People of all creeds, age, race or gender, fellow human beings: Show at least some semblance of humanity and help the trapped people of Gaza before it is too late! Demonstrate against the Israeli massacres at its embassies around the world, boycott Israeli products for there can be no divine right to commit genocide transferred over the generations that have perished in the first Holocaust!
Talking of war crimes and proportionality, with more than 1330 Palestinians killed and 20000 homes destroyed by the israeli army http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/01/200912574445581696.html during its three-week Gaza massacre, against a total of 13 Israelis killed in the process, the rule of thumb shows a slighty higher death toll than even the reprisals enacted by the Nazi army during WW2...
2 comments:
"Talking of war crimes and proportionality, with more than 1330 Palestinians killed and 20000 homes destroyed by the israeli army http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/01/200912574445581696.html during its three-week Gaza massacre, against a total of 13 Israelis killed in the process, the rule of thumb shows a slighty higher death toll than even the reprisals enacted by the Nazi army during WW2... "
The use of the word 'reprisal' (definition at end of response), in the above quote, I find anti-semitic and offensive as it can imply that the German Army was responding to some initial injustice perpetrated against it by the Jewish people. What did the Jewish people ever do to Germany except enrichen its culture? (As now the Poles, Pakistanis, Romanians ... are doing in the UK) Or are we going back to the arguments espoused in Mein Kampf? I hope not?
Your use of the clause 'the reprisals enacted by the Nazi Army' in this context has an anti-semitic tone, which unfortunately undermines what you have to say.
Options that would have avoided this.
1) If you had qualified your use of the word 'reprisal' by writing something like 'the reprisals enacted by the German army when withdrawing from Finalnd', this would have aradicated any suggestion of anti-semitism. But instead you put '...' and leave it open to interpretation. Very unpleasant. Are we talking about the German Army wiping out Jewish villages in Poland here, or rounding up Jews in Germany for the concentration camps?
Even if this is just a quote from aljazeera you are still being racist by using it in this way to support your view point.
Some of what you have to say makes sense, but there is no room in any argument for racism.
Adieu!
Reprisal (noun)
1. (in warfare) retaliation against an enemy, for injuries received, by the infliction of equal or greater injuries.
2. an act or instance of retaliation.
3. the action or practice of using force, short of war, against another nation, to secure redress of a grievance.
4. the forcible seizure of property or subjects in retaliation.
Origin:
1400–50; late ME reprisail FR reprisaille.
Dear Sir/ Madam,
Thank you for your comment.
I will try to answer the points you raised.
I fail to see how you could possibly consider the word "reprisal" as being "anti-semitic".
Moreover, the context itself is anything but. If, however, someone wanted (wilfully and maliciously) to read into it something else than the perpetration of crimes against humanity then, that person is definitely not me.
It was never implied that the German army behaved other than in a criminal manner - not just against the Jewish people, but to the rest of those over 60 million people that have perished in the WW2, of which more than 32 million were civilians. History tells us though that the allies weren't much better in the bombing of German cities such as Dresden, for instance.
Yet it wouldn't be fair to judge everything that happened back then by current standards.
However, the comments made in my blog about the situation in Palestine concern an ongoing situation where humans are forced to live in what can only be described as animal pens.
It was never implied that the Jews did anything else but contribute (enormously) not just to the German culture, but to human culture as a whole. In fact, some of the authors that have shaped my cultural perspective are Jews. Even my best friend in college was half-Jewish.
That, however, does not detract me from highlighting the injustices perpetrated by the Jewish state against the Palestinians. But, I think this is made obviously clear throughout my blog. As one can tell, politically correct newspeak is not my speciality even though I am trying hard to preserve what Weber considers axiological neutrality to be.
I hope this clears the air and also clarifies things.
Bogdan
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