Defiance: Israel, Hamas, Rockets & RAF area bombing

I spent a nice quiet evening in with the family watching DVD's last night. We've had a busy week and to be quite honest, an evening in was pleasant. As I had to pick eldest daughter up from Luton airport at midnight, returning from Swim Camp, it was also a good reason not to drink. One of the films chosen was Defiance. This stars Daniel Craig and tells the story of the Bielski brothers, who set up a camp for Jews fleeing Nazi extermination in Belarus, in the USSR during the Nazi occupation. It is a very good film. Not being familiar with the story, I don't really know how accurate it was, but I think that anything which reminds us of sheer evilness of the Nazi regime is clearly something to be applauded. Tuvia Bielski is clearly someone who's name should be known more widely. The generally accepted image of the Jewish people under Nazi occupation was one of passive compliance. This was clearly not the case with Bielski or his band. They are an example to the whole world of why it is vital to fight tyranny when sometimes it seems hopeless.

After the film, as I drove up to Luton Airport, I was thinking about the situation in Israel, in light of the film. Given that many of the residents of Bielski's camp ended up as citizens of Israel, it is worth giving the matter some consideration. As I drove along, I pondered the thought that last year, the story of the war between Hamas & Israel was lead news item for many a day. The Israeli justification for the attack was the daily rocket attacks by Hamas on Israeli towns. The thought occurred to me that I hadn't seen a news report about a single Rocket attack since the end of the Israeli attack. Was this due to the story not being newsworthy any more, or have Hamas changed their tactics & decided to use political means rather than violence to further their aims. I did a quick google and it certainly seems the case that Hamas is still firing rockets. It must be said that the reports are few and far between, since the end of the conflict (although how much of this is due to the story not being "hot", I know not). According to the report I've linked to, Israel maintains a policy of Tit for Tat attacks. The question I have is whether this will ever truly deliver the results which the Israeli generals hope.

I firmly believe that every sovereign country has a right to defend itself from attack. Israel is clearly being attacked, therefore it cannot be disputed that it is within it's rights to mount actions necessary to defend it's population. If I were an Israeli, the question I'd be asking is whether the current political and military strategy will work. The precident of history does not really bode well. The leader of bomber command during WWII, Arthur Harris, claimed that the Nazi's could be bombed into submission. My dad flew a Wellington bomber for 40 squadron, part of 205 bomber group as part of this offensive. I've taken a keen interest in the subject, to decide whether the sacrifices he and his comrades made were worth it. As part of the campaign lead by Harris, nearly a million tons of bombs were dropped on Germany. Over 60 towns were decimated, 595,000 civilians were killed. At the end of the war, the RAF set up a group to review the findings and see whether the policy of area bombing of cities, with no military value assisted the Allied war effort. The results were inconclusive. German morale did not crack. Until the final weeks of the war, production held up. The policy of hitting oil targets had a far more profound and devastating effect than wiping out cities such as Dresden. One of the most successful campaigns was mounted by my fathers squadron, in mining the Danube. This prevented barges loaded with oil & other supplies from Rumania reaching Germany. As the Nazi's didn't care about their civilian population, the attacks made little difference to the leadership. Apologists for the campaign claim that huge resources were tied up defending German cities. This is nonsense. If the RAF had purely attacked targets in Germany with military or economic value and concentrated their tactics on these targets, the effects would have been more damaging, the same resources would have been tied up and the war may well have ended sooner. 55,000 air crew were killed. RAF bomber command had the highest attrition rate of any service in the war with a 40% casualty rate. The tours of duty were set such that a crew had a 50/50 chance of surviving their tour. Bomber command was comprised of volounteers.

Which brings us back to the Israeli campaign against Hamas. If the RAF could fail so spectacularly against the Nazi's, with a campaign to undermine German morale, how do they expect their campaign to succeed against Hamas. Hamas have a similar disregard for their people, treating them as human shields and cannon fodder. Like the Nazi's in 1944 they have no prospect of defeating Israel on the battlefield, but this will not prevent them from sacrificing their citizens. This brings us back to Israel. How should they respond to rocket attacks? I've got to say that I really don't know, but they should certainly change their tactics. If they put the energies they've expended on military campaigns into more subtle approaches, could they have been less successful in stopping the attacks?

As to Hamas? Well in the unlikely event that anyone from Hamas would read this blog or listen to reason, I'll ask this question. What have all of the rockets you've launched achieved? How have the Palestinian people benefitted? With my Irish Catholic roots it is quite clear to me that the population of Northern Ireland's lives are far better now than during the troubles. They may not have everything they want, but ordinary people can lead their lives in peace, without fear. If I were a political leader, that would be my very minimum first objective. Unlike Bielski's partisans, the Palestinian people will not be carted off to death camps if their leaders lay down their weapons and engage in political dialog. They will merely achieve a better quality of life.

I used to argue long and hard with my Dad about area bombing. My mum once butted in and told me that what I should realise is that after the Blitz, it cheered the population of London up no end to here that German cities were being destroyed. I suspect that if the Israeli government were honest, this is the primary reason for the tit for tat attacks. It is clear that they have little effect in stopping the attacks.

I wonder how Tuvia Bielski would have approached the issue?

Barnet Eye Exclusive : Freer snubs local Jewish voters

Let me ask you a few questions :-

a) Name an area of London with a large Orthodox Jewish population?

b) What do Orthodox Jewish people usually do on a Saturday Morning?

c) Who is the Conservative Candidate for Golders Green?

d) If you were the Conservative Candidate for Golders Green, what would be the worst possible time to hold a Council funded meet the public session in Golders Green?

I kid you not, Leader of Barnet Council, Conservative Candidate for Barnet, Mike Freer has decided that the best time and place for his Leader Listens roadshow to visit Golders Green is Tomorrow (Saturday 25th April) between 10am and noon, at Sainsburys.

Read all about it here :- http://www.barnet.gov.uk/press_releases.htm?id=1956

According to the press release, voters can tell Mike how to improve Barnet. Leader of the Council, Councillor Mike Freer said:

“The Leader Listens programme has been instrumental in allowing residents of the borough to interact and share their views with the Council outside the normal channels, therefore expanding the scheme to make the Council more accessible makes perfect sense.”

Well it seems that a rather large and rather important sector of the public have been excluded. The question is whether this is pure incompetence from Mike Freer or whether it's a deliberate snub to the religioulsy minded Orthodox community. I recently attended the Bahmitzvah of my friend and local businessman Lawrence Bard's son and I asked his opinion of Freer's choice of venue and timing? His response "I'm speechless. It is awful." He added "It will exclude a whole section of the community which has many issues it would like to raise with the Council".

I would say that the appearance or otherwise of a grovelling apology from Mike Freer would indicate whether this is conspiracy or cock-up.

Holocaust Denial

It seems that the various Christian Denominations have been having a few issues with Holocaust deniers and other assorted Nazi and Fascist scumbags of late. As I'm a (rather bad) Roman Catholic, I thought I might give you my views on the subject.

As I've mentioned before, one of my first jobs in the 1970's was working with a Jewish stonemason, who'd been with the British Army when Belsen was liberated. He was an incredibly intelligent man who had seen things no one should ever had to see. He was also a friend of my father, who had been an officer in the Royal Australian Air Force during the war and flown 40 missions over enemy territory for bomber command.

One day over a mug or two of industrial strength tea, the question of the holocaust was being discussed. My Father had been raised in the Australian outback, amongst Aboriginal people. Over our cups of tea back in 1976, my father was telling us that somewhere near where he was born, was one of the few places where Aboriginals fought back against white settlers, who were pursuing a policy of genocide against them, in the early part of the last century. My father was explaining about aboriginal culture and that in the traditional Aboriginal way of thinking there were only three numbers one, two and lots.

Our Stonemason friend unexpectedly interjected by saying "That is a good way of looking at the holocaust". He mentioned Stalin's quote that "The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic". At the time of the conversation, the holocaust denial movement was in it's infancy (too many people with fresh memories to argue with then). Looking at many website's today, I am amazed by how much of what our friend said over a cup of tea in 1976 has come to pass.

He stated that he never ever used the term "6 Million" as no one could ever know how many millions had died. He always used the term "the unknown millions". He went on "how can you assign a number to such a tragedy, once you do, people for their own purposes will start twisting and distorting the figure. They will seek to chip away every single number they can, whilst ignoring all of the evidence around them" He said that they would claim that everyone who died after the liberation "was a victim of the allies" - even though their death was made inevitable by the Nazi's. He said that they would claim everyone who had disappeared off the face of the earth, had moved, not been murdered and burnt. He said that every record the criminal Nazi regime had destroyed would be counted as another life saved.

I asked why would anyone do such a thing? His response - "Imagine the crimes of the Nazi's as a jigsaw with six million pieces. If you take one piece away, you can still see what the picture is. If you take ten away, if you take a hundred away, if you take a thousand away, even if you take ten thousand away. There will however come a time when you take so many pieces away that you can't recognise the picture anymore. At that point they will say - actually the picture looked like this. You can't see the picture, you know they saw the picture before the parts were taken away so you trust them".

If a government's actions kill one person that is a tragedy, if they kill two people it's callous, if they kill lots of people they are a tyranny. The Nazi's killed untold millions. I heard many accounts of things in Belsen from our friend. He stated that the camp guards were the most degenerate and cowardly people he'd ever met. He said that if he'd had the chance he'd have machine gunned all of them. He said that the Nazi's were a warning to the world of what happens when a psychopath and a bunch of criminals get into power. He impressed one point on me and said "Never forget this". The point "The road that starts with a lie being allowed to let pass, ends with babies being fed to guard dogs". I've never forgotten that, I hope I never do.

Which brings us to the "Six Million" - is it accurate? - well it's good enough for me as an illustration of a very big number (more than lots). If anyone ever challenges it, they are not doing it for reasons of historical accuracy, because accuracy is impossible. They are doing it because they want to hoodwink us into believing that a bunch of evil, murderous criminals lead by a psychopath were really a bunch of great blokes. If you think that the world will benefit from racist policies or eugenics you cannot consider yourself a Christian. Jesus didn't gas the disabled, he cured them. Jesus didn't hate Jews, because he was a Jew. When he was crucified and was dying he is reported to have said "Father forgive them for they know not what they do". Doesn't sound too compatible with the Nazi agenda. Oh and as to his treatment of foreigners (a current rallying cry for our local brand of nutcases) - remember the story of "the Good Samaritan". Samaritans were considered to be undesirable foriegners by his audience. The story was illustrating the fact that there is good and bad in all races. He was saying that these people you despise (like the far right portray asylum seekers today) are no better or worse than you. I'm not a very religious person, certainly not a scholar. I was brought up in a house where you listened long enough to understand that the message was bleeding obvious, no more - some things are clearly right and some are clearly wrong - it's really not that hard. Nothing could be more obvious to me than the fact that if you are a Nazi Numpty you shouldn't be standing in a pulpit telling the rest of us how to live our lives.