Ramallah Online, Palestine
Jan 24 2005
Harry the Nazi
by Brady Long, Ramallah Online Columnist
I will be the first to express my indignation at the choice of
costume by Prince Harry.
But what troubles me is the righteousness coming from various world
leaders, including Israelis, as if this costume and symbol are alone
in their representation of evil of the 20th century. The European
Union would like to see this symbol banned. Is it time to put the
Nazi atrocities including the holocaust into the context of 20th
century genocides?
During the program, Dateline London, BBC, one of the guests asked if
there would have been a similar outcry if the Prince had costumed
himself as Stalin, Hirohito, Mussolini, Mao, Mugabe, the Young Turks
circa Turkey 1915, etc. The Jewish guest reacted swiftly by stating
that there was no comparison to what Hitler did to the Jews to any
other figure of the 20th century. During a conversation with a close
friend, he echoed a similar response by referring to the ghastly
images of the trains, the crematoria, and the snarling dogs. In one
sense I agreed but then again if nobody witnesses the falling of a
tree does it diminish the falling of the tree? This reality has
spurred me on to search out past and, in some cases, present
holocausts/genocides.
Whereas the holocaust was horrific, it pales to what Stalin inflicted
on the five to seven million Ukrainians, murdered by starvation, the
Chechnyans, the Cossacks and many others. From 1917 to 1987, the
Communist government murdered about forty-one million.
Ask the relatives of the five million Poles who also were killed by
the Nazis if they had received preferential treatment when they were
forced into the gas chambers or summarily executed.
The first holocaust of the 20th century occurred in what is now known
as Namibia; this was the first genocide of the 20th century. Some
Hereros have suggested that the Nazi Holocaust was patterned after
this genocide some three and a half decades later. `Germany ruled
Namibia from 1880 to 1915. In 1904, Herero warriors were angered at
the German settlers who had enslaved their people, lynched their men,
and stolen their land, cattle and women. On Jan 12, they massacred
about two hundred German civilians. Although the uprising ended on
1904-Aug-11, the German army continued to exterminate the Hereros
until 1907, resulting in the deaths of perhaps 65,000 persons. As is
usual in these mass slaughters, the number of victims is unknown. The
Herero population alive at the time range from 50,000 to 120,000.
About 15, 000 survived.’ ( )
“The [Christian] Armenian genocide of 1915-1916 effectively wiped out
the Armenian population of Turkey, claiming some 1.5 million victims.
Perhaps 75,000 Armenians endure in Turkey today, most of them in
Istanbul. The Armenian Genocide occurred in a systematic fashion,
which proves that it was directed by the Turkish government — the
Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire. First the Armenians in
the army were disarmed, placed into labor battalions, and then
killed. Then the Armenian political and intellectual leaders were
rounded up on [1915-] April 24 and killed. Finally, the remaining
Armenians were rounded up, told they would be relocated, and then
marched off to concentration camps in the desert between Jerablus and
Deir ez-Zor where they would starve and thirst to death in the
burning sun…The authorities in Trebizond, on the Black Sea coast,
did vary this routine: they loaded Armenians on barges and sank them
far out at sea. Three current and past governments of Turkey have
denied that the genocide actually happened. On January 18th 2001,
France passed a law branding as genocide the mass murder of Armenians
at the hands of the Ottoman Turk.’ (This information has been taken
from the following sources,
“The Armenian
Genocide,” at: )
Croatia, 1941 to 1945, was the arena of another holocaust whose
intent was racial purification.
`These atrocities were perpetrated by the Ustaša regime, the
Independent State of Croatia, which was established in power by the
Nazi government of Germany during World War II. They fiercely hated
Serbs, Jews, Communists and all other non-Catholics. Their goals were
to convert Croatia into a pure Croatian and Roman Catholic
independent state. On July 22nd, 1941 Dr. Mile Budak, the Ustaša
Minister of Education and Cults, said: “The movement of the Ustashi
is based on religion. For minorities-Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, we have
three million bullets. We shall kill one part of the Serbs. We shall
transport another, and the rest of them will be forced to embrace the
Roman Catholic religion. Thus, our new Croatia will get rid of all
Serbs in our midst in order to become one hundred percent Catholic
within ten years.” (“The embodied devils: Who was who in NDH?” Balkan
Repository Project, at: )
Other examples of ethnic/ideological cleansing in the 20th century
include:
Nanking, China- December 12th, 1937 – 320 thousand
China-1949 to1987 – 35million.
Cambodia-1975 to1979 – 2 million.
East Timor-1975 to1999 – 200 thousand.
Rwanda – 1994 – 800 thousand.
Bosnia/Herzegoviana-1975 to 1999, – 200 thousand.
Kosovo- 1998 to 1999 – deaths unknown.
Democratic Republic of Congo- 1997 to the present – 3 to 5 million.
Indonesia- 1965-1966, 1972 – 500 thousand.
Burundi- 1972 – 100 to 200 thousand.
Palestine- 1947 – 2005 ????????????
Before we jump to the conclusion that all of these holocausts were
the result of totalitarian regimes, look at the following examples of
pre-20th century holocausts closer to home.
….`For about 300 years, during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance
periods, the Christian church was directly or indirectly responsible
for the arrest, torture and execution of persons believed to worship
Satan or express heretical religious ideas. Civil courts, not by the
Catholic Church, passed most of the death sentences. However, the
church was indirectly involved: It provided the theological
foundation for the persecution of heretics in civil courts. It
created a false and unsupportable belief that large numbers of
worshipers had sold their soul to Satan and were committing evil and
homicidal acts. Belief in Witches gradually dissipated during the Age
of Enlightenment, as people began to question the reality of many
long-held religious beliefs. Estimates on the number of victims range
from 3,000 (from a Roman Catholic source) to 9,000,000 (from various
Neopagan sources).’
`…For his second voyage to the Americas, Columbus took the title
Admiral of the Ocean Sea and proceeded to unleash a reign of terror
unlike anything seen before or since. When he was finished, eight
million Arawaks — virtually the entire native population of
Hispaniola — had been exterminated by torture, murder, forced labor,
starvation, disease and despair. Later European Christian invaders
systematically murdered additional tens of millions of Aboriginal
people, from the Canadian Arctic to South America. The exact number
is unknown. Natives were murdered by warfare, forced death marches,
forced relocation to barren lands, intentional and accidental spread
of disease, poisoning, the promotion of suicide through the
destruction of their cultural and religious heritage, etc. Even
today, Canadian Natives have the highest suicide of any population
group in the world.’ The genocide against American Aboriginals is one
of the most massive, and longest lasting genocidal program in human
history.
`… The European invasion of Australia started in 1788. The population
of Aboriginals in the country was approximately 750,000. By 1911, the
number had been reduced to 31,000. Diseases introduced by the
invaders decimated most, against which the Aboriginals had no
defense. Some 20,000 were murdered. In those days, “The Sydney Herald
claimed that blacks had ‘bestowed no labor upon the land-their
ownership, their right, was nothing more than that of the Emu or the
Kangaroo.’ Courts rejected Aboriginal evidence, because
non-Christians could not swear oaths, and white killers used ‘the
defense that Aboriginal morality did not exist’. The extermination of
Aboriginals in Tasmania was particularly brutal; many white settlers
would shoot them on sight. In 1830, the remaining 300 Aboriginals
were ethnically cleansed from Tasmania. They were captured and
transferred to Flinders Island. They signed a treaty, which
guaranteed their later return. It was never honored. By 1843, only 50
remained alive. The atrocities continued into the 20th century.
Between 1910 and 1970, between one in three and one in ten indigenous
children were forcibly removed from their families. They were placed
with white families in order to absorb these people into the general
population. Aboriginals were finally granted citizenship in 1967.
They still await an apology from the Government of Australia.’
Why is it that we gravitate to the persecution of the Jews but not to
the millions of other victims? One answer may be ignorance while the
other is ominous in its prejudicial nature. The following excerpt
from the archives of MacLean’s may shed light upon the latter.
`It was not possible to get very close to the Russians nor to find
out anything much about them. They were a dumb, passive lot, knowing
no language but their own and quite devoid of intelligence for the
most part. ‘(Canadian POW/WW1 speaking about a fellow Russian POW)
One reality that is irrefutable is that Jewish persecution is the
longest in human history, (not the longest genocidal program-
American Aboriginals-) but that fact must not diminish the suffering
of all peoples who have and are being persecuted. The city of
Montreal, Canada came up with a novel idea
‘There are many monuments dedicated to various particular Human
tragedies in the world. In 1998 however, the City of Montréal was
innovative in this field by erecting a monument called La Réparation
– Monument á la mémoire des victimes de génocides, created by artist
Francine Larivée. This monument was dedicated to all victims of
genocides in the 20th century”, says the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.
La Presse, 1998.
Sadly Sharon and Bush, his chief ally, refuse to reflect on the past
and have chosen to do to the Palestinians what many are saying is
another attempt at ethnic persecution and in some cases ethnic
cleansing. Also, Bush and his coalition of the willing are
spearheading a war, not on terror, but on a crusade against Islam.
The first attempt took place one thousand years past and ended in
tragedy; this crusade is reaping the same results.
To conclude, if Prince Harry’s choice of the swastika is to be banned
and he should be forced to go to the 60th anniversary of the
liberation of Auschwitz and repent, should not the bearers of the
Star of David and the Star Spangled Banner be subjected to a similar
fate and be forced to go to the many places upon which they have
inflicted death and destruction and should many of us who have
ignored the plight of the Palestinians, and so many others, be made
to do the same?
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