nigel Farage on GB News, after publishing an article in The Independent.
Who cares what Cable thinks?
He’s yesterday’s man. So is Farage.
The whole stunt looks like it was cooked up to boost ratings for a failing far-right fake-news channel.
I hope no Vox Political reader is weak-minded enough to let Cable, Farage or GB News lead them by the nose in such a cynical way.
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Faceless: Universal Credit is an attempt to avoid treating benefit claimants as people. It is easier to deprive you of everything if they don’t have to think of you as a person.
The latest Tory propaganda effort to promote Universal Credit is not going well, it seems, with viewers labelling the policy “systematic genocide”.
This Site has already commented on the fact that employees at Liverpool’s Toxteth Job Centre didn’t want to appear on the show, because they did not want to be associated with government propaganda.
Now it seems viewers of the programme have rejected claims that Universal Credit helps anybody claiming it – voicing particular horror at the story of a 61-year-old woman who was forced to work three jobs, just to make ends meet.
61-year-old claimant Sue was shown struggling to survive on egg and baked beans after losing her job and being told her benefits would be reduced if she didn’t get 35 hours’ work a week.
@PurpleDon1973 said: “That poor woman. Susan, made redundant, 61 years old. 61 and expected to take on two or three jobs. Landed a job for 10 hours a week and jobcentre still on her back. 61 years old. Ffs.”
Another [viewer] described Universal Credit as “systematic genocide”.
Ant C said there are times he’s needed to claim Universal Credit “but was made to feel so ashamed I quickly withdrew my application”.
“No compassion whatsoever!” he said.
Some viewers were annoyed at the upbeat solutions to the case studies, suggesting the overall programme is actually more about government “propaganda” than showing the brutal realities at their worst.
JJ Wyatt said: “This show smacks of propaganda, the Universal Credit system is deliberately designed to punish and coerce.”
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Benjamin Netanyahu: He seems to think murdering Arabs is great fun.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
And some, it seems, examine the worst horrors with notepad in hand, keen to work out how they can achieve the same and get away with it.
So we come to the atrocities of the nation of Israel.
If the people of Gaza, imprisoned behind the apartheid wall imposed by Israel, may be likened to the inmates of a concentration camp – and I think they can…
And if their only defence against the Israel Defence Force thugs who murdered them on Monday was slings and stones – and I think it was…
Then it seems clear that Benjamin Netanyahu has launched a little Holocaust, all of his own, against the Palestinian people.
I know – accusing Israel of behaviour similar to that of Nazi Germany is an anti-Semitic trope. We’re all told we must not do it.
But that implies responsibility on the part of that country – not to emulate the Nazis in any way. It is a responsibility that the current Israeli government has scorned.
Netanyahu and his cronies are attacking Palestinian people purely because of who they are, and the fact that they live on land and occupy property he wants to steal.
A statement is not anti-Semitic if it is factually correct. And it is factually correct that Benjamin Netanyahu and the government of Israel are carrying out the racist, Islamophobic extermination of the Palestinian people.
The massacre of nearly 60 unarmed Palestinians – with more than 2,000 injured – is just the latest item on that agenda.
That it should happen on the 70th anniversary of the establishment of Israel as a nation only amplifies the crime. What happened – did Mr Netanyahu wake up and say to himself, “This is a great day – I think I’ll celebrate by murdering some Arabs”? That is, after all, what he did.
And what response does he receive from the international community and the media? Silence – or unrestrained approval.
It seems the threat of being labelled “anti-Semite” hangs heavily on some. To my colleagues in the mainstream media who don’t have the guts to stand up against brutality, I say: Shame on you. You disgrace us all.
Of course, the 70th anniversary of the establishment of Israel is also the 70th anniversary of the day Palestinians were turfed off land that had previously been theirs. They call it the Nakba, which means “catastrophe”:
Today marks the 70th anniversary of "The Nakba" or "Catastrophe". As we saw yesterday, the Palestinian people still live under a brutal and unjust occupation. We won't be silent. We offer them our full solidarity and support in their struggle for freedom, justice and equality. pic.twitter.com/0PP5TCLibv
Self-governing Palestinian territories like Gaza are entirely reliant on Israel for their water, electricity, telecommunications and other utilities – and the Israeli government has been starving Gaza of all of them. The Israeli government has turned Gaza into a ghetto.
We are told that around 40,000 Gazans have gathered at the fence that separates the territory from Israel. Israeli officials are pushing propaganda that states these people may rush on the fence in protest at their enclosure and effective imprisonment, and Israeli news channels are dutifully reporting that Hamas is using these people – rather than using the more likely explanation that these people are airing legitimate grievances.
In any case, if the Israeli government wants to talk about self-defence, we can always remind its representatives of the moment two months ago when video footage emerged of an Israeli Defence Force sniper shooting a Palestinian civilian dead – for fun.
If you want to know more about the attitude of the Israeli government, consider this hideous hag:
If you’re thinking, “Hang on, Mike, she’s really pretty!” think again. This is Ayelet Shaked, a member of the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament). You may find it bitterly ironic that she is currently Israel’s serving Minister of Justice, considering the fact that she broadcasts vile racism on her Facebook page.
For example, in 2014 she wrote: “Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.
“They have to die and their houses should be demolished so that they cannot bear any more terrorists.”
Do you think she’s pretty now?
Notice the dehumanisation of Palestinians as “snakes”. The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust has a poster on its website detailing the 10 stages of genocide, one of which is “dehumanisation”. “The Nazis referred to Jews as ‘vermin’,” it states. Those who would accuse others of anti-Semitism would be quick to leap on anybody who made such comparisons today. But they remain happy for Israeli politicians to refer to Palestinians as “snakes”.
At the ceremony to mark the US embassy’s move to Jerusalem, this woman accused Hamas, the Islamist party which rules the Strip, of “sacrificing its people as part of a PR effort”. What, is she trying to pretend Hamas killed an injured all those people? Israeli fingers were on the triggers. It seems clear that it is the Israeli government making the PR effort.
And failing, if there’s any justice in the world. Notice that Ms Shaked’s words fulfil another of the 10 stages of genocide: Denial.
Here’s the reality:
Theresa May needs to summon the Israeli Ambassador. Eight month old baby was killed yesterday due to Israeli tear gas. This is sufficient for the PM to expel the Israeli ambassador. #GazaMassacre#Gaza
What about Israeli government spokeswoman Michal Maayan, who advocated genocide because, “We can’t put all of these people in jail”?
What the?? #Israeli Government spokesperson "explains" that the use of live fire and the shooting dead of #Palestinian protestors in #Gaza is because they "can't put all these people in jail". This is genocide. (Source – @rtenews) pic.twitter.com/ktjIYJmWbN
Thank goodness Jeremy Corbyn is man enough to call an atrocity out for what it is:
The killing of dozens of unarmed protesters and wounding of many more by Israeli forces in Gaza, on the day President Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, is an outrage that demands not just international condemnation, but action.https://t.co/qUDmcDe2xv
But then, like myself, Mr Corbyn has already been accused by those who tar their enemies with the brush of anti-Semitism. What does he have to lose?
Notice that Theresa May – whose Conservative government sells arms to countries like Israel, in order to help them commit such vile crimes – remains silent. It seems it is up to Mr Corbyn to lead the call for international law and justice.
Doesn't it make you feel proud to be British? Yemeni children blown apart by our bombs, Palestinian children shot through the head by our rifles. https://t.co/fE3D90ReBa
Appallingly, the Jewish Chronicle is reporting that Tory ex-Work and Pensions Secretary Stephen Crabb, “chair of the Conservative Friends of Israel group, outlined its support for Israel’s right to defend itself from attempts to breach the Gaza border while accusing Hamas of “manipulating the citizens of Gaza”.
The United States – the country that likes to portray itself as the world’s police service – has blocked a United Nations motion for an investigation into the massacre. Don’t you think that a little suspicious?
BREAKING: White House says responsibility for Gaza deaths 'rests squarely with Hamas,' supports Israel's 'right to defend itself'
The cynicism is chilling The moral abdication is chilling The fact that so many others who consider themselves decent will say the same is chilling https://t.co/X5EzNhqUfL
When you consider the total number of MPs in Parliament – and what about the Lords? – it’s a pathetically small number. Presumably the others left their spines at home. One of them was Labour’s Grahame Morris:
Unfortunately these efforts have been totally undermined by the – at best – misguided efforts of Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), an organisation set up to support the government of that country, no matter what it does.
In the immediate aftermath of Monday’s massacre, LFI released a statement on Twitter that attempted to put the blame for Palestinians being shot by Israelis entirely on Hamas:
The tweet, blaming the Gazans for their own deaths, has been roundly condemned and has since been deleted – without comment. But the damage to LFI has been done and the Labour Party is being urged to reject the organisation. This may present a problem for MPs and other Labour representatives who are members:
Every member of Labour Friends of Israel should examine their conscience and consider whether they want to be associated with an organisation that can't bring itself to criticise the Israeli government for killing unarmed Palestinian protesters in yesterday's #GazaMassacre. pic.twitter.com/QDL6HOjbjY
— Frank Owen's Legendary Paintbrush (@WarmongerHodges) May 15, 2018
The LFI’s director tweeted similar propaganda – and took it down with similar haste:
I would like to know the opinion of ordinary Israeli citizens about the massacre – and that of Jews around the world.
Are they not as horrified as the rest of us by this outrage committed by the Israeli government?
That is what many of us want to see:
With the possibility of the violence worsening, please don't speak of British-Jews as some kind of alien force that can't be trusted as they're loyal to Netanyahu. British Jews are as British as anybody else and don't deserve to suffer due to the actions of the Israel government
Agreed. I would like to see vocal condemnation of the murderous actions of the Israeli Government from various groups who represent various British-Jews. I'm not demanding it; I'm just hoping they aren't silent. https://t.co/RCFL1rlcLe
Israel’s massacre of unarmed Palestinian protestors is horrific. The international community cannot continue to tolerate these crimes. Solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for freedom.
— Victoria Derbyshire (@vicderbyshire) May 15, 2018
“Deadly clashes.”
That’s a truly Orwellian way of describing Israeli snipers massacring Palestinian civilians. https://t.co/IEAlc4gtFq
— Kerry-Anne Mendoza 🏳️🌈🏴 (@TheMendozaWoman) May 15, 2018
I could go on and on but I think the point is made.
I await another wave of fake-outraged claims of anti-Semitism against me. Members of the Campaign Against Antisemitism are probably salivating as they type their latest screed.
But, as I said at the start, it isn’t anti-Semitic to point out a blindingly obvious fact.
In fact, let’s see a few more people highlighting the Netanyahu government’s racism, Islamophobia and genocide – starting with the UK government, the ‘Friends of Israel’ movements, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and everybody else who claims to speak for Judaism around the world.
And while we’re about it – what’s holding the tongues of all the reporters at the BBC?
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A woman and a man at the memorial plaque at Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany [Image: Jens Schlueter/Getty Images].
Here‘s a worthwhile article on the Beastrabban blog, making an important point about the way the scope of Holocaust Memorial Day seems to have been limited.
Today is, I believe, Holocaust Remembrance Day, when the world, or at least the Western world, reflects on the Shoah and the calculated extermination of six million Jews.
As we commemorate the sufferings of the Jews during the Nazi regime, we also need to take on board that it isn’t just about anti-Semitism, but about similar horrors that have disfigured human history down the centuries, and murderous, criminal regimes that are perpetrating them today.
Just so. The Nazi Holocaust, the killing of millions of Jews, and the way in which they were murdered, should never be forgotten. But part of this remembrance must involve recognition that similar hate-motivated atrocities can happen – and are happening – even now.
Unfortunately, there are some highly vocal people who seem to want to mask this fact, as we have seen on This Site over the last few days.
Holocaust Remembrance Day isn’t just about commemorating the Holocaust and its victims, but other genocides and their victims that have occurred throughout history. Hitler partly made his decision to go ahead with the extermination of the Jews because of the complete lack of western reaction to the Young Turks’ massacre of the Armenians. He commented, ‘Who remembers the Armenians?’ And before then, the German colonial authorities in what is now Tanganyika had attempted to exterminate the Herrero after they revolted, using similar eugenicist logic.
It is … important to remember the other victims of the Nazi camps as well.
This included the congenitally disabled, who were murdered by Nazi doctors under the Aktion T4 programme with the assistance and supervision of the SS… This prefigured and prepared for the murder of the Jews, particularly in the use of poison gas.
I made the point that disabled people are being persecuted to their deaths by the Conservative government in the United Kingdom – right now – in a response to comments in Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday (January 24).
And what initial response did I receive?
Denial. And denial is one of the ten stages of genocide, as we all know from the Holocaust Memorial Day website. Right?
The Nazis also attempted to exterminate the Romanies – the Gypsies – as they too were considered, like the Jews, to be subhuman and a threat to German society and racial industry.
Other victims of the camps included the mentally ill, neurotics, prostitutes, recidivist criminals, Prisoners of War, and political prisoners, such as trade unionists, Socialists, Communists, Anarchists, gay men, and slave workers from the Slav nations. The last were worked to death in horrific conditions, including building the Nazi fortifications and tunnels in the Channel Islands.
The Holocaust Memorial Day website devotes a couple of paragraphs on a page to these victims of the Nazi Holocaust. The highest estimate of the death figures shows they outnumber Jewish victims by a ratio of nearly two to one.
The website also devotes several pages each to the genocides in Cambodia, Darfur, Bosnia and Rwanda, and mentions the atrocities against Armenians which encouraged Hitler to commit his own.
It omits many other genocides, both recent and historical.
Nothing is said about the indigenous people of America, for example. Those of you who are aware of the HMD website may not even know there is a site for Aztec Natives, which makes the following pertinent point:
“The Mexican people are the descendants and the end product of five centuries of genocide – the greatest Holocaust in human history. Over 100 million of our ancestors, i.e. at least 90% of natives were killed.”
100 million dead, and no commemoration on Holocaust Memorial Day. It seems some groups have stronger public relations people than others.
Genocides have continued to be perpetrated, such as the various crimes against humanity committed by Fascist regimes across Latin America, Asia and Africa, supported by American foreign policy. The persecution of the Rohingya is just the latest of these.
Isn’t it interesting how we can identify the wrongdoings of people in other countries, yet we say nothing about what’s happening in our own? “It couldn’t happen here”, as the saying goes.
It has; it does; it is.
Those who deny it are complicit.
Fortunately, the Beastrabban piece provides a ray of hope. We see that not everybody supports the overwhelming concentration of attention on the Nazi Holocaust, and it is important to note that Jewish scholars are among those leading the way in this regard.
And Jews have been involved in protesting and commemorating them and their victims as well. In Canada, the leader of the mainstream Jewish organisation, Bernie Farber, organised a ‘Shabbat for Darfur’ after that city was attacked by the Islamist Janjaweed Militia in the early part of this century. Farber’s generous action has been bitterly criticised by members of the transatlantic conservative Right, who feel that Jews should concentrate solely on their own sufferings in the Holocaust, and not expand their experience of suffering, persecution and attempted genocide to form solidarity with the other persecuted ethnic and religious groups.
Why not form solidarity with other persecuted groups? We all know there is strength in numbers. Is it because making such connections might reveal uncomfortable truths about events closer to home?
Israeli scholars have also noted that the Holocaust, while horrific, was not a unique event. See Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review, edited by Israel W. Charny, the executive director of the Institute on the Holocaust, Jerusalem, and Director of Postgraduate Interdisplinary and Graduate Social Work Programs in Family, Therapy, Bob Shapell School of Social Work, Tel Aviv University. Dr. Charny’s book also includes a chapter on the ethnic cleansing of Israel’s indigenous Arab population, which is definitely unwelcome to the Likudniks.
But it bears out Ilan Pappe’s assertion that Israelis are still decent people, who need to have the situation and issues properly explained to them. But odiously, Netanyahu, Likud and other ethno-nationalists in his ruling coalition are doing all they can to prevent that occurring. As are his little helpers over here in the shape of the Jewish Labour Movement and the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism.
Food for thought, I hope. But I wonder if critics of This Site and This Writer will be able to forgive me for including more groups in my own commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Day than they do.
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Julie Hull (above) is the kind of person who wants the author of This Site condemned as an anti-Semite.
My word.
This Writer’s experience after Prime Minister’s Questions today demonstrates the danger of publishing unwise words – and I don’t mean my own.
At the very start of the session, Theresa May said: “I am sure that Members throughout the House will wish to join me in marking Holocaust Memorial Day this Saturday and in remembering all those who endured such appalling suffering in the holocaust.”
In fact, she seems to have made a common mistake, that HMD commemorates only the genocides perpetrated by the Nazis between 1939 and 1945. This is a falsehood. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn went some way towards correcting this as he stood to ask his first question: “I join the Prime Minister in commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day. Many Members will be signing the book of remembrance and attending the event tomorrow. We have to teach all generations that the descent into Nazism and the holocaust must never, ever be repeated anywhere on this planet.”
But of course it has been repeated – again and again. It is hard to describe the horror of the Shoah (as Jewish people describe the Nazi holocaust), but we have witnessed many occasions in which the same has been attempted against other ethnic groups.
The Cambodian genocide in the 1970s took anything up to three million lives. In Rwanda, in 1994, the highest estimate of the death toll is one million. In 1971, up to three million people were killed in Bangladesh.
There are smaller genocides, too. But are they to be treated with less horror, less revulsion, just because fewer people died? In East Timor between 1975 and 199, up to 200,000 people lost their lives. Are any of those lives less important than those lost between 1939 and 1945, or in Cambodia, or in Bangladesh? A similar number died in Somalia between 1988 and 1991. Were those lives any less important? What about the 200,000 Kurds said to have died in Iraq between 1986 and 1989? Or the 166,000 in Guatemala between 1962 and 1996?
Or the 30-40,000 deaths in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995? I was in Bosnia with a charity trying to help rebuild, in 1997. The things I saw, and the accounts of the people I met, will stay with me until the day I die.
What about the thousands of people who are understood to have died as a result of Conservative policies to people with long-term illnesses and disabilities since 2010?
They didn’t happen, according to people on Twitter today (January 24).
Perhaps it was unwise, considering the tidal wave of hate against me that has been swelling on Twitter over (false) claims of anti-Semitism that have been made against me – but I have been campaigning for many years against the Tory policy to push sick and disabled people to their deaths, and this was an opportunity I could not pass up.
So I tweeted:
.@jeremycorbyn made important point on Holocaust Memorial Day, that such crimes continue. Like Tory genocide of disabled ppl? #PMQs#bbcdp
First, there are those who deny that people with long-term illnesses and disabilities are being pushed to their deaths by Tory policies.
Here’s one now – Julie Hull:
A vile comment and equally grotesquely insulting to Conservatives, to true victims of genocides, and to the disabled. You and this kind of ‘kinder gentler politics’ bring shame on the party you pretend to love.
I’ll repeat her words, in case she chooses to delete the tweet later. She wrote: “A vile comment and equally grotesquely insulting to Conservatives, to true victims of genocides, and to the disabled. You and this kind of ‘kinder gentler politics’ bring shame on the party you pretend to love.”
Strong words. But it wasn’t clear what they actually meant, so I had to seek clarity. I asked: “Are you denying the deaths of sick and disabled people due to Tory policies?”
So Tory spending cuts in health and social care didn’t lead to the deaths of nearly 120,000 people since 2010 – mostly older people and those whose health issues mean they live in care homes? That will be news to the authors of this study, published by the British Medical Journal.
So Tory benefit cuts didn’t cause a “human catastrophe” for sick and disabled people in the UK? That will be news to the United Nations.
Julie Hull, that’ll be news to the UN. According to UN systematic abuse of disabled by Tories has led 2 thousands of deaths of disabled and sick! Eugenics!
(If you click on the link, you’ll see it refers to fewer than 2,400 deaths. This is because the Conservative government at first tried to withhold some information from me. The remaining facts were provided later, under the cosh of the UK Statistics Authority).
And what of the other deaths? You see, the Department for Work and Pensions only records the deaths of claimants up to around two weeks after a decision is made to cut their benefits. Many, many people have died after that period – due to a number of causes.
Who can forget David Clapson, a former soldier who died of diabetic ketoacidosis caused by severe lack of insulin, three weeks after his benefits were stopped – for missing one meeting at the Job Centre. He had no money to pay for the electricity to keep his fridge working, meaning the insulin he kept there became useless. At the time of his death, he had no food in his stomach at all. A pile of CVs was found next to his body. His death was not recorded by the DWP as it occurred after the Department’s two-week limit.
How about Michael O’Sullivan, who was driven to suicide bids after being found “fit for work” by the Department for Work and Pensions? A coroner, Mary Hassall, made it clear that she considered the DWP – and therefore the Conservative government – to have triggered his suicide.
There are many more incidents. If you have the stamina for it, try going through the list of articles on the subject, published on This Site alone.
And for anyone who still doubts that the Conservative government and its policies had anything to do with the deaths, bear in mind that the benefit assessment interview for both ESA and PIP includes a query about whether the claimant has ever considered suicide.
If they say “yes”, the next question is: “Why haven’t you done it?” Can you honestly tell yourself that a person with mental health problems, who has already considered suicide, won’t take that as a demand that they take their own life?
Oh, but never mind any of the evidence that has been amassed since 2010. Julie Hull says there’s no connection between the deaths of sick and disabled people and the Conservative government, so that’s all right then.
Is it? Really?
The other aspect of this is the following claim, repeated many times over the last few hours:
Minimising of the Holocaust is antisemitic, which you know and are doing deliberately to cause offence.
Beth Rosenberg wrote: “Minimising of the Holocaust is antisemitic, which you know and are doing deliberately to cause offence.”
Two points:
I have not minimised any Holocaust.
Holocaust Memorial Day commemorates many holocausts and genocides, not just what happened to the Jewish people.
The first point should be self-evident from what I have written above. If anything, my critics are minimising the deaths of sick and disabled people currently taking place here in the UK – and that is unforgivable.
It is possible that the people complaining to me misunderstand the terms. For example:
What a vile human being, someone needs to look up the definition of #Genocide
“What a vile human being,” tweeted Jonny Braham. “Someone needs to look up the definition of #Genocide.”
So I did – on the Holocaust Memorial Day website. I responded: “HMD website: “The Convention [The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide] defines genocide as … 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” among others.”
Ah ok so the tories made all these people disabled & now wants to wipe them out, I reiterate my previous tweet, you’re a vile human being
That reply defies belief: “Ah ok so the tories made all these people disabled & now wants to wipe them out, I reiterate my previous tweet, you’re a vile human being.”
Who said anything about the Tories making anybody disabled?
As for the rest of it – we were discussing genocide and I provided the information requested of me.
Oh, and yes – I referred to holocausts in the plural. Look up the definition – this one is from the Oxford Dictionary:
“holocaust
“noun
1.
“destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war.”
My insistence on this definition will become clear, later in this article.
As for the second: The tweet I’ve quoted makes it very clear that the person attacking me believes Holocaust Memorial Day to refer specifically to the genocide committed against Jewish people by Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. So does this one, from the same person:
The mythology from the left compared to the systematic murder of 6 million Jews. You are totally revolting and I’m not going to give a common little man like you any more attention.
She wrote: “The mythology from the left compared to the systematic murder of 6 million Jews.”
So HMD refers only to the Shoah and not to any other such events, according to Ms Rosenberg. Oh, and the deaths of thousands of people with long-term illnesses and disabilities have not happened, in her opinion.
Here’s S. Nicholson:
How dare you compare the systematic murder of millions of people with the fairy tale claim that controlling benefits is damaging? You are completely despicable and so is Corbyn
“How dare you compare the systematic murder of millions of people with the fairy tale claim that controlling benefits is damaging?”
“Fairy tale”?
Christina Wallis tweeted: “That’s probably the most deluded and disgusting comment I’ve ever seen on Twitter. How dare you.”
I responded: “In what way? Are you denying the deaths of sick and disabled people due to Conservative Party policy? If so, on what basis? Have you read the information available on this subject (there’s a lot)? Or are you just trying to attack me?”
“I just find it upsetting that you’re using an atrocity that lead to the death of six million people, including members of my family to make a political point. I wasn’t attacking you, I’ve never attacked anyone in my life.”
Oh, is that right? It seemed like an attack.
So we’ve established that the people quoted above consider the Holocaust to be the atrocity committed by Nazi Germany against Jewish people, and I am an anti-Semite for suggesting anything else.
I draw attention to it because, back in September 2016, former Momentum vice-chair Jackie Walker was suspended by the Labour Party after members of the Jewish Labour Movement complained that she was an anti-Semite, for believing exactly the same thing.
“In terms of Holocaust Day, wouldn’t it be wonderful if Holocaust Day was open to all people who experienced Holocaust?” she said at a training workshop on dealing with antisemitism at Momentum’s conference.
A number of people in the room immediately spoke out against Ms Walker’s comments and told her that Holocaust Memorial Day already included commemoration of other genocides. She responded: “In practice, it’s not actually circulated and advertised as such.”
Look at Theresa May’s words, quoted above. Look at Jeremy Corbyn’s. It is clear that they are referring to the Nazi atrocity. Together with the tweets above, I would say there is evidence that Ms Walker has a point.
Wouldn’t you?
For those who posted your hate messages in the hope that you would condemn me: At least you’ve done your bit to get Ms Walker’s suspension lifted.
For clarity, Holocaust Memorial Day does commemorate other atrocities – in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur. That means it leaves out many, many other such horrific events. Ms Walker, if I recall correctly, was unhappy that transatlantic slavery is not mentioned.
Fortunately, there were people who were willing to stand up and be counted on my side too:
120,000 deaths by the #DWP 100,000premature deaths by #NHSCrisis 1000's deaths by #homelessness 100's of deaths by #prisoners suicides All useless feeders on the #Tory agenda#Fascism is stalking the streets of Britain Now.
— David Stirrup #3.5% #Join a Union #BLM (@David4rds) January 24, 2018
Yes because Jews are the only ones who died in the Holocaust. My people died in the Holocaust as well, so its not Antisemitic.
— (Dan) BLM -=El Negro Matapacos=- (@TheAngryLeftie) January 25, 2018
'Control of benefits'? Was that for real? People are being systematically denied benefits as a result of the WCA. They have died shortly afterwards, according to coroners as a DIRECT result. The DWP does not deny this, yet you do? Grow up for Gods sake.
One more thing: The Holocaust Memorial Day website has an image entitled “The ten stages of genocide”, which I’ll reproduce below:
As you can see, the Conservatives are well on their way with their genocide of people with illnesses and disabilities.
Stage One – Classification, Stage Four – Dehumanisation and Stage Six – Polarisation have already been implemented, with government and their tame media encouraging their supporters to ostracise those who have long-term illnesses and/or disabilities, and to refer to them as “scroungers”, “skivers” and worse. The Tories have the Daily Mail, among other rags, to spread their hate.
Attempts have been made at Stage Two – Symbolisation, with the bid to make disabled people wear badges on the London Underground. On the face of it, this was to allow them access to facilities for the disabled, but advocates for disabled people warned that it would make them targets for people who had been indoctrinated with the hatred symbolised by Stage One and Stage Four.
Stage Three – Discrimination is exactly why the United Nations criticised the UK government several years ago. The government was found guilty of “grave or systematic violations of the rights of persons with disabilities”.
Stage Five – Organisation is covered by the Department for Work and Pensions. You see, violence doesn’t have to be carried out with guns these days – it can be done with a keystroke when a benefit claimant is deprived of their allowance. The assessment system for ESA and PIP assumes either that illness and/or disability is all in the mind, or that the claimant is trying to avoid working for a living, and current information has it that the government wants to clear 80 per cent of claimants from the benefit books.
Deprived of their means of survival, sick/disabled people are left to their own devices. They can’t claim Jobseekers’ Allowance – as directed by the DWP – because they would be sanctioned very quickly when their illness made it impossible for them to meet one or more of the conditions required of someone searching for a job. So they starve to death like David Clapson, or commit suicide, like Michael O’Sullivan, and the government can deny any responsibility, in accordance with Stage Ten – Denial.
We have already seen the Conservatives deny any wrong-doing to the United Nations; we know they do not collect information about the well-being of former sickness and disability benefit claimants who have been cut off by their cruel assessment system.
That’s how the Tory genocide of the sick and disabled works. If you denied it before reading this article, please reconsider your position.
The phrase most commonly associated with the Holocaust inflicted by the Nazis is “Never again”.
The fact is, since 1945, such events have happened again and again.
It is outrageous that I should be vilified for pointing it out.
Postscript: Believe it or not, I received the following after publishing this article:
“People die – it’s the way of the world” has to be one of the most sickening attempts to justify the Tory persecution of sick and disabled people that I have yet seen.
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