Harry’s Place

I don’t know Bunglawala so I could be way out here, but I get the feeling that his main motivation for wanting Srebrenica to be regarded the same way as Auschwitz is because by making the Holocaust less unique, it makes it less important.

Herman, that Bungle had to tack on a gratutious “It has got to be worthwhile teaching all our children to beware of the deadly hatred that can be unleashed by the relentless vilification of entire communities.” suggests that your hypothesis is likely to be correct.

Well the Turkish campaign of genocide against the Armenians and Assyrians preceded Treblinka and Auschwitz, and there were other ethnic and religiously inspired slaughters going back into history. Recognising that they happened does not, in any way, reduce the horror of the shoah. I think it is necessary for children to be taught how easily the human race turns on its own kind. But that means that no group gets its own history whitewashed. I can’t imagine Bungle being quite so pleased if the children were learning about the moghul conquest of India, or the adventures of Turkish troops with bayonets.

““It has got to be worthwhile teaching all our children to beware of the deadly hatred that can be unleashed by the relentless vilification of entire communities.”

Could somebody tell the rightwhinge press that before they run yet another spurious/made up/exaggerated/extrapolated piece about SCARY MUSLIMS!

Ok, I admit, I watched the Peter Obourne Prog on Ch4 and was actually very shocked at the content and impressed with Obourne.

Why not learn about some of the massacres committed in the name of Islam ? After all it was muslims who inspired Hitler to think that you can get away genocide.

Neil W, you are Simon Jenkins and I claim my £5.

The story of Srebrenica should be on our national curriculum.

I think its worth pointing out here again that after the age of 14 no history at all is on our national curriculum.

I really don’t agree with the concept of the “national curriculum” at all, and above all not down to a micromanaged level that seems to be implied in DT’s final paragraph.

Tony Benn, in the debate on Bosnia following Srebrenica, made perhaps the sickest and most infantile speech I’ve ever heard.

Arguing for cuts in military spending Benn comes out with some remarkable stuff. even for him. Heres some lowlights.

we cannot afford the present level of weapons. I have had the national defence budget divided by the population to help me to understand the matter, and it appears that every family of four is spending £40 a week on weapons. The Government should knock on any door and ask whether the occupants feel more threatened by an attack from the Bosnian Serbs or by the possibility that they might fall ill without medical treatment being available.

We have gone in to provide humanitarian aid, and I support that. I have said time and again in the House, and I shall say it again, that all that we can do in a civil war is provide an embargo of weapons, humanitarian aid and a peace table. It is a civil war in Bosnia, and we must not pretend that the war is an act of international aggression. Instead of providing an embargo, aid and a peace table, we have taken part in the most murderous assault by NATO, with which the Minister is proud to associate himself. That assault brought the Bosnian Serbs to the peace table. But if the Bosnian Government are not satisfied, they may say that unless NATO continues the bombing, they will not come to the table. NATO has become an instrument of the Bosnian Government.

I believe that the story will be different in the end. I think that Croatia will take over Bosnia, and that the Bosnian Serbs will probably move in with Serbia. We are seeing a partition of Yugoslavia between Croatia and Serbia, and the pretence that we are there to defend Bosnia’s Muslim multi- cultural Government is quite untrue.

Utter prick.

Utter prick.

Agreed. Behind stopperdon is a lurking extreme isolationism.

‘it was muslims who inspired Hitler to think that you can get away genocide’ - As was the example of Robespierre, Cromwell and the secular CUP, your point being?

I think “utter prick” is an understatement. “Out-of-touch, ignorant, buffoon” would be putting it gently, too. (Note how he appears to sympathize with the acts of Tuđman and his henchmen as well as with those of “Republika Srpksa”)

As for the post, agreed with David entirely. The manner in which extremists seek to make an identity a primary factor in society and then resort to violence to ‘balance the equation’ is a constant danger

Now of course, it is all forgotten and forgiven.

Tony Benn is a great lambaster of Western hypocrisy and supporter of Muslims worldwide: a man to be cheered at any STWC meeting.

Benns analysis of the Cold War in that speech is hysterical.

But enormous sums of money were spent on building up resistance to the Soviet Union. The real reason for that was very simple; if we pretended that we were about to be invaded by the Soviet Union, anyone who criticised the Government could be described as an agent of the KGB or of the Kremlin. It was a political campaign.

“Bright is correct. It has got to be worthwhile teaching all our children to beware of the deadly hatred that can be unleashed by the relentless vilification of entire communities.”

Wrong. Only individuals ever really die, not communities.

“Srebrenica also underlined the brutality of authoritarian and gangester regimes at their worst, and the importance of self determination of national and regional minorities.”

Like the IRA for example? Again, only individuals ever die.

“Nevertheless, I do think that the Srebrenica massacre should form part of the national curriculum. That curriculum should challenge the Islamist narrative, and consider very closely the reasons for, and consequences of, Europe’s inertia.”

Why? It was appalling and Europe’s “inertia” can never be the issue unless you confront why Europe really couldn’t give a flying one ’bout it. If you want the Nat Curricuulm to call the cunts in Brussels the cunts they are (and they are cuntologically cunts) then fine but… I’d be happier without a Nat C to start with. Except David T that’s not what you want at all. Is it? You want the kinda indoctrination which is is exactly how this sort of collectivist insanity starts in the first place.

You are so fucking up your own Gary that you just don’t get that in all recorded history that it never mattered that a group was persecuted. Oh, they were (and they were persecuted because of their definable attributes) but that isn’t what really matters. What matters is that individuals, real people, not abstract collectives have suffered. By viewing them as members of the collective and not as individuals you are carrying out the same sin that the mass-murderers of Auschwitz did, the KGB did, the Khmer Rouge did, and what Zanu-PF are currently doing.

Still don’t get it do you?

You don’t fucking get it do you? You allow, nay encourage folks to put into people, individuals, into collectives and by that very act you enable their slaughter. They’re Jews or Commies or Republicans or Muslims or Croats or Serbs or whatever. You know, or ought to know David T, what they really are, they are people.

… deadly hatred that can be unleashed by the relentless vilification of entire communities

On a recent Radio 4 programme, a witness to Kristallnacht described the day after. She said there was a deathly silence in public spaces, a sense of communal shame and shock. Some Germans actually apologised to Jewish neighbours and shopkeepers for the behaviour of the thugs. So, I find it hard to accept your thesis of communal hatred as the cause of the Holocaust - in contradistinction to, in particular, the Armenian Genocide, and some of the Jewish pogroms of Eastern Europe.

I don’t know enough of Srebrenica to say whether you are right or wrong about communal hatred (as opposed to dark plans of the leaders) being the primary driver. I think you need to be very careful about making such an analysis. That Bungle and his ilk should exploit this conflict is hardly surprising.

Are you sure of this “Tory” policy of an “equal killing field”? I seem to remember Hurd quoting Disraeli, who, faced with a similar Balkan issue, decided that we were well out of it. In the end, it was US muscle of a degree that Europe had neither the hardware nor the stomach for that settled the matter. But for the US, the rest of NATO could have got into a real quagmire, with more body bags than our media would tolerate, and serious questions about why our soldiers were involved in such a thankless operation.

That it should be taught, I agree with, provided (in agreement with Monty) that the Armenian Genocide (the model for the Holocaust), also be taught - in all its horror and religiously inspired hatred. The other ghastly horrors of 1400 years of jihad are probably a bit over the top for school, but the BBC should stop getting Terry Jones and Rageh Omaar to airbrush out this blight, and get a serious historian to cover it. I doubt Bungle would think much of that.

David

is this an appropriate place for me to be obsequious to you?

(in joke - the rest of you needne’t worry about)

Andy.
Are you supporting this?

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/07/23/extend-the-abortion-act-1967-to-northern-ireland/

I really don’t agree with the concept of the “national curriculum” at all, and above all not down to a micromanaged level that seems to be implied in DT’s final paragraph.

Well we did have a thread a while back where we pointed out how miniscule the amount of actual teaching of the holocaust could be in order to satisfy the requirement that it had been taught. I’m half tempted to suggest that at age 14 the last thing kids need is yet another pile of dead bodies in a far away place of which they know (next to) nothing and that a module on critical thinking about the “morality” of mass murder might be a better idea.

But I’m not sure.

Why stop with Srebenica? There’s a genocide in progress in Darfur. Kids should also be taught why the rest of the world is uninterested in stopping it.

Alcuin,

On a recent Radio 4 programme, a witness to Kristallnacht described the day after. She said there was a deathly silence in public spaces, a sense of communal shame and shock. Some Germans actually apologised to Jewish neighbours and shopkeepers for the behaviour of the thugs. So, I find it hard to accept your thesis of communal hatred as the cause of the Holocaust - in contradistinction to, in particular, the Armenian Genocide, and some of the Jewish pogroms of Eastern Europe.

Oh dear. You might as well have mentioned, as the usual suspects often do, that some Jews fought for Hitler (Hitler’s Jewish soldiers), that some Germans were philosemitic, or that Jews were well-integrated in German society.

Does this show that there wasn’t ‘communal hatred’, or, less euphemistically, virulent anti-semitism in pre-WWII Germany? Or that Hitler did what he did without the consent of most ordinary Germans? No.

Robert Gellately’s Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany shows quite nicely that Hitler’s anti-semitism was wildly popular; that ordinary Germans did not have to be coerced to participate in or support the atrocities; that ordinary Germans were happy to report Jews to the Gestapo; and that ordinary Germans were quite well-informed about what was going on.

Now fuck off.

Is anyone aware if anything that Inayat has written on the subject before? I say this because he’s being accused of bandwagon jumping a lot at CiF and I’m wondering if this is fair. I can’t find anything contemporary, but he must have had something to say about it in the 1990’s.

I presume Inayat learnt the lessons and supported an illegal Nato war in Kosovo?

Or that Hitler did what he did without the consent of most ordinary Germans?

That almost looks as though you’re saying that the Holocaust was carried out with the consent of most ordinary Germans. I haven’t lived under a totalitarian regime where dissent meant death, so I wouldn’t make so bold a claim and end it with a flourishing “now fuck off”. For one thing I’d be worried about looking really awful to the unbiased onlooker.

Gellately actually analyses 670 Gestapo case files from three different locations in Germany and comes to the not very new conclusion that the Gestapo terror depended on ordinary Germans denouncing Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals and each other

Such a small samples runs the risk of seeing little difference between Gestapo officers, who tortured and killed people, and ordinary citizens living under paranoia in a totalitarian state and using the apparatus of repression to settle personal disagreements. He adds up the percentages and tosses us some generalisations (and this has been pointed out by other scholars.)

This is not to say that Gellately’s work is crap just that I personally would not use it as the one and only source to generalise that “ordinary Germans did not have to be coerced to participate in or support the atrocities”.

I should add of course that Gellately very much DOES NOT see antisemitism as the main reason for support for the Nazis.

this topic has been covered elsewhere, not only Gellately’s work but many, many others, see

What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany
by Johnson and Reuband

Surely the lesson of the Balkan conflicts and Srebrenica is that secular society is fragile? The fact that a mixed city like Sarajevo could collapse into war groups is enlightening yet horrifying. Bosnia flipped from a state where mixed marriages were commonplace to separate communities, then war and then genocide.

On one of the news programmes this week, the reporter interviewed people on the street in a Serbian city about the arrest of Karadzic. One of the interviewees was a man who denied that genocide was perpetrated in Bosnia. Unsurprisingly, the man was in his 30’s or 40’s (judged by voice), from the age group who would have been involved in the Balkan wars. Assuming that Serbia as a nation is trying to move on, “de-nazification” and acknowledgement of past crimes must be an imperative.

Is there a difference between, when asked to condemn outright a mass killing of Bosniaks or other Muslims, to start rabbiting on about 1,400 years of Jihad (as if Christians had been turning the other cheek for this period); and, when asked to condemn outright a mass killing of Israeli or other Jews, to start rabbiting on about the Nakba, or something?

Andy

This website is honoured by the grace of your presence.

Now all we need is Chris Bertram and Neil Clark to make a strangely appealing moral triumvirate of confusion, zaniness and surreality.

Let’s just create a slaughter index, showing the total number of people murdered during armed conflicts since, say, 1914, broken down by country/region/locale and giving information about suspected or proven perpetrator(s).

Then we can show our children the facts and they can make their own minds up about the unique horror of every single killing.

Neil Clark has ceased his Srebrenica revisionism by the way.
From writing about 2-4000 victims he’s now using the 8000 figure.

@Tim

Tim Judah denies the 8,000 figure in his book The Serbs in the notes at the back. He’s hardly a revisionist. Either way it is still a crime against humanity. It does not become any worse if inflated by another 1000 or reduced. The point is the intention and practice of trying to wipe out an entire ethnic group. Over on Clark’s blog I’ve tried in vain to make that clear.

To make it clearer…

‘It does not become any worse a crime if inflated or better as a crime if reduced’.

i.e it is still a crime. The logic that somehow a crime against humanity is diminished in proportion to each individual life is part of the nihilistic mentality. For if those who have the intention to wipe out as many as possible of another ethnic group kill a greater of lesser number of humans is dependent upon their efficiency and ability. It has nothing to do with the nature of the crime. That is shown by Stalin’s comment that one death was tragic but a million deaths was just a statistic.

I think that a study of Bungle should be part of the curriculum.

I am willing to bet that one of the themes of Holocaust Memorial will be the Srebenica massacres. That will completely pull Bungle’s rug (and Dr Bari’s, he! he!)

K Naylor.
Of course you are right. the exact figures do not alter the relevance and viciousness of the crime.
The point I was trying to make is that Clark has changed his position.
When Milosevic was alive, and in the Hague, Clark was going all out to defend him.
Quoting Herman as fact was part of that.And thus the revisionist stats.
Now of course Slobodan is dead, Neil has no dog in this fight.
Its an interesting shift for someone who will die arguing that Milosevic had no part in the murders in Bosnia.

Karl, re dispute over the eight thousand. I’m prepared to believe it was six thousand, say. Consider the standard six million figure for Jews in the Holocaust which, also, is a rounding up (by Eichman?). Deniers there will cast doubt on the whole validity by questioning this precise figure. Same with Srebrenica.

Stopperlogic

“A million dead in Iraq

900,000 corpses missing.

8,000 dead in Srebrenica.

Not until we find the corpses.”

David T

“For Inayat, and for many other young Muslims who were recruited to the Islamist cause around that time, the lesson of Srebrenica was that Muslims were subject to international and eternal discrimination and genocide, even in parts of Europe in which they’d been safe for generations, at the hands of Christians and Jews, and their collaborators.”

When did Inayat mention Jews in relation to Bosnia or any of this ? Are you so without ethics as to put words in people’s mouths they never said? What if I said “the lesson David T drew from 9/11 was that all Arabs should be locked up”

The lesson many Muslims took from Bosnia is the clear one -that Muslims will never be acepted in Europe however they act- here was the most secular Muslim population on earth, beer drinking pork eating intermarrying indigenous white Muslims many of whome were Muslims in name only. Yet Europe allowed them to be annihilated simply becase of their Muslim names. The proponents of assimiliation are unable to answer this fact.

And anyone who knows anything of the history of the Balkans knows that Bosnian and other Muslims since the decline of the Ottomans had had little safety and had been subject to ongoing ethnic cleansing and slaughter.

And dont zionists believe “Jews are subject to international and eternal discrimination and genocide”- there whole project is based on this

Alcuin

“That it should be taught, I agree with, provided (in agreement with Monty) that the Armenian Genocide (the model for the Holocaust), also be taught - in all its horror and religiously inspired hatred.”

Funny even far right Muslim hating loon like Pipes and Bernard Lewis deny its a genocide. And if youre going to teach it why not the religiously inspired extermination of the Muslim population of Armenia and other ex-Ottoman states as well? Or the religious motivations for the genocide of Bosnian Muslims

Oh i forgot you dont consider non-Muslims killing Muslims wrong or genocide

” The other ghastly horrors of 1400 years of jihad are probably a bit over the top for school, but the BBC should stop getting Terry Jones and Ragieh Omaar to airbrush out this blight, and get a serious historian to cover it. ”

like who ?
Baet Yor?
Radovan Karadic?

Why not as you do just take Nazi material on the Jews and substitute Muslims to explain to our dhimmi schoolchildren the true demonic nature of the Mohammedans they study with?

I remember asking my SWP uni rep what they were doing about the Bosnia war and he replied “why should we do anything, the Bosnia muslims supported the Nazis during the war so stuff them”. Nice

Herman

“I don’t know Bunglawala so I could be way out here, but I get the feeling that his main motivation for wanting Srebrenica to be regarded the same way as Auschwitz is because by making the Holocaust less unique, it makes it less important.”

Yeah you must be right- Jews want the holocaust remeber to remebering the suffering and annihilation of the Jewish people. Muslims, not being fully human, want Bosnia remember so they can get at the Jews not because they feel the pain of the annihilation of the Bosnian Muslims Europes oldest Muslim community and want that suffering to be remebered.

“Bright is correct. It has got to be worthwhile teaching all our children to beware of the deadly hatred that can be unleashed by the relentless vilification of entire communities. The story of Srebrenica should be on our national curriculum.”

Hilarious- what is Harrys Place except a laboratory for vilifying the Muslim community?

“The lesson of Bosnia - and the indifference of the West - was used by Islamists who, photographs of atrocities in hand, recruited thousands of British Muslims to jihad. Muslims would only be safe - so they were told - if they managed to revive a Caliphate which would fight for Muslims worldwide.”

So tell us David do you think the Muslims you denigrate, who fought to save the Bosnians from genocide are heros or, because they are Muslims, “terrorists”? What of the British troops who fought the Serbs for the same purpose? Apparently David T would have us believe the Muslims who went to lay down their lives for the Bosnians were just cynical people pushing a power grabbing agenda (because they were “Islamists”) rather than people genuinely concerned for their fellow Muslims and outraged as anyone would be at what was happening- by calling them “Islamists” he can demonise them as people devoid of human feelings or morality -unlike he who really is concerend for Muslims wellbeing!!!

Its as if someone said that zionists fought the Nazis in WWII or were involved in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising just so they seize power and influence in the Jewish community - not because they cared Jews were being annihilated.

“For me, the lesson of Srebrenica was very different”

Of course- any lesson that villification of Muslims you are a small part of will eventually lead to genocide needs to be kept from your mind- you do at least have that much unease and conscience.

In all of this I have not seen a single reference to one of the core issues. Srebrenica was, at the time, under the protection of the UN, and the UN, having first disarmed the inhabitants under the promise of providing protection, then stood aside and allowed the massacre to happen.

A central lesson to learn from this is - how worthless is the word of the so called ‘International Community’ and heaven help those depending on the good offices of the UN.

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@Alec/Tim

Yes.

@Ex-SWP.

The fault for that kind of mentality comes from those like Pilger, bits of whose books are bandied about as though infallible. For example in New Rulers of the World Pilger just resorts to windy rhetoric about the Serbs ‘epic resistance’ against the Nazis. He does not distinguish between the Chetniks and the Partisans nor does he seem to get it that to invoke that as though some proof of Serbian nationalist virtue bought directly into the propaganda being put out by the Serbs during the Third Balkan War.

It is that trope that was extended by those like Neil Clark who take it that the USA is the ‘new Third Reich’ and then juxtapose plucky Serbia as some heroic underdog deliberately maligned and ‘victimised’. Orwell refered to this kind of logic as ‘transferred nationalism’ but few bother to notice how Pilger’s reverse spin works. Ultimately, its all about him, his vanity and his media image.

In recent years I have grown increasingly annoyed by idiotic WW 2 analogies and transferred nationalism’. They are a common staple of spurious propaganda from Blair claiming Saddam was another Hitler to those claiming Milosevic was a true patriot in the partisan tradition. Whilst ‘neocons’ have a simplistic idea of the Allied scheme of history the hard left cling to it too, only they tend to think the Soviet Union was absolved of its crimes by just being anti-Nazi which is why the repugnant dolt Seumas Milne is so insensed by any comparisons between Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism.

This is the fascinating thing for me-how only the Nazis and their crimes have been elevated to some unique and sole total absolute of evil and how all those powers who fought against Hitler’s regime are somehow absolved of their crimes as well just because they fought against the Third Reich. By this I mean the crimes that were committed by the Soviet Union but also across Europe by nationalist guerillas, partisans and collaborators of all kinds.

One reason I have set up my blogsite ‘reverse spin’ is to counter these kinds of propaganda tropes that masquerade as though superior wisdom. There is so much polemic that is quite frankly utter bollocks and yet people buy into it in large numbers.

For increasingly large numbers of people want simplistic explanations and the comfort that comes with feeling ‘we’ are guilty for everything because only ‘we’ can change the world if ‘we’ break out of the sinister world of total mass media manipulation. They do not see that Pilger, Parenti and others with neurotic and somewhat unhinged worldviews are contributing towards obfuscation rather than clarity.

It hasn’t done their careers much harm, though, has it ?

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‘in all its horror and religiously inspired hatred’ - The Armenian Genocide cannot be reduced to a Muslim on Christian massacre, just as the Holocaust cannot be reduced to a Christian on Jewish one. The controllers of the genocide were secular, they regarded the sultanite/caliph rule as backwards and the cause of Turkey/The Empie’s decline. Gokalp was inspired more by Durkheim or Spencer than Mo. The Ittihadists were at root organic nationalists seeking to purge Turkey of a ‘malignant’ minority that would not or were never asked to buy into this new identity.

‘Hitler’s anti-semitism was wildly popular’ - or the Goldhagen fallacy. Strange then that in the years of electorial growth 1928-32, Goebbals played down the Jewish ‘threat’ outside of the party.

The issue is a lot simpler than the rights and wrongs of whatever happened in the former Yugoslavia, or anywhere else. It’s: are there universal rights that should be upheld in any circumstances? Do we want to see mass murder of any kind prosecuted? If so, how can this be done most effectively and with the maximum of justcie?

For a defence of the Human Rigths left see:http://shirazsocialist.wordpress.com/2008/07/25/in-praise-of-the-human-rights-left/#comments

If Countingcats is correct, and he is, what does it say for the prospects that the “international community” will come to the aid of Israel against a, say, nuclear-armed Iran when the chips are down? The Israelies are under no illusions; it will be America or nobody. Period.

Charlieman is on target about the fragility of the secular community. The social process he is so worried about is much like the psychology of the prison. In prison, one rarely has the luxury of staying neutral or having friends in the various ethnic/racial “communities.” Rather, one is forced to choose sides under risk of death being seen either as a race traitor by one’s own kind, or as a weak sister and a man not to be trusted by the other groups. With the increasing import of Islam into the West and it’s almost total cultural incompatibility with the laws and customs of Western civilization, and the fact of obvious lack of assimilation–an assimilation made less likely which each passing day as the numbers increase–the future prospects for
stemming the sad rise and ultimate fruition in full flower within the West of the sort of dismal psycho-social maladies that beset the prison world is not good.

Orwell (via HP) If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

emmanuelgoldstein: Now fuck off.

Ben: You stupid cunt Alcuin. You piece of human filth.

Maximilien Robespierre: Pity is treason.

William Butler Yeats: The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

I have always believed that all British school children should be taught about the unique horror of the Srebrenica massacre in the same way that they are all taught about Auschwitz.

Martin bright is clearly an idiot.

To compare the islamist agitation characterising the Balkans in the 90s, the visits of Bin laden, the presence of Arab and Pakistani foreign fighters, combatants, many of whom were aided, abeted and protected by *civilian* fighters, such as the ones present at Srebrenica, to the fate of innocent civilians like Anne Frank or the events at Auschwitz is an obscenity.

What British school children should be taught is how The West’s cowardice, its cold-hearted indifference to the fate of Balkan Christians, to their suffering and to their slaughter IN THE MILLIONS CULMINATED to the Armenian genocide, which in turn DIRECTLYinspired The Holocaust.

Those centuries of craven Ottoman collaboration, and the present ( since the 70s) alliances with islamists is what will bring about the next holocaust.

Hmm ….8,000, and not only is the number disputed by reputable pundits, but also the combatant/non-combatant status of some of those killed, and with this we compare, we draw an eqivalence with, the 6 million Jews slaughtered WWII and with the twelve to fifteen million Christians slaughtered under the Ottomans.

Imagince the historical amnesia coupled with the moral bankruptcy and shrill anti-christian sentiments that would blindly drive bigoted individuals to believe that a violent, imperialistic and genocidal Balkan Islam is always “victim” and never “aggressor”.

It would seem that some are far more interested in avenging the last holocaust, than they are in preventing the next one.

EXAMPLE:
Just a few days ago here in Canada, a young Jewish gril was attacked and brutally beated by some Muslims.

The Canadian Jewish Congress, who’d have gone ballistic and who’d have demanded an inquiry had the attackers been white Christians, could hardly bring themsleves to admit the perps were Muslims.

They stuttered and stamered before finally fessing up to the truth in barely audible voices.

Yes Islam means peace and Serbs are demons.

And with yet more masturbation about Srebrenica, we place the noose about our necks.

Way to go JP that’s the most disgusting comment that I have ever seen on here (and I’ve seen a few.) Take back anything I said the other day about you being semi-redeemed by a sense of humour - you are as bad as Irving/Zundel or any of the other deniers.

civilian* fighters, such as the ones present at Srebrenica er?

In the words of Bill Clinton:

We remember this terrible crime because we dare not forget, because we must pay tribute to the innocent lives, many of them children who were snuffed out in what must be called genocidal madness

Maggot.

To compare the islamist agitation characterising the Balkans in the 90s, the visits of Bin laden, the presence of Arab and Pakistani foreign fighters, combatants, many of whom were aided, abeted and protected by *civilian* fighters, such as the ones present at Srebrenica, to the fate of innocent civilians like Anne Frank or the events at Auschwitz is an obscenity.

We are not comparing ‘islamist agitation characterising the Balkans’ with the Holocaust; we are talking about the massacre of Srebrenica. Perhaps you’d like to tell us of the ‘islamist agitation’ of Nurija Halilović, a civilian girl of the same age (to the month) as Anne Frank. Or perhaps you can tell us of the evil Muslim crimes of 5 year-old Naida Hodžić. Both were killed at Srebrenica. And the other 366 children killed at Srebrenica.

While the Holocaust is unique, to deny discussion of other genocides because of the magnitude of the Nazis’ crimes is to seek to belittle or deny those genocides.

I think you’ll find that there were ‘foreign fighters, combatants, many of whom were aided, abeted and protected by *civilian* fighters,’ present during World War II, as well. Many Jews fought back through their own partisan movements as well as in units attached to the British, Polish and Red armies.

…זוג נישט קײנמאל אז דו גײסט דעם לעצטן װעג

What British school children should be taught is how The West’s cowardice, its cold-hearted indifference to the fate of Balkan Christians, to their suffering and to their slaughter IN THE MILLIONS CULMINATED to the Armenian genocide, which in turn DIRECTLYinspired The Holocaust

Certainly we should avoid the slaughter of Albanians by Serbs in 1878-81, 1912-13, 1918-21 and 1945 and their mass deportation in the 1930s, the 1950s and the 1990s. We should also not talk about the ethnic cleansing of over a million Ottoman muslims between 1878 and 1912 from south-east Europe by Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. We should certainly describe what happened to the Greeks of Smyrna as genocide while remaining silent about the Turks of Salonika and Drama.

Hmm ….8,000, and not only is the number disputed by reputable pundits, but also the combatant/non-combatant status of some of those killed,

One might wonder why there were so many Bosniaks of fighting age in Srebrenica at all. Might it be something to do with the fact that had been slaughtered and deported throughout the rest of Eastern Bosnia and this was all they had left?

We know have the names of over 8,000 people who were killed at Srebrenica. Their names have been published and those who were unknown were left off the list. If you dispute that those individuals were killed there, please account for them and explain why their families are missing them.

and with this we compare, we draw an eqivalence with, the 6 million Jews slaughtered WWII and with the twelve to fifteen million Christians slaughtered under the Ottomans.

Please account for these figures. And while you’re at it, can you tell us something about Muslims slaughtered under the Ottomans, too? If you think there aren’t any, you know even less about Ottoman history than I thought.

Imagince the historical amnesia coupled with the moral bankruptcy and shrill anti-christian sentiments that would blindly drive bigoted individuals to believe that a violent, imperialistic and genocidal Balkan Islam is always “victim” and never “aggressor”.

Imagine the historical amnesia coupled with the moral bankruptcy and shrill racist (Muslim is an ethnic tag in the Western Balkans) sentiments that would blindly drive bigoted individuals not only to believe that a violent, imperialistic Greater Serbia is always “victim” and never “aggressor” but also to cheer on the killers and their paymasters while insulting the injured and bereaved. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

It would seem that some are far more interested in avenging the last holocaust, than they are in preventing the next one.

Hence all this stuff about the Ottoman Empire and the Bosnian SS, as if they excused what Milošević, The Man With The Golden Dildo and their pals did.

Just a few days ago here in Canada, a young Jewish gril was attacked and brutally beated by some Muslims.

Bosnian Muslims, or will any old Muslim do?

Serbs are demons.

Most Serbs lead quiet, ordinary lives like most other folk; during the Bosnian war, over 80% of young men in Belgrade did not respond to their call-up papers.

Then there are the aspiring politicians, the crooks, wannabe intellectuals and religious maniacs who lead people to deport, rape and kill people in the name of ethnic purity. And those that defend them. Are they demons? If the cap fits, wear it.

And with yet more masturbation about Srebrenica

Now that is truly obscene.

I went to Auschwitz in 1989 (I was organising a conference in Krakow the week before the berlin Wall came down).

My big boss and many of her advisors were German (i.e. FDR) they all refused to come with the rest of us to Auschwitz.

They didn’t need to, you see, as they were all lefties they were not responsible for the Holocaust and they did not need guilt tripping by others who knew far less about these matters than, they a generation raised on Gunther Grass.

Except my bosses secret (and for anyone in Public Life it had to be closely guarded) was that she had escaped from the DDR.

She knew that she hadn’t learned of the holacaust in school (and really where else are people going to learn of these things) because as communist Germans they had not been responsible for the crimes of the Nazis.

So she went alone to Auschwitz not telling her friends (or me until later when i seriously worried for her health).

She broke down, and that which broke her and threatened her sanity was the maps and the diagrams, the telegrams and letters, in official beaurocratic German, the identical language that she used for the mass mobilisation of health campaigns.;

-The telegram from the Station cheif complaining of the human sounds coming from a locked train car that had been left for days in the sidings, that had disturbed the sleep of local residents, requesting its removal.

-the orders sent to various clothing manufacturers telling them that the sorting and admixture of human hair products for textile manufacture had now been centralised to one distributer in Nurenberg and that therefore manufacturers should no longer conduct individual negotiations and contracts with seperate human hair product producers (i.e. the camps themselves).

It was these things the detailed, precise markers of a massive and efficient system that described for her the scale of the holocaust industry dynamics and the level of involvment of ordinary Germans.

My boss’s view was that the Holocaust could not have been carried out on the scale it was, cutting acrosss all pre war German industries and institutions, without a very clear knowledge of what was happening by several hundred thousand functionaries and several million more must have had a pretty good idea of what was going on, had they cared to ask themselves a few simple questions (like what caused the human sounds from locked and abandoned train carriages?, where were they going, these mostly efficiently run services always locked always to the same destinations?).

Then of course she had the questions (that could no longer be asked, how much did my parents know? what did they really do? how much did they not want to know or refused to ask? what more could they have done?

I don’t know about curricula, but Graham is right the moral questions raised by genocide must be encouraged in its exigesis to school age young people (and beyond) genocide cannot be yet another teaching module of a set of ‘facts of killing’ which the morally depraved will always seek to relativise and rationalise, diminish and excuse.

John.P

You really are quite repulsive. I fail to see a shred of Christian morality in your comment on Srebinica.

Your frenzied hatred of an abstract and idealised Muslim murderous other leaves you morally corrupted, a swill of hatred that allows you to feel nothing for young children murdered in cold blood so that they may not grow up to ‘breed’ as Muslims.

Genocide for the love of God!

You claim the spiritual high ground of your purported faith’s greater compassion and kindness and its abscence of revenge, you vengeful, spite filled, hatred spewing barbarian.

May your God damn you for your cowardice and cruelty you ethically bankrupt primitive husk of a lie claiming to be a man of a superior faith.

There have been many posts on the various horrors of the 20th century, some are getting rather heated over who is the worst villain, citing detailed records, and experiences of victims - mettaculture’s was particularly poignant, though his comment on Christian morality - and subsequent puerile diatribe shows a curious irony.

After his Ascent of Man series, Dr Jacob Bronowski was on Parkinson. He had some personal history at Auschwitz, but when he went there, it was not the gas chambers, the cells, the depravity, the terror, that hit him - it was a room full of children’s tin piss pots. For every one there must have been a child, and a mother who was doing her best to care for a soul that would never grow up - love stamped out by callous mechanical bureaucracy.

On Saturday Live this morning (from 19 minutes in)), a Bosnian Muslim described his incarceration in a Bosnian concentration camp. The conditions were awful, but it was seeing people he knew as friends, turning into jailers. In particular his GP, who spoke to him in the camp as though little had changed between them. Surreal, banal and terrifying at the same time.

BBC4 recently showed a documentary by the late (and excellent) Charles Wheeler on the Sudeiten Germans of Czechoslovakia - jailers and tormentors in 1940, victims in 1945. Both events involved similar behaviour, but with the boot on the other foot. Both sides see themselves victims, both want their own crimes swept under the carpet.

We will never stop such things by blaming certain types of individual, because they are all different. We are into Milgram territory here - we could all get sucked into such conflicts. It’s about identity, and the flaw in us all that allo