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Rather belatedly, I wish all Sparrow Chat readers a very merry Christmas, and a happy and prosperous New Year. It’s a busy time in most households and ‘chez Adams’ is no exception.

I hope to be back at the keyboard before too long. Until then, eat, drink, and be merry as befits the season, and try to forget about climate change – unless you live on a Pacific island, of course, in which case you may find that rather difficult.

“Arbeit macht frei” is a physical symbol of the atrocities committed by the Nazis during WW2.

The sign bearing those words, recently stolen from its position above the main gate of the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp, translates as, “Work sets you free”.^[1] It’s significance goes much further than its innocuous meaning.

This camp was the brainchild of Heinrich Himmler. It was designed as the location for the “final solution of the Jewish question in Europe.”

Over one million human beings died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Ninety percent of them were Jews.

This week marks the first anniversary of the last major Israeli incursion into Gaza that led to the killing and maiming of thousands of Palestinians. It was the culmination of two years of blockade that has left Gaza little better than a concentration camp. Surrounded by barbed wire, the Strip has only three entrances: the southern Rafah crossing into Egypt, the northern Erez crossing and the eastern Karni crossing, both controlled by Israel. The Karni crossing is used solely for cargo.

Today, aid agencies published a report condemning the international community for not doing enough to bring an end to Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. According to Jeremy Hobbs, Oxfam’s director:

…….world powers have failed and betrayed Gaza’s ordinary citizens”.^[2]

The report calls for more pressure on Israel to end its ‘illegal collective punishment of Gazans’, and states that while conditions were bad before last December’s incursion, matters are now infinitely worse. Rebuilding of properties destroyed by the Israeli military has barely begun due to a lack of materials; food and water are in short supply. Despite Israeli assurances that medical supplies are allowed into the Strip, people are dying from a lack of basic medical care.

In short, conditions within Gaza are appalling. The international community sits on its hands and does nothing. The bully America ensures its allies comply with its own policy of total Israeli support, while that nation continues the inhumane and brutal ethnic cleansing of its Palestinian neighbor.

Jews everywhere should bow their heads in shame that their community, their homeland nation, has become no better than the German Third Reich that once persecuted them so mercilessly.

The sign that reads, “Arbeit macht frei”, has now been recovered from those who stole it. Perhaps it should not be returned to its previous position at the gate to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Instead, let it be erected above the Erez crossing into Gaza, so that Jews everywhere will be reminded that their past suffering can never serve to justify inflicting similar atrocities on others, equally innocent.

^{[1] “Auschwitz sign theft ‘ordered from abroad'” BBC, December 22nd 2009}

^{[2] “World ‘failed Gaza over Israeli blockade’ – aid groups” BBC, December 22nd 2009}

Filed under: No more final solutions

Barack Obama has sunk the Copenhagen climate summit. His speech to delegates was eloquent, but empty. They expected him to lead the world into a new era, but all he really did was inform them what America was doing about climate change, and how everyone else could follow suit, or sink, or swim.

“America is going to continue on this course of action no matter what happens in Copenhagen……America has made our choice. We have charted our course, we have made our commitments, and we will do what we say.”

“You’re either with us, or you’re with the………” (fill in your own appropriate noun).

Just as George W Bush told the world where to get off over his war on terror, so to has Barack Obama behaved over the war on climate change. He hasn’t listened to the needs or concerns of other countries. The $100billion of assistance for developing nations, announced by Hilary Clinton, is so tied up in legalities and red tape as to be almost worthless.

There’s nothing wonderful about Copenhagen today. Not, at least, that part of it containing the political elite charged with saving the Earth.

Right now, everyone’s rushing about behind the scenes attempting to produce some sort of document to justify the huge expense and time of this ‘last chance’ summit.

Priorities have changed. No longer is it an opportunity to save the planet.

All that matters now is saving face.

Filed under: More of the same