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May 20, 2013
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 Rules of War Weren’t Made for Only One PeoplePosted on Feb 14, 2009
By Robert Fisk Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Independent. The third and very final part of the “normality” of war. I have just finished reading Lyn Smith’s Forgotten Voices of the Holocaust. I admit to a personal interest. Lyn is a friend of mine for whom I have been recording my memories of Middle East wars for the Imperial War Museum. Nothing I have ever seen can equal this, however, and I can give only one example from the terrifying, outrageously brave and moving book this is. It is the testimony of Leon Greenman, a British Jewish inmate of Auschwitz-Birkenau who arrived at the extermination camp with his wife and child. It speaks for itself. All other passages pale beside it: “We were bullied out of the train and stood about waiting. It must have been about half past two in the morning. It was dark, a blue light was shining on the platform. We saw a few SS men walking up and down. They separated the men from the women. So I stood right in front of the men and I could see my wife there with the child in her arms. She threw me a kiss and she showed the baby ... Then one of the prisoners in a striped uniform commanded us to follow him. Well, we turned to the left and walked a little way for two or three minutes. A truck arrived, stopped near us and on the truck were all the women, children, babies and in the centre my wife and child standing up. They stood up to the light as if it was meant to be like that – so that I could recognise them. A picture I’ll never forget. All these were supposed to have gone to the bathroom to have a bath, to eat and to live. Instead they had to undress and go into the gas chambers, and two hours later those people were ashes, including my wife and child.” I recalled this searing passage this week when I received a letter from a reader, taking me to task for my “constant downplaying of the suffering of the Palestinians on the grounds that their deaths and suffering are minimal when compared with that of the Second World War”. Now, I should say at once that this is a bit unfair. I was especially taking exception to a Palestinian blog now going the rounds which shows a queue of Palestinian women at one of Israel’s outrageous roadblocks and a (slightly) cropped picture of the Auschwitz selection ramp, the same platform upon which Leon Greenman was separated from his young wife and child more than 60 years ago. The picture of the Palestinian women is based on a lie; they are not queuing to be exterminated. Racist, inhumane and sometimes deadly – Palestinian women have died at these infernal checkpoints – but they are not queuing to be murdered. Advertisement And yes, I’ll go along with this. If it’s an individual being deliberately killed, then this is no less terrible than any other individual, albeit that this second person may be one of six million others. The point, of course, is the centrality of the Holocaust and – Israel’s constant refrain – its exclusivity. Actually, the Armenian Holocaust – as I’ve said on umpteen occasions – is also central to all genocide studies. The same system of death marches, of camps, of primitive asphyxiation, even a few young German officers in Turkey watching the genocide in 1915 and then using the same methods on Jews in the occupied Soviet Union. Numbers matter. But our reader has another point. “After all,” she says, “in the Second World War, after the entry of the US and USSR on our side, people could feel pretty positive about the outcome. But where is such hope for the Palestinians? And now to cap the horror the BBC is refusing to even show an appeal to help Gaza…” I’m not at all sure that W Churchill Esq would have entirely placed such confidence in the outcome of the Second World War – he was initially worried that the Americans would use up their firepower on the Japanese rather than against Hitler’s Germany. I think, however, there is yet one more point. The rules of war – the Geneva Conventions and all the other post-Second World War laws – were meant to prevent another Holocaust. They were specifically designed to ensure that no one should ever again face the destruction of Mrs Greenman and her child. They were surely not made only for one race of people. And it is these rules which Israel so disgracefully flouted in Gaza. It’s a bit like the refrain from Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara and a whole host of other apparatchiks when the torture at Abu Ghraib was revealed. Well, yes, they told us, it was bad – but not as bad as Saddam Hussein’s regime. And of course, this argument leads to perdition. True, we were bad – but not as bad as the Baath party. Or the Khmer Rouge. Or Hitler’s Germany and the SS. Or the Ottoman Turks – though I noticed movingly that one of Lyn’s Jewish Holocaust survivors mentions the Armenians. No, the numbers game works both ways. A thousand Palestinians die in Gaza. But what if the figure were 10,000? Or 100,000? No, no, of course that wouldn’t happen. But the rules of war are made for all to obey. Yes, I know that the Jews of Europe had no Hamas to provide the Nazis with an excuse for their deaths. But a Palestinian woman and her child are as worthy of life as a Jewish woman and her child on the back of a lorry in Auschwitz.  TAGS:
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By Shenonymous, February 14, 2009 at 11:43 pm Link to this comment
Part 3 - How so many Jews came to be concentrated in one geographical area in Germany proper and its vicinity
In the autumn of 1942, the Germans seized approximately 770 Norwegian Jews and deported them by boat and train to Auschwitz. An effort to deport the Danish Jews in September 1943 failed when the resistance in Denmark, alerted to the impending roundup, assisted the mass escape of Danish Jews to neutral Sweden.
SOUTHERN EUROPE
The Germans deported Jews from Greece, from Italy, and from Croatia. Between March and August 1943, SS and police officials deported more than 40,000 Jews from Salonika, in northern Greece, to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the camp staff killed most of them in the gas chambers upon arrival. After the Germans occupied northern Italy in September 1943, they deported about 8,000 Jews, most of them to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Based on an agreement with their Croatian Axis partner, German officials took custody of around 7,000 Croatian Jews and deported them to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Bulgarian gendarmes and military units rounded up and deported around 7,000 Jewish residents of Bulgarian-occupied Macedonia, formerly a part of Yugoslavia, via a transit camp at Skopje. Bulgarian authorities concentrated approximately 4,000 Jews residing in Bulgarian-occupied Thrace at two assembly points in Bulgaria and transferred them to German custody. In all, Bulgaria deported more than 11,000 Jews to German-controlled territory. The German authorities deported these Jews to Treblinka 2 and killed them in the gas chambers.
CENTRAL EUROPE
German authorities began to deport Jews from the Greater German Reich in October 1941, while the construction of the killing centers was still in the planning stage. Between October 15, 1941, and November 4, 1941, German authorities deported 20,000 Jews to the Lodz ghetto. Between November 8, 1941, and October 1942, German authorities deported approximately 49,000 Jews from the Greater German Reich to Riga, Minsk, Kovno, and Raasiku, all in the Reich Commissariat Ostland (German-occupied Belorussia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia). SS and police officials shot the overwhelming majority of the deportees upon arrival in the Reich Commissariat Ostland. German authorities deported another approximately 63,000 German, Austrian, and Czech Jews to the Warsaw ghetto and to various locations in District Lublin, including the transit camp-ghettos at Krasnystaw and Izbica and the killing center in Sobibor, between March and October 1942. German Jewish residents of the Lodz and Warsaw ghettos were later deported with Polish Jews to Chelmno, Treblinka 2, and, in 1944, to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The first transport of Jews from the Greater German Reich directly to Auschwitz arrived on July 18, 1942, from Vienna. From late October 1942 until January 1945, German authorities deported more than 71,000 Jews remaining in the Greater German Reich to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Germans deported elderly or prominent Jews from Germany, Austria, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and western Europe to the Theresienstadt ghetto, which also served as a transit camp for deportations further east, most often to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Between May and July 1944, Hungarian gendarmes, in cooperation with German security police officials, deported nearly 440,000 Jews from Hungary. Most of them were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. With the cooperation of Slovak authorities, the Germans deported more than 50,000 Slovak Jews to the concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek. The Slovak Jews were the first to be selected for the gas chambers at Birkenau. In the autumn of 1944, German SS and police officials deported 10,000 Slovak Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau during the Slovak uprising. This deportation was the last major one to a killing center.
Report thisBy Shenonymous, February 14, 2009 at 11:43 pm Link to this comment
Part 4 - How so many Jews came to be concentrated in one geographical area in Germany proper and its vicinity
Report thisBetween March 1942 and November 1943, the SS and police deported approximately 1,526,000 Jews, most of them by train, to the killing centers of Operation Reinhard: Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. Between December 8, 1941, and March 1943 and again in June-July 1944, SS and police officials deported approximately 156,000 Jews and a few thousand Roma and Sinti to the killing center at Chelmno by train, by truck, and on foot. Between March 1942 and December 1944, the German authorities deported approximately 1.1 million Jews and 23,000 Roma and Sinti to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the overwhelming majority by rail. Fewer than 500 survived the Operation Reinhard killing centers. Only a handful of Jews survived the transports to Chelmno by escaping from the trains; none are known to have survived arrival at Chelmno. Perhaps as many as 100,000 Jews survived deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau by virtue of having been selected for forced labor upon arrival.
By coloradokarl, February 14, 2009 at 11:20 pm Link to this comment
Cyrena, Peace has to BEGIN Now. Any words to the past are not constructive, They will not help the cause of Peace. Once the Government is in place then an active movement towards a Just and Fair solution for BOTH Sides can begin. The Palestinians are having elections soon also (I think). Full Employment is a Good first step. But until the Governments are in place there is too much confusion with the parties more worried about the politics and posturing for votes. Obama wants a solution for his legacy, I’m sure. I have a good feeling and am Hopeful for the future of Israeli Jews and the Palestinians. This is the Key of the door to Peace in the Middle east. The World needs this.
Report thisBy wildflower, February 14, 2009 at 10:48 pm Link to this comment
Clearly, the Holocaust was a horrific event. But as I look at what has recently happened in Gaza, it’s also clear to me that many Israelis either have not learned from or do not fully understand the horror that the Holocaust represents:
“. . . A Norwegian doctor claims Israel is using Gaza as a ‘test laboratory for new weapons,’ including Dense Inert Metal Explosives, or DIME. . .”
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0114/p07s01-wome.html?page=2
“. . . Villagers here in this southern Gaza farm town say their neighborhood was showered with hundreds of chunks of burning white phosphorus. . . Majid Najar said the phosphorus started fires all around the home where he had taken shelter along with 20 relatives. He said he was next door helping evacuate a pair of elderly neighbors when he felt the impact of something striking his home. . .
On Jan. 24, a research team from Human Rights Watch visited Khozaa. Researcher Marc Garlasco, a weapons expert, examined the markings on the artillery shell that killed Hannan Najar. . . “This is clearly white phosphorus,” said Garlasco, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-gaza-phosphorus15-2009feb15,0,3503405.story
“. . . a week into Israel’s war in Gaza, the home of Sabah Abu Halima was hit by an Israeli shell. Ms. Abu Halima, the matriarch of a farming family in the northern Gaza area of Beit Lahiya, was caught in an inferno that burned her husband and four of their nine children to death.
Amnesty International said it found “indisputable evidence of widespread use of white phosphorus in densely populated residential areas in Gaza City and in the north.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/world/middleeast/22phosphorus.html?scp=3&sq=gaza white phosphorus&st=cse
Report thisBy cyrena, February 14, 2009 at 10:00 pm Link to this comment
coloradokarl,
I too have read the “Art of War” along with several other similar writings and teachings – specifically in conjunction with my academic endeavors. This includes the same tenet that the WINNER was defined as the side that could do so, without firing a shot.
Such wisdom taken in terms of the reality of human behavior make it valuable – if so utilized. It’s the REALITY of human behavior that makes it tricky, because the theory ‘assumes’ that ‘peace’ is the ultimate goal for both sides of any conflict. It’s a legitimate assumption/hypothesis, because MOST of humanity in general, seems to prefer a peaceful environment. We certainly operate more efficiently as a species in peaceful times as opposed to times of war and human destruction.
HOWEVER, that hypothesis doesn’t allow for the irrational mentality among a portion of the world population that does NOT necessarily put ‘peace’ as their primary objective, DESPITE what they may or may not reveal as their goals. Or, they may want peace as a secondary goal, with that conditional upon the primary goal.
That is the case with Israel. Israel wants to define the terms of any so-called ‘peace’ and they are far LESS interested in ‘peace’ than they are in the elimination of all Arabs from the areas they have illegally occupied for 60 years. Considering that, there is no PEACEFUL way to NEGOTIATE the ELIMINATION of a POPULATION, because there is no PEACEFUL method for accomplishing that. At least not unless you think being gassed in ovens was somehow more ‘peaceful’, than some of the newer techniques of eliminating populations. I think most would agree that the horrors are suffered by the victims at the same levels, and none of it is ‘peaceful’.
At any rate, the still neo-natal system of International Law was designed/initiated to help prevent the firing of any shots, (to the extent that they can be) by creating a third and impartial body to help with this part of the ART – resolution to the dispute without the need for firing shots. At the same time, the designers were prudently aware that they certainly could not prevent ALL wars in this manner, so they also adopted some Universal Rules of Engagement, to lessen the human carnage of such wars. However, as Leefeller has clearly pointed out on another thread, these laws are ineffective without enforcement.
Since these laws have NEVER been enforced against Israel in its 60 year history as a state, we have no idea whether or not the system of International Law would be effective in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, because it’s never been tried.
Actually, that isn’t entirely true. It HAS been ‘tried’ in terms of setting up all of the special delegates and envoys in the past, and it’s been tried in terms of a lot of wasted time writing and recording agreements that Israel has consistently violated, since they’ve always entered into such agreements in bad faith anyway, never intending to respect such resolutions underwritten by the World Community.
So when I say that these tools haven’t been used with Israel in terms of the occupation of Palestine, I mean only that none of the prevention/punishment tools have ever been utilized. Israel has NEVER been the subject of economic sanctions, or any other form of political isolation. In fact, they’ve managed to wield the ULTIMATE ‘power of the nuke’ over the entire Middle East, and the world community has yet to bring them to account for any of their crimes, because the “West” (as represented primarily by the US and Western Europe) has PREVENTED such protocol from ever taking place or being initiated. That’s the ugly reality of it all.
In short, it just takes one vote to block anything the rest of the World Community (UNSC) may agree upon. When it comes to the Palestine-Israel conflict, the US has consistently provided the blocking vote that prevents any punitive action from being taken against Israel.
Report thisBy coloradokarl, February 14, 2009 at 8:38 pm Link to this comment
Dwelling on the whole Israel two state thing is a TOTAL WASTE OF TIME until and only until they get their political situation straightened out. This will take at least a month. Until then Just BREATH….........
Report thisBy FistUpper, February 14, 2009 at 8:05 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Back to the Future ... again and again,as the HoCaust has become the Jewish favored playing card,along with
Report thisthe Nazis,the SS and the ConCamps.However boring this
may seem,they are always predictable especially when there are voices out there,pointing at the eternal evil Jew,after episodes such as with Bernard Madoff,the Jewish master-crook and the recent Israeli slaughter of some (again)innocent 1500 Palestinian.
Digging up the same old,same old BS to cover up these
recent crimes is just plain disgusting and there can not be any sympathy for such criminals….regardless.
By Lenny, February 14, 2009 at 7:00 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Methinks jews protestest too much when you question the holocost.
Report thisBy Fadel Abdallah, February 14, 2009 at 6:57 pm Link to this comment
Few points and one question?!
1. Death is death! So murdering and killing civilians, women and children is the same, whether it happened in gas chambers under Germany or by F-16, Apaches, tanks or phosphorus bombs in Gaza under Israel in plain twenty-first century.
2. Percentage wise, the killing of 1300 Palestinians in three weeks, in a small area like Gaza, is possibly equal or worse than the killing of 6 million Jews in a six-year World War II duration, involving a much larger geographical area and many millions of population. I don’t know the exact number of the population involved during WWII, nor do I know how to do a percentage comparison; however I would welcome a mathematician to venture a percentage calculation.
3. During WWII and the crimes of Nazi Germany, the state of technology was very primitive; so for lack of Satellite, Internet, and other advanced technological communication devices, the horrors of the wars and the number of victims could not be captured with exact accuracy; there were only just estimates that are open for dispute.
4. In comparison, the latest Israeli slaughter in Gaza was documented to every limb and every name of the victims, and despite Israeli censorship, the images of death and destruction were reported live and watched by millions around the world. Thanks to 60-year time interval between WWII and Gaza in 2009, and much advanced communication technology, the Israeli onslaught could not be continued beyond a certain point without a universal condemnation.
Now for my question: “How and why there were so many millions of Jews concentrated in one geographical area in Germany proper and its vicinity?” This is a real question since I don’t know the answer, and therefore I would appreciate any information on this!
A logical follow up question must follow: “Since Jews have adopted the well-known slogan of ‘NEVER AGAIN’, isn’t it safer for Jewish survival to be spread over different geographical areas rather than concentrating almost one half of their total numbers in one small geographical area, rightly perceived by the natives of Palestine as being stolen from them by occupiers coming from all parts of the world?!”
Report thisBy coloradokarl, February 14, 2009 at 6:25 pm Link to this comment
Minutes ago i was listening to NPR and Scott Ritter the weapons inspector and out spoken critic of the Iraq war. He was making a call for peace activists to get busy. One point he made concerned the writings of a Chinese man Tsun Tsu or something like that who wrote a book 1200 years ago called the Art of War. One basic tenant was that once the fighting starts there are NO WINNERS. The ART is negotiating a PEACEFUL settlement to any problems. The war mongers thrive from division. I am going to make an effort to offer solutions and have and will ignore negative rants. I think dwelling on 50 year old history is Non-productive. We have NO control of the past or the future and NOW is only an experience oooop see it’s already gone and here’s a new NOW….............
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