Headline: “Innocent Gazan civilian killed together with all ten members of his family….” Oops…”Innocent civilian killed but his family all survived…” Oops…”Innocent civilian was in fact a Hamas terrorist…” ….a typical news story from Hamas-controlled Gaza. (http://honestreporting.com/Jack Cohen
The European countries have not yet earned the right to advise Israel on how to avoid so-called innocent civilian casualties.
Lithuania was the first country in Europe where the Nazis carried out their “final solution,” but the local Lithuanian leaders were proud to announce that they had murdered 175,000 innocent Jewish civilians, out of a total of ca. 200,000 that were killed (90% of all Lithuanian Jews), before the Nazis arrived. That was in 1941, only 73 years ago. The other Baltic states, Latvia (70,000; 77%) and Estonia (2,000; 44%) were similarly enthusiastic about murdering their own innocent Jewish civilians.
Slovakia (71,000; 80%) cooperated enthusiastically with the German program of murdering civilians, as did Hungary (550,000; 67%) and Poland (3,000,000; 90%). The Czech areas (78,000; 66%), the Netherlands (100,000; 71%), Greece (65,000; 87%) and Yugoslavia (60,000; 77%) managed to murder the majority of their innocent Jews. There were some countries where only a minority of the Jews perished, including Austria (50,000; 27%), Germany (142,000; 25%), France (77,000; 22%), Belgium (25,000; 38%) and the USSR – including Ukraine and Belarus (1,000,000; 33%).
Norway (762; 49%) cooperated with the Nazis, as did the so-called neutral countries of Sweden and Switzerland. But, it is not enough for any of these countries to say that it was the Germans that did the murdering, they all cooperated in the mass murders. Only three countries (out of 22) in Europe actually saved their Jewish citizens, namely Denmark, Bulgaria and Finland (even though Finland was an ally of Germany).
After WWII, when Britain still held the Mandate for Palestine, the Labor Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin was publicly known to have anti-Semitic views and deliberately prevented the emigration of Jewish survivors known as Displaced Persons (DPs) from Europe to Palestine, including the notorious return in 1947 of the passengers of the Exodus from Palestine to prison in Germany.
Yet, these are the countries that together adopt a “holier than thou” attitude towards Israel when they consider the so-called “holocaust” of Palestinians in Gaza. Actually we in Israel do not need their advice, we have our own standards of protecting civilians, we are not up to their former proficiency in murdering innocent civilians. Israel managed to kill only ca. 800 civilians (40% of the total of 2,000 dead) in 4 weeks of intense fighting in a densely populated area. One could see their criticism of Israel as an extension of their former indigenous anti-Semitism, or as a call to “human rights” after they feel so guilty for their own enormous transgressions. But, I suspect the former explanation is correct.
Jack Cohen
Jack Cohen, Netanya, Israel
Kerry’s About Turn: Jack Cohen Born in London, UK, lived in suburban Washington DC area for 30 years, moved to Israel in 1996. He has a web site: Comment From Israel
