Friends and relatives of two victims of a triple bombing in the northeastern city of Qamishli, attend their funeral on November 13, 2019. AFP
by Arnold Zeitlin 29 January 2020
the cry has been raised once again, inspired by the marking of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of auschwitz-birkenau, camps where the nazis murdered an estimated one million jews, romas, homosexuals and mental patients as part of an extermination holocaust that claimed up to 6 million european lives, mostly jewish, during world war II.
the words have become universal, no longer associated with the extremist and discredited jewish defense league, which planted bombs at soviet union and arab properties and raised the cry in its gratuitous defense of jews.
the u.s. house of representatives has even just passed a never again education act that aims to award grants of money to american educational institutions to promote holocaust education.
while all his is going on, the chinese leadership has herded up to million moslem uighurs to so-called vocation education camps. there they are subject to being stripped of their religious and ethnic identities and taught to love the ruling communist party. as holocausts go, it is relatively non-lethal but psychologically fatal. the world, particular its moslem members, looks on without action.
never again! hardly.
at the same time, hundred of thousands of rohingya moslems, driven by the army from their homes in myanmar, huddle in fetid refugee camps on the bangladesh border, now state-less with no where else to go, victims, if not of a holocaust, of ethnic cleansing. action to return them to their myanmar homes so far is futile.
never again! hardly.
it’s no holocaust, but jews are once again under attack in jersey city, monsey, manhattan, brooklyn, pittsburgh, halle, germany, poway, california. not to be ignored, christian and moslem houses of worship etc etc also are under attack in new zealand, the philippines, china and elsewhere.
never again! hardly.
since the end of world war II, the world has lurched from one holocaust attempt to another:
darfur, sudan: hundred of thousands died in a government-sponsored campaign starting in 2003 to wipe out non-arabs. the international criminal court indicted sudan’s presdient, omar al-bashir, for genocide war crimes. it was left to his army to oust him in 2019 and put him on trial.
srebenica, bosnia: a serbian army invaded the town in july, 1995, and slaughtered 8,000 bosnian moslems, mostly men and boys. general rartko miadic, who led the serbian troops, was sentenced by the international criminal court to life in prison in 2017 for committing crimes against humanity
rwanda: from april 6 to july 16, 1994, government-sponsored militias killed an estimated 800,000 to one million tribes people, more than 80 percent tutsi tribals, were slaughtered. no country, agency, church, nor any outsiders intervened to stop the killing. u.s.president bill clinton later said he regretted not taking action. eventually, 100,000 people were arrested on charges related to the killings. firing squads executd 22.
it’s possible to go on and on: sri lanka, cambodia, bangladesh, indonesia. all have had their holocausts.
never again! hardly. again and again and again! more likely.
luv all, az