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Sunday, March 25, 2012

The Titanic and The Shoah

The debate around Israel’s right to self-defence is focused on delegitimization of those most human of entitlements; the right to protect ones-self and ones family; and the right to self –determination. In the UK there is a never-ending stream of self-righteous liberals and intellectuals lecturing “those Jews” on just how tired “everyone” is of hearing about the Holocaust.

The ‘Holocaust’ is from the Greek and is usually translated as ‘Purifying Fire’, as in a sacrifice.  The Hebrew word ‘Shoah’ is more appropriate, it means calamity.

“You, of all people, should know better” is one racist euphemism meant to shame us. We all too often hear it uniquely expressed towards “those Jews again” as if only in suffering can a Jew approach equality with his or her betters.  Another expression we too often hear is: “You (Jews) should be more like us (Christians/Muslims).” i.e. you should learn to “turn the other cheek” It would be churlish, perhaps even salacious to point out that the two missionary faiths have been responsible for a quarter of a billion martyrs to prejudice in less than the last two thousand years.  Jews, for most of that period of history, turned the other cheek.  It was only when they did not, that they survived.

Shortly before midnight on April 14, 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland. It sunk early on the morning of the 15th of April 1912.  1,517 men, women and children died (almost 90% of the deaths were men).   In 1933 Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and over the next 12 years he, the Nazi party and Fascism’s collaborators across Europe were responsible for the waging of a war that claimed fifty million victims.   It is estimated that Nazi death squads harvested between 11 and 17 million souls in their quest for racial purity. They murdered Jews, Gypsies, Russian POW’s, Russian Civilians; Poles, Serbs, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Homosexuals, those of mental or physical disability, and of course, in typical non-democratic fashion, their political or religious opponents.

There are similarities between the Titanic and the Shoah. The International Ice Patrol was formed as a direct consequence of the sinking of the Titanic and almost 100 years later it continues to monitor the stretch of ocean around Newfoundland, warning shipping of the dangers that exist.  World War 2 caused an exasperated USA to look for a means to once and for all harness mankind’s energies against war. The United Nations Organisation was supposed to facilitate the realisation of this noble ideal and it has failed spectacularly to create even a dent in humanities blood lust. One hundred million people have died in war in the period following the creation of the UN.  But many Jews were instrumental in the creation of The Convention for Human Rights overseen by the UNO.  This is just one of the exquisite ironies of the UN tragedy. Conceived in pain and suffering, created as a political body, it was born in original sin. Usurped by racist nations exploiting what is essentially the political nature of international relationships it precludes any serious discussion or action ever being taken against ethnic cleansing or genocide.

Britain is obsessed by the Titanic.  This cruise liner was a magnificent engineering feat of construction. And an ice-berg slid through its hull like a knife through warm butter.   And here in Britain we continue to worship the marvel of its design. In the idolisation of its beauty we are blinded to its fatal defect.

On the 11th of March 2011 two Arabs, both adult Muslims, took knives and beheaded a three month old baby; they killed two other children and their parents.  After the two murderers were captured they proudly re-enacted their heinous crime. It was called by the press a nationalist crime.  If I was a religious man I would call it a blood sacrifice, an act of fealty and re dedication on the devils altar. No sane ethical human being can today, imagine murdering a child. That the perpetrators were praised for their evil by a significant number of Arabs of all classes is truly frightening.

On the 19th of March 2012 a French Citizen, an Arab man, a Muslim, grabbed a struggling 8 year old girl by her hair and murdered her because she was Jewish. He also murdered a father and his two sons’ aged 3 years and 6.  He was proud of his act of infanticide; his brother, when caught, expressed familial pride in his siblings’ carnival of killing.

If it was the Arab world only that celebrated these separate displays of evil we could fear this Arab toxicity as aberrant. But when Pakistani Muslims murdered some 164 people in Mumbai on the 26th -29th November 2008 their handlers (purported to be members of Pakistan’s Intelligence community – the ISI) were recorded by Indian Intelligence, in conversation with the killers during the massacre, reminding them that every Jew killed was worth two non-Jews.

Is it this universal corruption that makes the Koran itself a threat not only to humanity but to the survival of the human species? The Jewish people are a sickness to a sick mind; they are the canary in the mine of human civilisation.

When an eight year old was murdered by an Arab racist, France mourned with the Jewish community.  When the Fogel baby was beheaded, the national British press ignored it, until that is, a Christian novelist and Member of Parliament asked in Parliament why this heinous act was dismissed by the British Press as not newsworthy. On the 12th of March 2012 it was reported throughout the day, in the national news programmes that a Titanic letter was returning to Northern Ireland. A benefactor had paid £21, 692 for a two page letter that was written by a surgeon on the Titanic, who had gone down with the ship. It will now be displayed in Belfast; a national treasure ‘returning’ to its home.

It is not our ability to internalise tragedy that is at fault. It is not the three million Muslims living in the UK that inform on our lack of sensitivity to events around the globe while we absolve our consciences with Live Aid Concerts and protest selectively against Jewish empowerment in a small and battered Jewish state. It is the choices we as a society choose to make that create our society.  UK Plc (Ltd) has always been in the business of making money and projecting power.  It supersedes every other consideration.  Here, in the UK we despise those who try to remind us of our inaction and therefore our complicity in the annihilation of European Jewry (and not just Jews who died as a result of our deliberate inaction in the face of genocide). We use the Shoah as a bludgeon and employ it against the Jewish State. Here in the UK we worship a maritime catastrophe as we celebrate the vehicle of its delivery.

 The difference in emphasis is as deliberate as it is vile in its contemplation.

1 comment:

  1. Interesting analogy! Never would have thought of it.

    ReplyDelete