Reply to Senator Ben Cardin: Israel no longer "a light unto the nations."
Here's some context to Israel's demolishing homes in Gaza by mass demolition detonations, aerial bombardments, shelling and the deaths of 27,000 Gazians, with 66, 139 wounded.
Image from NY Times article videos, “Israel’s Controlled Demolitions are Razing Neighborhoods in Gaza,” Feb. 1, 2024: Taken Nov. 15 to Jan. 21…this is in Gaza City.
---------- Original Message ----------
From: WILLIAM NEIL
To: Senator Ben Cardin <senator@cardin.senate.gov>
Date: 02/02/2024 10:31 AM EST
Subject: Re: Facts Under Fire
Dear Senator Cardin:
Thank you for reminding all your constituents, and beyond, of the importance of remembering the Holocaust. I have written extensively recently about the fate of the Weimar Republic in Germany, 1919-1933, which ended when Hitler was appointed Chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933. The world, and Americans know more about what happened to the Jews of Germany (and Western and Central Europe) than they do about what happnened in the first concentration camps set up in 1933-1934, where it was the German left - trade unions, socialist leaders, communists - who were imprisoned first, starting on May 2, 1933, many thousands tortured and then killed with no legal proceedings. Some were Jews, but they were arrested for their roles in the complex German left, which ceased to exist as a public block after May 2.
I thought it was important to remind my fellow citizens and elected officials of these historical facts because I and many other Americans have been labelled "vermin" by Herr Trump, and targetted for removal in some unspecified way by the leading Republican candidate for president.
I also have been unable to get my last two online comments printed by the NY Times, which is unusual - I have had about a 75% publishing rate over the years. Both were about the war in Gaza, and the last in response to a NY Times article featuring the organized demolition of residences in Gaza. I wrote the following, which I saved not knowing if it would be published:
Apparently the teaching of European history in Israel lags a bit, or is too focused on one important event. But even conceding that, how is it possible for those who centralize the Holocaust that they cannot see the irony of turning Gaza into a giant Palestinian ghetto, and now razing it in a repeat history of Warsaw, especially its uprising in 1944, led by Jewish resistors, who were ready to die fighting since they knew they were on the way to the death camps anyhow?
Why won't Gazians, even ones who don't like Hamas' rule, adopt the same fatalism and turn their last gasps of energy against Israel?
For a nation steeped in Old Testament history which wants the whole world to visit the museums if not the sites of the Holocaust itself, Israel's conduct of vengeance is deeply ironic and self defeating. Oh yes, and it has a great rationale: that Hamas wants in turn the chance to destroy Israel; the limitation of that view is that Hamas does not have the ability to destroy Israel - yes, to disrupt it and as seen on Oct. 7th, to conduct an Arab pogrom upon it - but the reverse side is that Israel can destroy Gaza entirely and ethnically cleanse both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip...let's face the facts, that's what's going on, not yet completed. If readers think that is too harsh, try an Israeli version of Apartheid imposed on Palestinians in both locations. A couple of months ago that sounded extreme to me; today it does not.
A light unto nations? No longer. Not on this path.
Here is the link to the NY Times article that I was responding to: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/01/world/middleeast/Israel-gaza-war-demolish.html
I also saw the following letter in the NY Times today, February 2nd, from 800 public servants in Western Europe and the U.S. who have crticized their nations’ uncritical support of Israel's policies over the past four months, since the Palestinian pogrom upon Israel on October 7. I thought you ought to see it: and for readers here at Substack, here’s the Times link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/us/politics/protest-letter-israel-gaza.html
Transatlantic Civil Servants’ Statement on Gaza:
It Is Our Duty To Speak Out
When Our Governments’ Policies Are Wrong
Released February 2, 2024
Declaration of civil servants regarding Gaza:
Recalling that:
We have the duty to respect, protect and uphold our constitutions and international and national legal obligations which our democratically elected executives have committed us to;
We are expected as civil servants to respect, serve and uphold the law while implementing policies, regardless of the political parties in power; that we have done so for our entire careers;
We have been hired to serve, inform and advise our governments/institutions and we have demonstrated professionalism, expertise, and experience that our governments have relied on over the past decades of our service;
We have internally expressed our concerns that the policies of our governments/institutions do not serve our interests and called for alternatives that would better serve national and international security, democracy and freedom; reflect the core principles of western foreign policy; and incorporate lessons learned;
Our professional concerns were overruled by political and ideological considerations;
We are obliged to do everything in our power on behalf of our countries and ourselves to not be complicit in one of the worst human catastrophes of this century; and
We are obliged to warn the publics of our countries, whom we serve, and to act in concert with transnational colleagues.
We publicly reiterate our concerns that:
Israel has shown no boundaries in its military operations in Gaza which has resulted in tens of thousands of preventable civilian deaths; and that the deliberate blocking of aid by Israel has led to a humanitarian catastrophe, putting thousands of civilians at risk of starvation and slow death;
Israel's military operations have not contributed to its goal of releasing all hostages and is putting their well-being, lives and release at risk;
Israel's military operations have disregarded all important counterterrorism expertise gained since 9/11; and that the operation has not contributed to Israel’s goal of defeating Hamas and instead has strengthened the appeal of Hamas, Hezbollah and other negative actors;
The ongoing military operation will be detrimental not just for Israel’s own security but also regional stability; the risk of wider wars is also negatively impacting stated security objectives of our governments;
Our governments have provided the Israeli military operation with public, diplomatic and military support; that this support has been given without real conditions or accountability; and that when faced with humanitarian catastrophe, our governments have failed to call for an immediate ceasefire and an end to blockages of necessary food/water/medicine in Gaza;
Our governments’ current policies weaken their moral standing and undermine their ability to stand up for freedom, justice, and human rights globally and weaken our efforts to rally international support for Ukraine and to counter malign actions by Russia, China and Iran; and
There is a plausible risk that our governments’ policies are contributing to grave violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and even ethnic cleansing or genocide.
We therefore call on our governments/institutions to:
Stop asserting to the public that there is a strategic and defensible rationale behind the Israeli operation and that supporting it is in our countries’ interests;
Hold Israel, like all actors, accountable to international humanitarian and human rights standards applied elsewhere and to forcefully respond to attacks against civilians, as we are doing in our support to the Ukrainian people; this includes demanding immediate and full implementation of the recent order of the International Court of Justice;
Use all leverage available - including a halt to military support - to secure a lasting ceasefire and full humanitarian access in Gaza and a safe release of all hostages; and
Develop a strategy for lasting peace that includes a secure Palestinian state and guarantees for Israel’s security, so that an attack like 7 October and an offensive on Gaza never happen again.
Coordinated by civil servants in:
European Union institutions and bodies
The Netherlands
United States
Also endorsed by civil servants in:
Belgium
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Italy
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
United Kingdom
Thank you for taking the time to allow a mere citizen in an oligarchic democracy to speak up.
Sincerely,
William R. Neil
Frostburg, MD
https://williamrneil.substack.com/p/world-on-fire-part-iii-us-domestic
And here is the original letter from Senator Cardin that I was responding to:
On 01/27/2024 10:10 AM EST Senator Ben Cardin <senator@cardin.senate.gov> wrote:
January 27, 2024
Dear Fellow Marylanders,
Today, International Holocaust Remembrance Day is one of the most solemn days of the year, not only for the Jewish people, but for all those who value freedom and life.
It was on this day in 1945 that Soviet troops liberated the Nazi-run concentration camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau. Young soldiers, most now long-gone, came face to face with a few hundred survivors, piles of corpses and heaps of personal belongings of the victims of the worst atrocity humans have ever committed against other humans.
As survivors told their stories, the world could no longer deny the enormity of the horrors committed in this place. Journalists snapped photos (no internet or smart phones yet), human rights violators confessed to crimes across Europe, and it became clear that we should, and could never forget the Holocaust.
I was 15 months old at the time – too young to remember the headlines. But even now, as an adult, it is overwhelming to think of the scale and devastation of the Holocaust in human terms. Six million Jews killed, as well as millions of Roma, Afro-Germans, LGBTQI individuals, people with disabilities, and more.
Seventy-nine years later, the global population of Jews has still not recovered. Alarmingly, there has been a resurgence in the hateful ideologies and actions of those who want to kill every Jew on the face of the earth.
Along side this has been a rise in efforts to minimize or erase the facts of the Holocaust. Deborah Lipstadt, President Joe Biden’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, describes Holocaust denialism this way:
“People have long been susceptible to conspiracy theories and to notions that go against the facts. For many deniers … it seems there is a deep-seated antisemitism and a feeling that Jews are getting something out of the Holocaust or using the Holocaust for their own advantage, and that the Jews are a manipulative sort so that they must be making this up.”
Antisemitism and hate existed long before the internet, but there is no denying that social media has provided a fertile platform for Holocaust denialism and antisemitism. It has gotten so extreme that even the United Nations has taken notice. In its report entitled, “History under attack: Holocaust denial and distortion on social media”, Oxford researchers analyzed thousands of Holocaust-related postings on Facebook, Twitter (now X), TikTok, Instagram and Telegram. According to the report, “nearly half of Holocaust-related content on Telegram either denied or distorted its history. For moderated or regulated platforms, nearly 10 per cent of posts on Facebook, and 15 per cent of posts on Twitter that discussed the Holocaust hosted denial or distortion content.”
The brutal terrorist attack by Hamas on October 7, killing more than 1,200 innocent people in Israel – Americans included – and taking hundreds of hostages has poured gasoline on this denialism fire. Despite the fact that Hamas sent its fighters across the border and into Israel with cameras to document their deliberate slaughter and kidnapping of women, children, elderly and others, some groups are now trying to call the worst terror attack on Jews since the Holocaust a “false flag” operation.
Elizabeth Dwoskin writes in the Washington Post that “[s]ome argue the ambush was staged by the Israeli military to justify an invasion of Gaza. Others say that some 240 hostages Hamas took into Gaza were actually kidnapped by Israel. Some contend the United States is behind the plot. These untrue and misleading narratives have been seeded on social media, where hashtags and terms linking Israel to “false flag” — a staged event that casts blame on another party — tripled on services including TikTok, Reddit and 4chan in the weeks after the attacks, according to the Network Contagion Research Institute, a nonprofit tracking disinformation.”
The threats and hate are not confined to the virtual world though. According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), antisemitic incidents increased 360 percent in the three months since October 7. “The American Jewish community is facing a threat level that’s now unprecedented in modern history,” according to Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO. “It’s shocking that we’ve recorded more antisemitic acts in three months than we usually would in an entire year.”
Shocking indeed.
Since October 7, we now have more people in the United States openly talking about getting rid of Jews “from the river to the sea.” This literally means wiping Israel off the map. People are attacking Jewish businesses here in America. They are attacking Jewish students on college campuses in America. I never thought I would see such an eruption in my lifetime.
We cannot accept such blatant disregard for the facts to spread. We cannot excuse the embrace of hate. We cannot be silent. Silence and apathy are what allowed the Holocaust to take root. The Nazis used propaganda to turn people against each other. They were elected to office capitalizing on ignorance and perpetuating falsehoods; they weaponized bigotry and fanaticism until it began to feel normal and accepted. It is hard not to see the similarities to modern day events.
On this International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we all must commit to breaking this cycle of hate, denial and ignorance. As President Joe Biden said on Friday, “without equivocation or exception, we must … forcefully push back against attempts to ignore, deny, distort, and revise history. This includes Holocaust denialism and efforts to minimize the horrors that Hamas perpetrated on October 7, especially its appalling and unforgiveable use of rape and sexual violence to terrorize victims.”
We all have an essential role to play in correcting disinformation and denialism, with facts and evidence, education. There also must be legal consequences for those who incite and commit violent attacks.
I thank the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for its ongoing efforts across this country and around the world to create lesson plans for schools and fact-based materials to help counter the proliferation of Holocaust-related misinformation. New groups like “Six Million Voices” are taking on this task as well, working to overcome ignorance and apathy with “empathy to inspire everyone to stand up against human suffering anywhere and everywhere.”
Learning the truth – about history and current events – is the key to fighting intolerance and disarming hate. On this day of remembrance, and every day, it is one of the best ways we can pay tribute to the Jews lost in the Holocaust and on October 7.
Thank you for your time. Please feel free to reply to this email with your thoughts on this topic or any other. I value your feedback.
In solidarity,
Ben Cardin