BLOG POSTS

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance adopted its working definition of antisemitism in 2016. The definition is, as follows:

“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

I was castigated recently by a woman who insisted I was dishonest by not writing equally in favour of Israel, which suffered the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7th, rather than my (to her) obvious bias towards the Palestinians and their suffering under the military onslaught of Israel.

I made the point that I had condemned those Hamas attacks in a number of posts HERE and HERE, oh, and HERE, but she was not to be mollified. Obviously I was anti-Semitic. I tried reason, only to find she had blocked my email address, preventing any further discussion.

I have no problem with someone who disagrees with my opinions, but I find it intolerable to be blocked from a discussion before it’s truly started, by someone who has simply stuck a label on me and slammed the door in my face.

I’m an atheist. My journey to atheism has been long and difficult. I arrived here through numerous religious and spiritual paths.  I now find the whole concept of religion through the ages to be no more than a clever means to control the populace of the time.

That control continues to this day, despite science having revealed the utter falseness of deities, angels, heavenly after-lives, and all the paraphernalia that surrounds them. Every year the Muslim Hajjes takes the lives of numerous pilgrims. 1,300 deaths is the figure stated for this year’s Hajj, with many more suffering acute illness from the intolerable heat. Meanwhile the Saudi government makes a fortune (around US$12 billion) from the Hajj every year.

Christianity is no better. Christians and Muslims have been at one another’s throats since before Pope Urban II started the first crusade against the Muslims in 1095. It continues to this day. Christians have even been fighting among themselves as Protestants and Catholics slugged it out intermittently throughout the Middle Ages.

Jews believe they are the chosen people of their God. Christians believe themselves the chosen people of their God, who happens to be remarkably similar to the God of the Jews. There’s an uneasy and very hypocritical peace that exists between both factions.

55% of Protestant American Christians firmly believe that they’re living in the ‘End Times’, as foretold in the Biblical Book of Revelations. That figure rises to 63% among US Evangelical Christians. They also believe that when their God (Jesus, the Christ) arrives at Armageddon,  he will take all the Christian believers to Heaven, but not the Jews unless they are prepared to convert to Christianity! The rest will be left to fend for themselves.

The Jewish religion has a slightly different interpretation (as one would expect). Before Armageddon (or, End of Days, as is the Jewish interpretation) all nations will come to acknowledge the God of Israel as the only true God (problematic for US Protestant Evangelicals). Two characters, Gog and Magog, play important roles before the commencement of the ‘End of Days’. There has to be a war between, on the one hand the evil Gog/Magog, and on the other the Jewish Messiah (probably not Jesus, the Christ) who will defeat them. Apparently, no-one has discovered who Gog and Magog actually are, which I suppose could cause problems for the Jewish Messiah, if he can’t recognize them.

If this were written as fiction, it would be considered too fantastic to be acceptable. According to the churches, it’s not fiction but the sacred word of their God. Down through the ages they’ve brainwashed their congregations, over many generations, into believing it to be truth.

If I appear a little flippant it’s simply because the whole religious concoction is so outrageously fictitious that it beggars belief. Is it not easier just to believe in Santa Claus, a fat guy in a bright red dressing gown who lives somewhere in Lapland and flies around the world once a year on a magic sleigh pulled by reindeer, delivering toys to little children?

To hark back to my label of ‘Anti-Semite’. I’m an atheist, but no-one accuses me of being, “Anti-religious”, or “Anti-Christian”, or even, “Anti-Hindu”. Why accuse me of antisemitism, (which is only a fancy word for ‘Anti-Jewish’) when I have already, on more than one occasion, made clear in my writing that I do not take sides. My concern in any conflict is it’s effects on the innocent, in this case both Palestinians and Israelis. I consider Vladimir Putin to be the most evil of men, but in no way do I hold the Russian people en masse responsible for Putin’s criminality in Ukraine.

I’m no Holocaust denier either. The extermination of people of Jewish origin by Eichmann and his murderers stands as possibly the worst known individual atrocity in human history. They were innocents being cold-bloodedly slaughtered in the most appalling manner.

Atrocities have been an ongoing saga of the human species since we came into existence. Always there are atrocities being perpetrated by humans against other humans in the world. Today: Palestine/Israel; Russia/ Ukraine; the Sudanese civil war; Ethiopia; Central African Republic; DRC… the list goes on and on.

The Holocaust was an abomination, but in terms of human life, if all the present day and recent history atrocities in the world were added together, the figure of six million would possibly pale into insignificance.

Adolf Eichmann was an anti-Semite. He hated the Jewish people and wished to destroy them all. I do not hate anyone, but I despise any individual, Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu or Atheist responsible for the brutal and cold-blooded killing, maiming, raping, torturing, of innocent human beings who just want to live their lives in peace and harmony.

Does that make me anti-Semitic?  You decide.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last night I sat through the UK’s Channel Four ‘Dispatches’ program, entitled “Kill Zone: Inside Gaza.” Could anyone sit through this hour long documentary and not be moved to tears by the horrors that unfolded?

Yes, we’ve seen and heard the news. We’ve watched some of the devastation of Gaza and the suffering and deaths of many Palestinians, but to illustrate the full macabre horror took the efforts of Palestinian journalists and camera people to capture it, in all it’s full blown revulsion and repugnance. Revulsion at the mass suffering taking place; repugnance at the Israeli government’s apparently cold-blooded attitude to the slaughter they’re inflicting.

The Guardian’s review of the program leaves little unsaid. I would entreat everyone to read it, and if possible to watch the documentary. Some of those who made it gave their lives to do so.

It begs the question as to why we human beings do this to each other? Out of eight billion souls on this planet, there are probably less than eight hundred with the real power to create chaos and death on a huge scale. That’s 0.000001  percent of 8 billion. The rest of us just want to live in peace with each other. Whether we are Israeli, Palestinian, Ukrainian, Russian, or from Timbuktu, we have no desire to kill each other or cause our fellow beings suffering.

It’s the remaining 0.000001 percent who create all the wars and chaos in the world. The ones who hold the power. The presidents, the dictators, the leaders of terrorist groups. It’s power that we, the people, have mostly handed to them. We vote them into office. History tells us clearly that those who hold the reins of power are incapable of controlling it. It corrupts them and causes a madness that eats away at their brains like some aggressive, parasitic worm. It causes mental sickness, deluding them into believing themselves as little gods.

But they are not gods. They are weak human beings who cannot handle the power we allow them in a way that reflects our wishes.

When are we, the other seven billion, nine hundred and ninety-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand and two hundred going to do something to stop them?

It would by unfair to end this post without mentioning the Israelis who had their lives torn asunder by the heinous crimes of Hamas last October 7th. The maimed, the kidnapped, the bereaved. It is to be hoped that the perpetrators, or at least those who planned the attack and gave the orders, can in time be held to account, along with Netanyahu and his cohorts. We need more power to the International Criminal Court, not less when it suits.

 

^{Ghassan Abu-Sitta denied access to France by German visa ban} 

There are times one reads of things online or in the media that are upsetting or disturbing. Occasionally, one reads things that cause the blood to boil with anger and frustration.

I have always been a strong supporter of the European Union. I believe the unity of peoples and of countries to be our only hope for peace among our turbulent and often violent species.

However, I read today that Germany, of it’s own volition, has imposed a Schengen-wide ban on Ghassan Abu-Sitta. He’s a globally respected medical professional who arrived in Paris yesterday to speak at the French senate, at their invitation.

The French government stated it had no knowledge of the German action against the Palestinian doctor.

Ghassan Abu-Sitta has committed no crime, unless one considers it a crime to be Palestinian.

From the Guardian:

“During the months of October and November 2023 at the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza that has since killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, Abu-Sitta operated from Gaza’s al-Shifa and al-Ahli Baptist hospitals. During his 43 days, he described witnessing a “massacre unfold” in Gaza and the use of white phosphorus munitions, which Israel has denied. He has also provided evidence to Scotland Yard.

Raymonde Poncet Monge, the Europe Écologie-Les Verts senator who organised the conference, said she condemned the police action and said they had contacted the office of the interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, in an attempt to allow Abu-Sitta entry without success.

“How can Germany issue territorial bans throughout the Schengen area? It’s mind-boggling! This is a new step in the repression of everything to do with Palestine,” said Poncet Monge, who later posted a photograph of Abu-Sitta attending the conference via video.

“We are outraged that he cannot be present among us,” she said.”

Outraged, indeed! It would seem that Germany is determined to try to assuage its social guilt over the Nazi atrocities of WW2, by its support of the Israeli government no matter what heinous crimes they commit against the innocent Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank.

Is it not time that Western governments stopped treating Israel as the poor, down-trodden nation that must be appeased at all costs? It’s time to leave religion out of the equation. Every Israeli has a right to practice whatever religion they choose. To be Jewish is to practice the Jewish religion. There is nothing special about being Jewish that sets them apart from the rest of humanity. Unless, of course, you believe all that crap about them being the chosen people of the one God. This loving and caring god who sent the angel of death to slaughter every Egyptian child under two years of age.

Israel now seems determined to kill or maim as many Palestinian children as they can, presumably to prevent them from growing to adulthood hating their belligerent and cruel neighbour.

If Germany is determined to continue acting like some demented child haunted by the atrocities of its ancestors and determined to an existence of continual self-flagellation, then it can feel free to do so.

To thrust its guilt onto the rest of Europe is not unity, but dictatorship.