Israel Vs Hamas: Winning the War and Losing the Propaganda

A Marxist friend relentlessly posted messages and articles against Israel and finally called support of Israel as evil as supporting Nazism. Of course such stupidities are always trotted out with the excuse "oh I am not an anti-semite". She then proceeds to delegitimize the existence of Israel just like Hamas. I mean at what point would anybody concede their anti-semitism. So many nations have been formed and destroyed in the course of human history and particularly between 1940-1990 but only the formation of Israel irks the preening human rightists. Strangely this Marxist and her acolytes are silent about Chechnya and Saudi Arabia and China.

It is beyond indecent to see idiotic statements on Facebook that say" Israel does unto Hamas what Nazis did unto Jews". 6 million Jews died without raising a finger, as loyal citizens of the many countries they resided in, with nobody to give them voice and no rockets to launch at the Nazi state. Yes, Hamas is no match for Israel's military might but by that logic Osama Bin Laden was no match for USA either. Comparing holocaust to the current battle in Gaza is plain idiocy and does not bear scrutiny. Unfortunately such silly idiocies have the strength to become a rooted myth that makes reality look like a lie.

For the millionth time let me reiterate that Israel was NOT the consolation price that a guilt ridden West offered the Jews for holocaust. The promise of Israel was made in the Balfour declaration in 1917, nearly 21 years before Kristallnacht.

Another Facebook simpleton posted a photo showing the shrinking borders of Palestine from what the UN mandated to what it is today in 2014. True, it is shrunken and for that the Palestinians can congratulate themselves and their Arab brethren. As I've repeatedly pointed out Israel pleaded to be left alone in 1948 when the UN mandate created two states but Palestinians egged on by their Arab neighbors vowed to push the Jews into the Red sea but lost. That a beleaguered people, with far less international help than what Hamas gets today, even survived such a war is the greatest miracle of modern history. Not satisfied with the damage wrought the Arabs tried again in 1967 with Jordan, Syria and Egypt to snuff out Israel only to be defeated in the most humiliating manner. And yes, the borders shrank once again as a victorious Israel.

Life is unfair and Israel learned that, yet again, during the Yom Kippur war. Humiliated by the defeat in 1967 Anwar Sadat launched the Yom Kippur war that almost destroyed Israel. Unlike the 1967 war this time Israel slept and ignored the signs of war. In addition, Israel's Golda Meir also realized that another pre-emptive strike would alienate the American establishment. With great bravery Israel defended itself and marched into Egypt. Sadat, in a face saving gesture, declared victory and got on a plane to sign truce with Israel.

Life is unfair and Israel, yet and yet again, learned that in 1991. In 1991 the Arab nations pleaded with America to stop Saddam Hussein but their one condition was that Israel should not be involved. If Israel got into the war, the Arab coalition warned that they would oppose. Seeking to use that condition to destroy the alliance Saddam Hussein launched missile attacks into Tel Aviv. By every international law Israel was entitled to retaliate and yet its hand was stayed by America just to save the coalition.

Anything to do with Israel brings out the worst from many of its opponents. Let us be clear that the current round of violence was initiated by Hamas with the kidnapping and subsequent brutal killing of 3 Israelis. While Israel looked for the kidnapped citizens Palestine, Hamas and the world cared a damn. When the bodies turned up and a revenge killing happened, which Israeli government condemned and did everything to apprehend the guilty, the world started taking notice. Then Hamas started firing rockets into Israel and Israel replied back in kind. Now human rights advocates and activists sprouted from every corner of the world like locusts. A pornography of grief has ensued with the tragic killing of 3 children, playing on a beach, during an Israeli bombing.

Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb threatens Saudi Arabia as much as it threatens Israel or US. Yet, Saudi regime is relaxing knowing full well that America and Israel will take care of it. This duplicity is what paints America and Israel into a corner.

So much is made of America's aid to Palestine. America buys oil from Arab states and funds totalitarian regimes in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Unlike Israel those nations who enjoy American dollars have repaid US in treachery. Russia is the backer of the murderous regime in Syria. Where is the indignation for that? What is the level of indignation against a terrorist army like ISIS or even the Boko Haram?

There is so much of hue and a cry about Palestinian casualties as against almost zero Israeli casualty. Hamas locates its rocket launchers in homes and schools and purposefully leaves its citizens unprotected. In fact Hamas wants more casualties so they can parade corpses. This is the ugliest truth. An Israeli mother writing in a letter to New York Times editor said that she cried reading about the dead Gazan children even as she herself was hiding from rockets fired by Hamas. The rockets fired by Hamas were 'intended' to kill civilians unlike Israel's rockets.

The ever redoubtable Charles Krauthammer offers the stark contrast in 'moral clarity' with a quote from an Israeli minister "we are using missile defense to protect our civilians they are using civilians to protect their missiles". As Krauthammer, with his anger barely concealed, points out Israel had exited out of Gaza in the full glare of international TVs and there is no occupation in Gaza or even the much hated settlements. Instead of building a state for its citizens Palestniians sought to create a sanctuary for terror with a view to nurturing a permanent state of war with Israel.

Another much circulated cartoon on Facebook shows Israel showering rockets on Gaza in response to one rocket from Gaza. New York Times which ran many critical article against Israel, including a much well documented one on the 4 children being killed, also ran another article that stated "sheer number (of rockets) fired by militants since July 8th has shaken Israeli society". Israel's fabled 'iron dome' defense foils most of the rocket attacks and therefore Israeli casualty is almost zero. But that is NOT the point. While the dome protects life imagine living under a barrage of rockets and perpetual air raid sirens.

Terrorist organizations have the aura and romance of being some nitwits idea of a freedom fighter. Hamas is romanticized by unscrupulous idiots. Hamas happened because Arafat's Al Fatah was a corrupt and effete organization. And Hamas too is corrupt with many of its top leaders being millionaires. The tragedy of Palestinians is not the state of Israel but its leadership.

Even school textbooks are vehicles of hate in the Middle East. To be sure Israeli textbooks have their share of scaremongering. But the Palestinian textbooks go beyond scaremongering into hate mongering.

Unlike those who hate Israel and are blind to Hamas's fault I shall not be blind towards Israel. The current ground war is pointless and it only alienates much more. As much as Krauthammer might take comfort in the 'roof knocking' it is grotesque and useless. Telling a family to pick up its bags and run to god knows where in the face of an impending rocket strike is unfathomably horrendous. I admire Israel for how it has grown into a formidable economic and military power amidst unprecedented existential threats but such growth places great responsibility too.

All that said it is sheer propaganda to place the blame disproportionately on Israel's head. As the Israeli mother wrote to New York Times it is a wonder why Hamas builds tunnels to hide its weapons but no shelters against Israeli rockets. As one who considers himself a student of Jewish history I'll never say that Israel should heed world opinion. The world opinion be damned. In another of his long list of sharp and clarifying op-eds Krauthammer pointed out that it is silly to harp on how the world loved America on 9/11 and Le Monde writing 'we are all New Yorkers now', because on just two days later the same editorials were calling for America to stand silent. Krauthammer acidly remarked that the world loves America when it is weak. Its the age old Nietzchean struggle of the world hating the strong. World opinion has never been of help to Israel and will never stand up for Israel.

A case in point in point is the flotilla to Gaza that Israel embargoed in 2010. Then too many cried hoarse about how Israel was preventing just food and unarmed activists from going to Gaza. Later investigations revealed how the flotilla had no intention of promoting anything but peace and were in fact armed.

It is a region where there is no hope for sense or rationality. I'll not offer any prescriptions to any side. The reality is far too complex and intractable for legions of arm chair analysts, including me.


References:

1. Israeli mother's letter to NYT http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/18/opinion/The-Agony-of-Israel-and-Gaza.html

2. Charles Krauthammer's column in Washington Post, 'Moral clarity in Gaza', http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-moral-clarity-in-gaza/2014/07/17/0adabe0c-0de4-11e4-8c9a-923ecc0c7d23_story.html?hpid=z4

3. New York Times detailed reporting on the killing of 4 Gaza children http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/world/middleeast/through-lens-4-boys-dead-by-gaza-shore.html

4. New York Times article on rockets fired Hamas http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/18/world/middleeast/from-gaza-an-array-of-makeshift-rockets-packs-a-counterpunch.html

5. Textbook propaganda in Israel and Palestine - from Economist http://www.economist.com/blogs/pomegranate/2013/02/israeli-and-palestinian-textbooks

Holocaust and the Israeli/Jewish psyche

Hollywood found a convenient story in Rwanda and romanticized the story of Tutsi persecution by Hutu's. 'Hotel Rwanda' did not delve into the complex history of the conflict, a history in which Hutus and Tutsis killed each other in turns culminating in a horrific genocide that saw a million Tutsis butchered. Paul Kagame, leader of Tutsi rebels, won a military victory and took office. Kagame later went to war with Congo for purely imperialistic purposes and presided over retributions killings of Hutu's in Rwanda. Yet the world only speaks of the Tutsi dead. Rwanda is not lectured to about learning from its past. If Rwanda was Israel American college campuses would gleefully scold about their inhumanities.

Last year Afro-American mayor and fellow Afro-American legislator of the city of Washington D.C. let loose a racist rant against Asian shopkeepers and Asians in DC. If one did not know the speaker was an Afro-American and listened to the remarks, given the history of USA, one would mistake it for a rant by a white racist. Al Sharpton and Malcolm X were established anti-semites. One protest organized (related to an unfortunate car accident caused by a Jewish driver) by Al Sharpton targeting Jews in Manhattan resulted in the death of a Jew. The Crown Heights riot tore apart Manhattan. Afro-Americans and Latinos (most of who are illegal immigrants) share a testy tenuous relationship in cities like L.A simply because Latino, since most are illegal, lack access to elected office unlike blacks.

Gandhi's India, Putin's Russia, De Gaulle's France, China and more countries indulge in naked imperialistic aggression against neighbors. Yet those countries are not the most scolded in UN. That dubious honor is reserved for Israel.

Do Israeli's and the Jews in general suffer from perpetual victimhood? Is holocaust a convenient 'victim card' that Israel plays? No and No. Never. Ask those questions to the small child who was killed in southern French town of Toulose by a jihadist because the child was Jewish. Ask those questions to the innocent Jews, including both parents of a toddler, who were mowed down in a Chabad in Mumbai by Pakistani terrorists because they were Jews.

For those bleeding heart liberals who say "we condemn those acts but Palestine..." I say 'shame on you'. Not even Indians knew that Jews lived in Mumbai. That were targeted by Pakistani terrorists speaks of how hatred had hijacked a religion. If those same Jews in Mumbai injured any Muslim as retribution for Palestinian intifada would any sane minded person accept that as rationale. We would condemn it unequivocally.

The Jewish people, given their history of being persecuted over 2000 years, have long memories. Scattered around the globe and living amidst hatred they nurtured hope for living in Jerusalem saying 'Next year, in Jerusalem'. The holocaust gave rise to another slogan, 'never forget'. How can they forget? Can Israel afford not to be a hawk? Can Israel depend on international bodies in times of need? No and No.

When Israel pleaded to be left alone after the UN partition the Grand Mufti croaked 'we will push you into the Red sea'. No country, not even US, guaranteed Israel its right to exist. UN abandoned Israel after the partition vote. Having lost 6 million, with no cash coffers of friendly governments, nobody to buy ammunition from legally, surrounded by enemies Israel defended itself in a drama unparalleled in human history. As soon as the British left, as they always do, it was chaos. Armies from Syria, Jordan, Lebabon and Egypt descended on Israel from all sides barring the Red sea side. Golda Meir landed in New York with nothing but a handbag. Ms Meir told the Jews of New York "it is not your choice to decide whether or not we fight. It is ours and we will fight. But it is your choice whether we live or die because we need money without which we will die".

The war of 1967 is looked at as the most pivotal moment in Arab-Israeli history. Israel humiliated Egypt and Syria in a swift and decisive campaign that altered the maps and left a searing wound in the Arab psyche. Egypt and Syria were baying for Israel's blood and Israel lived under the scepter of war and total annihilation. Again, this was a campaign that US did not support or wish to happen. A Syrian paper published a cartoon of mountain of Jewish skulls leaving no doubt as to what would happen to a defeated Israel.

 Photo Courtesy : "The Six Day War" Michael Oren

                                                                                                

Then in 1970 came 'Black September'. Yasser Arafat unleashed naked terrorism against Israeli athletes who were in Munich for the Olympics. It was terrorism on live relay. Jews were once again threatened on the soil of Germany. While the world ignored this heinous act Israel once again found itself alone battling for the lives of its beloved citizens. No one, not even the US, came to the rescue of those Israelite athletes. In a botched rescue attempt the athletes were killed and the Olympics proceeded on schedule without so much as a pause. Till today in no Olympics are those athletes mourned. If only they had been from any other country.

Today Bibi Netanyahu is reviled as a hawk. How can he not be one after losing his brother in Operation Entebbe. A plane carrying Israelis was hijacked by PLO terrorists. With 106 Israeli lives at stake Israel looked around for help and once again God's chosen people found themselves alone, all alone. In a daring rescue attempt, one for the history books, a commando operation liberated the hostages during which Yonathan Netanyahu was killed. Can Israel afford to rely on world opinion? Can Israel afford to 'forget'? Never. Not in a 1000 years must Israel forget. 

Would Sonia have signed a peace treaty with Prabhakaran? Would Putin shake hands with a Chechen leader? Would an Armenian shake hands with a Turkish leader? Yet, Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin shook hands with Yasser Arafat and paid for it with his life at the hands of a murderous Israeli. 

When two sides fail to arrive at a negotiation what would they do? If they asked Yasser Arafat they would launch terrorist attacks on the other sides. The Camp David negotiations shepherded by Bill Clinton, in a desperate attempt to rescue his legacy post-Lewinsky, ended, according to most observers, only because of Arafat's intransigence. To cover up his failed talks Arafat launched the second intifada, a campaign of terror. Ehud Barak conceded more than what any Israeli had ever conceded and Arafat had almost everything he wanted at hand. Arafat who knows only to inflict terror and not to build a nation stomped out. Arafat is no Ben Gurion and both Israel and Palestine pay a price for that.

It was a rich irony for Arab states to move a motion in the UN to label Zionism as 'racism'. This by a bunch of people who run tin pot dictatorships with no semblance of human rights. Israel's ambassador to UN Chaim Herzog in a stirring speech 'hate, ignorance and evil' ripped apart the motion figuratively and literally, watch it here:

Time magazine in a shameful cover asked recently if Israel desired peace. The cover featured an Israeli lounging on a beach side. Israel has forged its destiny amidst an unprecedented sustained campaign of military assaults and terrorist attacks. That a magazine would take the picture of a man at a beach side and wonder if a nation desires peace shows the depths of depravity to which journalism plunged to. Would that same Time magazine, after 9/11, show Americans in revelry and ask "do Americans desire peace"? 

America became a staunch ally of Israel due to strategic real politick as Egypt became ensconced in the bosom of USSR. America stands by Israel for its own strategic reasons. Much is made of American aid to Israel. Pakistan practically blackmails America into giving billions in aid without which, Pakistani leaders claim, fundamentalists would run amuck and destroy America. Just last week America released $750 million to Egypt, a country which has no friendly intention toward America. But for America Saudi Arabia would have been overrun by Saddam. What America refused to do for Israel in 1948 it did for Muslims in Kosovo. 

Is it an accident that Israel has the largest number of companies listed in the Nasdaq after USA. The book 'Startup Nation' explores how Israel focused on development and human capital amidst the constant fear of death. Warren Buffet is investing in an Israelli company that is within distance of being annihilated by Hamas's rockets. Buffet reasons that he is investing in what the employees are capable of producing not in the brick and mortar that Hamas can destroy.

When Mitt Romney spoke of cultural differences in the context of how Israel and West Bank/Gaza develop the politically correct left wingers erupted in anger. Many were livid that Romney would compare Israel with strife torn, segregated, walled off West Bank. What the critics forgot was how immigrant Jews created Tel Aviv out of the swamps. Israel was nothing but swamps and vast tracts of land unused with pockets of habitation. Israel was built by hand kibbutz after kibbutz. If Palestinian leadership know nothing but terrorism is it Israel's problem?

A recent analysis of Israeli and  Palestinian textbooks found rampant stereotyping on both sides with the Palestinian textbook far outranking Israeli texts in preaching hatred. Egyptian textbooks practically inculcate a culture of hatred in children with outrageous texts. 

It is easier to find Jews in Israel who are sympathetic to Palestinian cause than to find a Palestinian who is critical of Yasser Arafat or Hamas. Many Jews in America are now increasingly critical of Israeli policies particularly on the settlements. 

All the above notwithstanding it would be in Israel's own interest to help Palestinians realize their own state. The settlement policies are human rights violations and territorial aggressions. It further messes up an already intractable problem. 

Just as Gandhi's India is militaristic and Christian West is guilty of every human rights violation on the textbook Israel too is not without blemishes. The blemishes of Israel should be seen as the blemishes of a nation and nothing more. Holding Jewish people everywhere as guilty is anti-semitism. Speaking of Israel's questionable acts as the acts of 'Jewish people' is as silly as speaking of America's militarism as the militarism of Christians. The holocaust is bigger than even the state of Israel. It has universal lessons for all.

Let us all study and learn from holocaust. I wish nothing but peace for the people of Palestine and Israel. May their God's give their leaders wisdom to achieve what has eluded generations for the past half century. 

My Pilgrimage To Auschwitz And The Tragic 'Uniqueness' of The Holocaust

I am not a religious person and therefore the idea of a pilgrimage has never appealed to me. My journey to Auschwitz should aptly be called 'pilgrimage'. It is a trite cliche to say that it is the journey that matters not the arriving. I experienced it as my flight was about to land in Krakow.

As the flight from Berlin entered the airspace of Poland I could see that it was chillier than Berlin. As we landed in Krakow I could see snow. Krakow airport looked like a suburban airport in India. I was now worried whether my light jacket would stand the cold. Then I worried if my baggage would be handled properly or would it be lost on a wintry rudimentary airport in Poland. I consoled myself that I can wear a knitted T-shirt underneath by thick cotton shirt with suede patches and top it off with my jacket to beat the cold.

I've watched so many movies and documentaries of Holocaust and read so many books. I remember how Meryl Streep, in 'Sophie's choice',  stands shivering in the cold on that notorious 'selection platform' in Auschwitz with two infants at hand. Then of course 'Schindler's list'. And then a wave of shame washed me over. Here I am, a healthy guy with credit cards and the ability to buy anything I want at any store in case of emergency. Even if my bags are lost its only an inconvenience for me. In the case of a dire necessity as American citizen I can walk into a US consulate. Millions of women, children, aged and the sick have been dragged to this city in box cars, families have been torn asunder at the whim of a Nazi thug at the platform. The victims were depersonalized, their bodies did not belong to them let alone their possessions. In that one moment I realized why a pilgrimage is a spiritual necessity. Whether one calls it a pilgrimage or a study tour the idea is that nothing, no amount of reading books or watching movies, can substitute for being in a place. Of course a study tour or pilgrimage is useless without the reading and watching prior to that. Only a mind that is pullulating with memories will find that aha moment at a place. Else one would be a mindless tourist sauntering through Auschwitz like one would stroll in a park or a museum.

When our tour guide pointed to a serene innocuous swimming pool like water and asked us "what do you think that is" most thought it was a swimming pool for the Nazis to relax. No. Auschwitz was insured by the company Allianz. As an insurance requirement, like today, Allianz stipulated that Auschwitz should have a pond like place to store water to fight any fire hazard. No book had written about that. Looking at the pond and the memory of millions who died a chill ran down my spine at the grotesque nature of human affairs.

Our tour guide made a penetrating observation that Auschwitz was not a concentration camp but an 'extermination' camp built to kill on an industrial scale. Auschwitz's central location played a key role. A map showed the places from which Jews (and others) were transported to Auschwitz from as far as Budapest.

These are insights that become readily available and would take several books to cultivate. That is why a history study tour is essential for students. Next on my agenda is to stand on Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma where Afro-Americans went on a march braving mounted police and police dogs. Several trips like that are pending.

I've often been confronted with the question of whether Holocaust is unique? Being from Tamil Nadu I am also often asked "would you not consider the killings of Sri Lankan Tamils as holocaust, is Rajapakse not Hitler". Of course a Rwandan could ask the same, so would somebody from Darfur. What about an Armenian? The massacre of a million Armenians is still not officially classified as 'genocide', let alone a holocaust. What is so 'unique' about the holocaust? Is it the numbers, a staggering 6 millions? Yes and no.

For any victim in an ethnic conflict his/her tragedy would be, in his/her perspective, the greatest tragedy to befall humanity. I've to respect how a victim feels. A Tamil mother grieving over a child blown to death or a wailing child who had lost both parents or Rwandan who was gang raped and mutilated or a Darfur native who is maimed would all be legitimate in feeling remote to a tragedy that befall a different people decades ago.

It is however the unpleasant duty of a historian to put things in perspective. Let us not forget that from Jaffna to Darfur to Rwanda the deaths and killings were part of and result of civil war with both sides being engaged in an armed conflict. That 6 million Jews were murdered like sheep without a single bullet being fired from their side is indeed unique. That they went to their deaths without a fight has been cruelly used to criticize them or even discredit the scale of the horror.

Syria is burning. UN report says that a million Syrians have crossed over to neighboring countries as refugees. However feeble maybe the efforts of the world in stopping the bloodshed it should be noted that at least the world bodies are 'trying' something and there are nations to open their doors to the refugees. A plaque at Dachau states bluntly "when the inmates at Dachau were liberated most went back to their home countries but the Jews had nowhere to go".

FDR's inaction to bomb Auschwitz is a hotly debated topic. Just last week a new book claims that if the transit lines to Auschwitz had been bombed and if the crematoriums had been bombed it still would not have saved many because allies had the ability to do those only late into the war when many had already been killed. It is 2013 and even today new evidences and new rationale is being investigated in the most complex savagery of humanity.

It is a modern shorthand to refer to any despicable ruler as 'Hitler'. Only Stalin, in reality, matched the cruelty and horrors of Hitler. It is impossible for any ruler of any country to inflict on any race the horrors that Hitler inflicted on humanity at large and at Jews in particular. Doctors, I mean doctors, non-chalantly indulged in medical experiments on Jews. Dr Mengele used to select twin children and subject them to blood curdling medical experiments. Doctors in Berlin thought it unnecessary to wonder how come so many body parts of so many children is turning up for analysis. Dr Mengele had a peaceful anonymous death and never was brought to justice.

Do concentration camps (or the modern internment camps) make up the holocaust? Historian Timothy Snyder in a book review of 4 books writes that it was 'not yet holocaust' referring to Warsaw Ghetto, the laws that prohibited Jews from practically living as human beings etc. In very penetrating analysis Snyder comments that Hitler's murderous scheme was able to take root only because Hitler, in every country he invaded, destroyed every civil institution. In Poland non-Jewish Poles had to be killed first. But in Lithuania which had already been ravaged by Stalin and lost its civil structures Hitler found willing allies in the puppet right wing regime. Close to a 150,000 jews were killed in the matter of a year with Lithuanians being eager to outdo the Nazis and prove themselves as valuable subjects of Nazi state. Death visited the jews in the form of the invader and aided by people who used to be neighbors.

The Nazi regime was an industrial killing machine that took the contours of a holocaust as it brought countries under its jackboot. Stalin had to content himself killing mostly Soviet citizens. Wholesale murder of the Czech or Poles was something even Stalin could not do. Jews were made to pay for the cost of cremating the murdered jews. Snyder writes "Nazi Germany was a special kind of state, determined not to monopolize but to mobilize violence".

Sick minds have caviled about whether it was indeed 6 million who died. Two weeks ago New York Times reported that what we thought we knew of holocaust and the camps is but a fraction of truth according to new evidence. Recent research, gruesomely detailed and verified, asserts that there were nearly 40,000 death camps. Way more than what was thought of.

Only when I planned my trip to go to concentration camps I realized a sobering fact. All the notorious camps were actually close to cities. Dachau is an hour away from Munich, Auschwitz and Birkenau are just 2 hours away from Krakow, Bergen-Belsen where Anne Frank and her sister were killed (not died) is 2 hours away from Berlin, Berlin itself had a concentration camp, Ravensbruck was 90 miles north of Berlin, Buchenwald was near Weimar. The NYT article concludes that given the number of camps it is impossible that people did not know what was going on. At Dachau I saw a photograph of stunned German citizens, dragged to the the camp by allied army liberators, looking over emaciated corpses and the ovens. Were the people of Dachau truly ignorant? I don't think so.

When communist jackboot replaced the Nazi boot in Eastern Europe covering Auschwitz talk of jewish victims was muted as Stalin's regime wanted to speak only of communist victims. That, after nearly 65 years since the camps were liberated, we are still learning and unearthing evidence gives us a perspective of the tragic uniqueness of holocaust. This new knowledge is not an incremental addition to the existing knowledge but it is a paradigm shift that practically enlarged the scope of what was already a too big to digest horror.

Holocaust remains a unique tragedy unparalleled before or after in history. Let us not, juts to rob the Jewish people and Israel, deny this uniqueness and nor shall we wish it upon any people for ages to come.

The one remaining question that I promised to answer was about the lessons from Holocaust that Israel learned. In another perversely unique manner no other tragedy that befall any people draws the question "did they learn from it?". No other people who have suffered are being asked "how different are you from your tormentors". Whenever I speak of holocaust to most people the invariable question is "what about the suffering of Palestine". People are more eager to hold Israel and the Jewish people accountable for todays mess all the more so because of holocaust. In this aspect too, sadly, Israel and the Jewish people are treated uniquely. I'll answer them in my next blog.

Conversation with A Syrian Muslim

Two days back I had to head to work at Jersey City and as per company policy I hired an executive cab. It was a crisis day at work. I normally strike up a conversation with the drivers, it is often interesting. This driver I learned was a Syrian Muslim and was very chatty. When we the talk veered to elections and eventually Bush he became animated. He let loose a tirade on the Bush years. Talking of 9/11 he repeated well known calumnies, a plot by CIA and Israel, US etc. He then curiously cited Michael Moore's documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" as offering proof. Moore, a veterate Bush hater, did not do that at all in the documentary. Then the cab driver went into full praise mode of Yasser Arafat. He seemed to be well read for a cabbie. I asked him about Arafat refusing to compromise on Jersusalem during Camp David talks. That was non-negotiable for a muslim he said. Arafat should not have negotiated peace with Rabin (both got a Nobel for that). Saddam had given security to his people compared to today's chaos. I asked him about women voting in elections in Iraq, a first in the entire Islamic middle east. He claimed the US had no right to impose Western style democracy.

This guy had emigrated from Syria in the 80's. It was during that time that Assad, President of Syria, obliterated an entire town of Sunni's killing 30,000 and torturing hundreds more. The tortures would make medieval European menthods appear quaint. Assad was of the Allawi sect. Those killed were Sunni's. The Sunni's, a minority in Iraq, returned the favor to Shia majority, under Saddam, a Sunni. The cabbie, living in US for 22 years, was proud of his business, he loves Bill Clinton, more importantly the prosperous years. Note that in the 90's when money was rolling in executive cabs like he has made a windfall ferrying not just executives but even mid level employees and consultants who stayed late after 8 PM. Remember those were the heady Y2K days when tech consultants laughed their way to the bank clocking devilish hours every day. It was never to be the same again after 9/11.

It is more than ironical that while enjoys the fruits of Western liberal democracy he does not like it being "imposed" elsewhere. Let the people make the choice he said. Kurds made that choice and learnt a bitter lesson in Halabja. By the way nobody tires of mentioning that US armed Saddam. Guess who armed theSyrians. It was Soviet T-62 tanks and MiG fighters that flattened Hama in Syria.

Now, for a moment I thought "well he is a Syrian Muslim, not surprisingly he thought thus". But I remembered books by white Americans, actor Martin Sheen, Professor Ward Churchill, an ex-colleague have all shared various views of this cabbie. His being a Muslim and emigrant lends itself to ready stereo typing but he is not alone.

I am reading Thomas Friedman's masterful "From Beirut to Jerusalem" and it provided some good backdrop of Syria, especially the massacre of the city of Hama by Assad. Many in India lionise Arafat, few know that Arafat was chased by one government after another of his own Muslim countries who saw him as trouble maker. The most famous chasing being from Jordan when the king cracked down on PLO. In fact many Palestinians settled in Jordan viewed him as upsetting a delicate balance and despised his faction ridden corrupt organisation. So much to share, let it wait for another day.