How many people today google "genocide," "holocaust" or "rape camp"? With changing journalism comes a changing agenda. Yet New York Times Reporter Nicholas Kristof, single-handedly, is still pushing stories of genocide and women's inequality to the front pages.

When filmmaker Eric Daniel Metzgar set out to follow Kristof on his stories, he realized this film is as much about the art of journalism as it is about compassion, and suffering. He let the story tell itself which led the audience to meet people in the greatest suffering, in the deepest anger, and with the saddest stories. And that is what Kristof wanted, because one person's story can provoke compassion and maybe bring the issues alive.

Today, it is unbelievable to think how we got here. There are 5.4 million dead in Africa's genocide over the past five years, and 1.4 currently misplaced in Eastern Congo alone. Twenty two militias are in battle in the region, in a place with absolute no law and order. Rape is not a crime, in fact it is what militia do during battle. In this case, it's a battle that never ends or clocks out. Kristof has written 60 columns addressing the genocide alone.

"If it's happening every day, it should be written about every day," said one journalist in Reporter. "Imagine, during the Holocaust, saying ‘Oh, there was 20 stories written about the extermination of the Jews. It's redundant.'"

One way to fight the genocide is with militia and guns, said Kristof. Another is with notebooks and pens. "And that's what I do," he said, bringing two students with him - Leona Won and Will Okun - to travel as eyewitnesses in the Congo.

The Congo

The Congo is a land where 22 militias are at constant battle especially among the most fierce, the Hutus and Tutsis. After fleeing the Rwandan genocide, the Hutus fled to the Congo reliving a same kind of fate there.

Kristof and the crew spent, at one point, time with Nkunda - a warlord on the side of the Tutsis - where they got to see their church and even stayed for dinner. "We love G-d too much," said one militia.

After attempts to fight peacefully, Nkunda formed a rebel militia. "In Africa, we have no human rights. Only strong rights," Nkunda said. "I'm not a warlord. I'm a liberator."

They all believe they are liberators, as told in the film. All trying to create order, and justice, in their own way through murdering and raping others.

"It was unbelievably eerie to eat with people who caused so much suffering in the Congo. But it was the best meal we had since we got there," Metzgar said.

The Writing Process

It was said that if it were not for Nicholas Kristof, the world would not know of Darfur. Kristof was the first to put it on the map, and continues to push the agenda. He has covered women's issues including sex trafficking for almost a decade now. His work has been acclaimed with two Pulitzer awards. How does Kristof get us to care?

Kristof has a habit of reading the psychology of compassion. He has learned that people are far more compassionate when they see one girl in need on a television screen, or hear of one death, than when they see or hear of even two people. Then it becomes a statistic; then our minds lack the ability to comprehend.

Kristof's art is in telling the story of one person to bring systemic change for all. That one person is who Kristof calls his "Rokia," the person whose story can illuminate the massive conflict. Everyone warranted a column, Kristof said. But he was still seeking the saddest story, even though saddest stories exist whether he writes them or not, Metzgar said while capturing the hunt for Kristof's Rokia.

Take that one person's story and multiply it by 4 million - and then you have a fuller story of what's really taking place. Kristoff is famed for his piece "Save the Darfur Puppy." If people are unmoved by the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of humans, maybe they will care about a puppy, he decided.

The film incorporated beautiful still snapshots taken by student Will Okun to coincide with the stories, and luckily, student Leona Won knew medicine enough to help a 40 year old woman, under 80 pounds, get to a hospital to find out her infections were incurable. Kristof interviewed that woman who could barely speak on the way there.

How Do We Help?

Actress Mia Farrow, now involved with UNICEF, said Kristof's column on Darfur "Tore me apart and rearranged me." Hearing about what is going on, seeing it, reading it rearranges most of us, for deep down we are unbearably human. Some issues are too great to deal with. What is it that we can possibly do? Building a school, as said in the film, isn't helpful when militia return and burn it down. Giving instructions to the people isn't helpful. But, Kristof says, we can listen more and speak up more.

Ruth Messinger, President of American Jewish World Service who hosted the film premiere at HBO Studios, sat on panel after the premiere alongside Eric Metzgar and Nicholas Kristof. What can we do? She said we can read newspapers more and keep journalism alive. We can start and continue to talk about these issues. We can get involved in organizations that help keep this agenda front and center and continue to write to our leaders that we want to see action.

As a journalist who is most passionate of all about the 60 to 100 million young girls and women missing to the sex trade -- girls who die in their early 20s to AIDS or get their eyes gauzed for being resistant -- Kristof tends to break his journalistic boundaries and even "buys" girls in order to return them to their homes. This model of what we can do says we can do anything; that we should do anything in our power.

"I think this is true compassion," Metzgar said in the conclusion of the film referring to Kristof's desire to create change by telling these stories. "If Nick didn't think he could do this, he'd probably given up by now."

During the Q&A session that concluded the premiere, Kristof said he likes traveling light. He prefers not to make plans and instead maneuvers around in as much secrecy as possible to prevent any likeliness for kidnap. Not only did he bring two students with him this time, but a camera crew is "really not my style," he said. With all the gear that was brought, Kristoff joked he was tempted to hand over the crew to General Nkunda. But ultimately, Kristoff said, "I care about the story. If Eric can do that [bring alive this story], then I'm willing to have on an extra twenty boxes of supplies."

The event was sponsored by American Jewish World Service Global Circle. For more information about the Global Circle, please visit http://www.ajws.org/get_involved/global_circle.html. For more information about Reporter, please visit www.Reporterfilm.com.

 

 

By Edgar M. Bronfman and Taylor Krauss

After the Holocaust, the phrase "Never Again" became the determined vow, not only of the survivors themselves but also fellow Jews throughout the world. This vow, a profound assertion of self-protection, was passed on to their children through efforts to educate them about the Holocaust and to document its history. Today, the phrase has been adopted by the world at large-particularly younger Jews-as a rallying cry to end all genocide. And even across the globe this April, millions of Rwandans sung along to a new gospel song called "Never Again," commissioned especially for the fifteenth commemoration of the Tutsi Genocide in 1994.

Among American Jews, there is an increasing generational rift in the way the phrase is used, a rift that the two of us noticed profoundly as we recently discussed the meaning of this phrase. One of us was born in 1929, coming of age when the atrocities of the Holocaust were at their most palpable and immediate. The other was a freshman in high school when the Hutu majority committed genocide against the Tutsi minority of Rwanda, awakening a broader, Jewish sense of responsibility for the global community.

Those who remember the first cry, "Never Again" for Jews, are reluctant to embrace the second, "Never Again" for all. Those who embrace the second feel less commitment to the vigilance on behalf of Jews that the first vow demands.

That Jews of an older generation guard the language of the Holocaust against use by others stems from fear for Jewish survival. The older generation of Jews, those who lived through the atrocities of the Holocaust, saw the world stand aside as Jews perished in concentration camps. They responded with the resolve to fight anti-Semitism worldwide and to ensure Jewish cultural continuity. But a tragedy of our Holocaust is that humanity has not absorbed the lesson its horrors should have taught. Asserting "Never Again" for all does not mean denying the unprecedented nature of the Holocaust. It means keeping its memory alive in the service of others.

Continue reading...

Choeung Ek, near Phnom Phen, Cambodia, is the best-known site of the Killing Fields, where the Khmer Rouge regime killed thousands of civilians from 1975 to 1979. Transformed from a mass gravesite into a public memorial, Choeung Ek houses hundreds of human skulls and is still littered with bone fragments. It also features an English-language sign declaring, among other things, that the Cambodian genocide “was more cruel than the genocidal act committed by the Hitler Fascists [sic].” When she visited Choeung Ek in 2006, my friend was offended by the sign’s minimization of the Holocaust. Six million Jews died at the hands of the Nazis, she said, while two million Cambodians died under the Khmer Rouge. It was no contest.

Avraham Burg would have none of my friend’s thinking. A former speaker of the Knesset and leader of the World Zionist Organization, Burg argues against the uniqueness of the Shoah in The Holocaust is Over; We Must Rise from Its Ashes. The book was controversial when released in Israel in 2007 as Defeating Hitler--Burg was called a hero by some and an anti-Semite by others. Newly translated and released in the U.S., The Holocaust is Over makes many contentious arguments. But perhaps none is as emotionally charged and confrontational as Burg’s thoughts on the Holocaust.

“The Holocaust is ours, and all other killings in the world are common evils, not holocausts,” he writes. “For us, the Shoah is unique in the history of the world. It is the logical climatic outcome of anti-Semitism. We have never sought to view our Shoah as an event in the historical continuum of others…For the non-Jew, the Shoah is a chapter among chapters, a trauma among the other European traumas. It resides in history alongside Napoleon, Versailles, Lenin, Spain, World War I and the divided Germany after World War II...Life in the shadow of trauma does not allow room for a bigger picture to emerge—that of the universal context of hatred and its origins, of dictatorship and tyranny, of the history of genocide, not just the Jewish genocide.”

Burg’s argument is not quite novel. In 1986, several German historians asserted that the Holocaust was unexceptional; Hitler had merely replicated Stalin’s massacre of 14.5 million kulaks (class enemies). Their arguments scandalized the Germany intelligentsia, who concluded after years of debate that the dangers of forgetting the Holocaust far outweighed those of remembering it as unique.

But Burg’s contentions are noteworthy because of his prominent standing in Israel. Never before has such a high-ranking politician and thinker made these arguments. Burg’s remarks are a sign, or perhaps a harbinger, that the Holocaust’s hallowed place in Jewish life is being questioned.

Part of me instinctively recoils from Berg’s argument, and finds it not just untrue but deeply offensive. The Holocaust is unique, I think. It is not just another of the massacres that have demolished peoples throughout history. To label the Shoah as similar to other genocides seems to deprive it of its power and horror. It seems even to blaspheme the victims, whose tragedy has been documented and lamented in unprecedented numbers of films, books and museums. If the Holocaust is in fact not unique, its distinctive place in Western memory becomes not only superfluous, but downright unwarranted and even unjust. The problem with denying the uniqueness of the Holocaust, I am afraid, is that rationalizes or normalizes the Shoah.

Certainly a good case can be made for the Holocaust’s singularity. For one thing, there was the staggering number of Jews killed. Scholars are unsure about the exact number, but it’s somewhere between five and six million. Six million has been the popular estimate for years—Adolph Eichmann’s trial in Israel in 1962 opened with the Attorney General of Jerusalem dramatically declaring that he was not the sole prosecutor because “with me are six million accusers.” But scholars are actually divided about the sum. The historian Raul Hilberg estimates the number at 5.1 million. Hilberg’s assessment is thought to be on the conservative side, however, with British historian Martin Gilbert going with 5.75 million, and Jacob Leschinsky arguing for 5.95 million. Yad Veshem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, is probably most accurate when it concedes that “there is no precise figure.” In any case, the number is staggering, and between 5-6 million Jews.

Compare the Holocaust’s amount to the genocide in Rwanda, where the number of massacred is estimated at between 750,000 and one million. Or Cambodia, where 1.7 million were slaughtered. 1.5 million Armenians were massacred by Turks from 1915 to 1923, and thousands of Muslims were killed in the Yugoslav Wars. The Holocaust dwarfs all of those.

The problem with this numbers game is that it limits comparisons to only modern genocides. And while “the word is new, the concept is old,” as the philosopher Leo Kuper memorably put it. Genocide dates back at least to the Third Punic War (149-46 BCE), when Romans killed an estimated 150,000 Carthaginians, more than one-third of the population. Since then, dozens of genocides—maybe even hundreds—have taken place. If all of them are included, the Holocaust loses its exceptionalism.

In terms of numbers, the largest number of killed people might be in the indigenous populations in the Americas. Historian David Stannard argues that 100 million died in the “Euro-American genocidal war.” Recent books like 1491 and Respect for the Ancestors affirm that thriving pre-Colombian cultures were wiped out by the arrival of the Europeans.

Stannard’s ideas are widely disputed, however. Genocide, according to the United Nations Convention that bears its name, must include the intent to destroy a people. Most scholars of the subject believe the intentions of Europeans and Americans to be more complicated, with many desiring subjugation, not extermination, of the indigenous populations. Moreover, since few records were kept and many natives perished from diseases, it is impossible to identify the exact number of slaughtered indigenous Americans. If Stannard’s numbers are even partially correct, however, the slaughter of the indigenous Americans would dwarf the Holocaust.

But maybe the Holocaust’s recency is exactly what makes it unique. The Holocaust took place in an era when much of the world thought exterminating entire peoples was barbaric. Unlike the Europeans’ massacres in the Americas, Nazi treatment of Jews aroused fierce condemnation from around the world (though not, of course, intervention), because it was believed to be below the standard of civilized behavior. Germany itself had been a central player in the development of civilization, as leaders in the arts, technology, intellectual developments, and political and social spheres. “[H]istorians have generally been overwhelmed by the spectacle of a nation once thought to be among the most “civilized” destroying one of the most “civilized” of peoples,” as historian Istvan Deak writes.

Other reasons have been provided for the Holocaust’s uniqueness. The modern character of it has been evoked repeatedly since 1945. It was the event when industrialization was first married to barbaric ends, the genocidal equivalent of World War One. Others mention the illogical, fantastical nature of Nazi hatred of the Jews, or the totality of The Final Solution. “This was not a byproduct of war, not casualties as a result of skirmishes or partisan activities, but the end-result of an ideology,” CUNY professor John A. Drobnicki argues. One of the foremost defenders of the uniqueness mantle, Cornell University professor Steven Katz, wrote that “never before has a state set out, as a matter of intentional principle and actualized policy, to annihilate physically every man, woman and child belonging to a specific people…Only in the case of Jewry under the Third Reich was such all-inclusive, noncompromising [sic], unmitigated murder intended.”

And yet, I can’t help but think these explanations somewhat arbitrary. Why should victim-number and killing methods be the sole criteria for uniqueness? After all, other genocides also have distinctive characteristics. In the Rwandan genocide, for example, Hutus killed thousands of Tutsis with the full knowledge of the international community at the time. The West had a clear, relatively painless opportunity to prevent thousands of deaths—UNAMIR General Romeo Dallaire said 5500 troops would do the job—and chose not to. Never before had genocide been so brazenly and openly perpetrated. Moreover, the instruments of death in Rwanda were machetes and rifles—even though the murders occurred in the post-industrial era of mass technology. In direct contrast to the Holocaust, the killing methods in Rwanda are unique precisely because of their primitivism. Should Rwanda not be a candidate for uniqueness on this basis?

The problem may lie with the vagueness of the concept of uniqueness. Each genocide is in some ways unique and in other ways not. The question then becomes, as one scholar put it, is the Holocaust uniquely unique? Is it more different than other atrocities? Is it exceptional, the same question journalist Ron Rosenbaum has asked about Hitler’s evil?

Ultimately, I think, deciding on that is impossible. It requires measuring immeasurables. What counts for more: numbers of killed, or method of killing? Do the horrors of the death camps outweigh the efficiency of 100 days in Rwanda? Does Zyklon B offset machetes? Answer these questions is not just distasteful, it is hopeless. Acts of cruelty cannot be quantified and appraised like baseball statistics. An accurate ranking of atrocities is unachievable. And the persistent attempts to claim the uniqueness mantle become a sort of atrocity competition. Some genocides are minimized to accentuate others; some crimes are downplayed while others are emphasized. If the Holocaust is uniquely unique, is it worse than other genocides? I find something more than a little disconcerting about that idea.

Memory is not motionless. In the first decades after World War II, Jews rarely mentioned the Holocaust. Desperate not to appear weak, determined to overcome their helplessness in history’s greatest war, there was a silent pact among Jews to avoid delving into the recent past. But the Eichmann Trial and the 1967 War, especially, changed all that. The Holocaust is now the most memorialized atrocity in history. Surely this is better than forgetting or ignoring it, and that will always be a danger. But fixating on the Shoah’s uniqueness brings dangers of its own for Jews. It can separate us from the rest of humanity, for whom the Holocaust is in a string of genocides that stain the 20^th century. It can blind us to the suffering we cause others, in the Holy Land but also elsewhere. And, perhaps worst of all, declaring the Holocaust unique just might not be true. 

In the end, Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, the President of the UN General Assembly, decided not to attend the Holocaust commemoration ceremonies at UN Headquarters here in New York. One can speculate endlessly as to why D’Escoto - whose choice of metaphor to describe Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians is “crucifixion” - bowed out. Perhaps it was because he didn’t want to be in a room where he wasn’t welcome; perhaps something inside him dreaded the prospect of looking actual Holocaust survivors in the eye just a few months after he embraced the world’s most well-known exponent of Holocaust denial; perhaps (let us not forget those who will inevitably say this) he was “leaned on” or “pressured” or “prevented” by you-know-who.

D’Escoto did, however, send a message to the gathering, read out by Rwanda’s UN Envoy. In its tone and substance, the message was supremely safe and eminently laudable, if completely unoriginal. The Holocaust was a consequence of demonizing Others (”Roma, communists, gays and lesbians, and most of all Jews.”) Its most basic lesson, if the cry “Never Again!” is to have meaning, is the need for tolerance. The election of President Obama is an inspiring demonstration of where such tolerance can lead.

Anyone who knows D’Escoto’s reputation will have a field day picking holes in these remarks. The word “genocide” is mentioned several times, for example, but no current examples are provided. In another setting, D’Escoto would doubtless have pointed to the conflict in Gaza, which he regards, as he told Al Jazeera, as a “genocide.” In this setting, though, a mention of Darfur would have been more appropriate. But Darfur didn’t figure. Its absence might be put down to the fact that Palestine’s international partisans, like D’Escoto, are irritated by talk of the slaughter there, which they regard as a Zionist plot to change the subject. A likelier explanation still is that the UN doesn’t regard what is happening in Darfur as a genocide.

Acts of recognition and commemoration can be very confusing, therefore, particularly in the inverted world of the UN, where a genocide can be recast as a “civil war in which all sides are committing atrocities” and, equally, a nasty regional conflict in which culpability can be distributed among several parties is suddenly defined as a “genocide.”

Why is this? Our view of history -- more precisely, the way in which we remember the recent past in the public domain - generally tends to be cluttered by the political imperatives of the present. Holocaust Memorial Day 2009 demonstrates this beautifully. The furore in New York over D’Escoto was based upon a sense, particularly among Jewish organizations, that his attendance would soil the event. Just by being there in person, many observers said, he would have shifted attention away from the past crimes of the Holocaust to the present allegations of “Israeli genocide.”

Try, though, to imagine D’Escoto in another context. Were he a local government official in Catalunya, he would not have delivered a speech either in person or through a surrogate; there would have been no event at which to hear such a speech. Instead, he would be defending the statement that “marking the Jewish Holocaust while a Palestinian Holocaust is taking place is not right.” Ditto if he served with the local authority in the Swedish town of Lulea. Or if he was an official of the Muslim Council of Britain.

The point is this: the objection to D’Escoto was never really about his physical presence. In another country he would have been visible by his purposeful absence. Rather, it centered upon fears about the representation of the Holocaust.

In the last few weeks, the Holocaust has been commemorated, in a manner of speaking, nearly every day: it is present in the accusations of genocide committed by the IDF, it is audible in the comparisons between Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto, it is visible in the banners which equate the Star of David with the swastika. No-one, believe me, has forgotten the Holocaust. Even those who deny its occurrence, like the Iranian President, perpetuate the discussion about it.

And that is why I was left profoundly uncomfortable with the final sentence of D’Escoto’s remarks: “Let us remember and learn about the crimes of the past in order to prevent them today and in the future.” A harmless platitude, you might think? Maybe, had that sentence had been uttered by a schoolchild, or by a diplomat whose only concern is protocol. But coming from a man who has too often turned the lessons of the Holocaust against Jews themselves, and who believes that Jews have morphed into their persecutors, it sounds very, very sinister.

Jewcy received an urgent message from Jonathan Kesselman of World Wide Media Conspiracy about the horrors of a second Holocaust:

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. There are 7 - 8 films in current release that deal with the atrocities of the Holocaust. One of them deals with Defiant Jews in the woods and stars an Aryan man from England... so, just ignore that one for now.  This film is different. The short video you are about to see will shock you. There is a Genocide happening right now that you are most likely not aware of, and it is affects us all.

Please help! Watch the film and get involved. 

Now, take a look at how infamous Holocaust denier Bishop Richard Williamson has just been reinstated by the Pope. Remember, those trees died for Jesus.

Waiting: An Israeli tank crew preparing before the assult on the Hamas terrorist regime in Gaza.The Homefront Command has outlawed public gatherings in the towns bordering Gaza, which in effect means that people here have been told not to go to shul. Jews, however, take issue with governments telling them that they can't pray. So they pray anyway.

I have always found davening to be more meaningful when things blow up in the background. The thrust of the words hit me again, after having been a rut for months. While it is still dark outside, I find my way to the central Ashkenazi shul in Sderot for morning prayers. Occasional bursts of heavy machine-gun fire are intermingled with explosions as the small minyan silently sways back and forth. Sometimes the ground shakes so violently that I wonder if the Tzeva Adom early warning system is functional this frigid morning.

At around 1 p.m. I find myself taking cover in a shelter together with a terrified woman that asks me and a Swedish colleague to describe her reality to the Swedish people. Like a lot of Israelis, she is convinced that "European media" is biased toward the Palestinians. Well, that is just not true, at least not in Sweden. The Palestinians seem to have decidedly over-milked the cow of their own suffering. Whatever huffing and puffing going on does not translate into action, and calm voices of reason are being heard, both among politicians and among influential journalists. For example: when Nizar Rayan was assassinated on January 1, 2009, along with his four wives and nine of his children, he got a phone call from the IAF in good time. Innocent lives could have been spared in that case, as in so many other cases, but this silly little man decided to stay put, instead cracking jokes with his kids about how he was too fat for the morgue freezer. That might boost morale among suicidal terrorists, but normal people around the world with a healthy sense of right and wrong are slowly realizing that the callousness of Nizar Rayan reveals the true and sick core of the death cult calling itself "Palestinian resistance."

Gaza, day 11: Smoke rising from Gaza, as seen from a hilltop on the outskirts of Sderot.From where I am sitting right now, I can see two Apache helicopters hovering in the air. Every once in a while there is a loud flushing sound when they fire missiles at targets in Gaza. The subsequent explosions are so powerful that the windows in the coffee shop shake: it sounds like kassam rockets striking two blocks away. The IAF has bombed and shelled thousands of targets in one of the most densely populated areas on the face of the planet non-stop for 12 days now, but even if we believe in the most generous figures from Gaza, only about 150 civilians have been killed (out of the 660 total). If the secret Israeli objective were to kill as many innocent Palestinians as possible, the IDF is obviously not doing a very good job. At last we might actually have found something that the Jews are not good at: genocide.

I have already tried to show how Hamas has failed the people of Palestine politically, and how even the most optimistic appraisal of the organization's supposed "pragmatism" has failed to pan out, even under exigent circumstances in which pragmatism should surely trump ideological purity. However, lest one come away with the narrow assumption that Hamas's theocratic fascism represents a direct long-term threat only to Jews, I invite you to consider the following speech made by Ahmad Bahr, the Acting Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (and a Hamas member), on April 13, 2007. Coming as these words do from the political equivalent of Nancy Pelosi in Palestine, they should not be easily dismissed as mere rhetoric:

"You will be victorious on the face of this planet. You are the masters of the world on the face of this planet." Yes, [the Koran says that] "you will be victorious," but only "if you are believers." Allah willing, "you will be victorious," while America and Israel will be annihilated, Allah willing. I guarantee you that the power of belief and faith is greater than the power of America and Israel. They are cowards, as is said in the Book of Allah: "You shall find them the people most eager to protect their lives." They are cowards, who are eager for life, while we are eager for death for the sake of Allah. That is why America's nose was rubbed in the mud in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Somalia, and everywhere. America will be annihilated, while Islam will remain. The Muslims "will be victorious, if you are believers." Oh Muslims, I guarantee you that the power of Allah is greater than America. We saw to them that with the might of Allah, with the might of His Messenger, and with the power of Allah, we are stronger than America and Israel.

I tell you that we will protect the enterprise of the resistance, because the Zionist enemy understands only the language of force. It does not recognize peace or the agreements. It does not recognize anything, and it understands only the language of force. Our jihad-fighting Palestinian people salutes its brother, Sudan.

The Palestinian woman bids her son farewell, and says to him: "Son, go and don't be a coward. Go, and fight the Jews." He bids her farewell and carries out a martyrdom operation. What did this Palestinian woman say when she was asked for her opinion, after the martyrdom of her son? She said: "My son is my own flesh and blood. I love my son, but my love for Allah and His Messenger is greater than my love for my son." Yes, this is the message of the Palestinian woman, who was over 70 years old--Fatima al-Najjar. She was over 70 years old, but she blew herself up for the sake of Allah, bringing down many criminal Zionists.

Oh Allah, vanquish the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, vanquish the Americans and their supporters. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them all, down to the very last one. Oh Allah, show them a day of darkness. Oh Allah, who sent His Book, the mover of the clouds, who defeated the enemies of the Prophet, defeat the Jews and the Americans, and bring us victory over them.

One has heard about the cult of death that underwrites Islamic attentats, and it would certainly not strike most Western ears as newsworthy that Hamas is a fundamentally anti-Semitic movement. But that it is openly dedicated to the "annihilation of America" should hit home with sympathizers and apologists, eager to invoke sinister and histrionic moral equivalences between the current Israeli incursion into Gaza and 9/11, and eager to view Hamas as pledged to little more than national "resistance," albeit draped in colorful religious garb. If anything, Hamas' anti-American sentiments reflect Iran's supervisory role as both the party's main financier and as its imperial guardian in an ideological war that extends well beyond the borders of the modern Levant. (For more on this subject, see Robert Kaplan's excellent new piece in the Atlantic.)

Continue reading...

From: Shmuel Rosner

To: Adam LeBor

Dear Adam,

Thank you for your thoughtful response. The lesson of your experience seems quite obvious: if even someone like yourself, whose instincts (I suspect) are much more pro-UN than mine, has turned skeptical, then the organization is really as useless as I imagined. And the point you've raised regarding its treatment of Israel is but one example of why it should be scrapped, or at least marginalized. Giving it more power will be very costly to Israel, as instead of working to better the world as it should, what I expect the UN to do it is to try and use any power it might obtain to make Israel less secure.

So let us agree (I think we do) on that, and turn to the question of Darfur, and to Jewish-American involvement in trying to make this cause a keystone of using Jewish political power to improve the world.

The facts are indisputable: Jewish Americans were on the forefront of the battle toScene From The Armenian Genocide: Jews fought against genocide even before the Holocaust save Darfur. If you happened to attend the largest Washington demonstration for Darfur you couldn't ignore the fact that although it wasn't a "Jewish" rally, most of the participants happened to be Jewish. Jewish legislators (among them the late Tom Lantos) were vocal, Jewish activists were, well, very active, Jewish organizations were, and still are, making space for this issue on their agenda.

But what is the reason for all that?

One possible explanation should make all of us very proud: Jews, who suffered the most from genocide, feel compelled to raise their voices against it in every part of the world. They feel they have the moral authority and obligation to do so. And they're right.

But there's also a second possibility (which isn't mutually exclusive from the first): For the past few decades, American Jews were spent most of their political capital on the just cause of securing Israel --- and then got tired of it. They got tired of being seen by some elite groups as particularistic and tribal. They got tired as the cause (Israel) has shifted from being David to being Goliath. And they were looking to prove that American Judaism is not a hostage of the Israel-first school of thought, that it has its own priorities.

This comes out in discussions of Darfur as well as other humanistarian causes. One expression of those sentiments the outrageous letter (former IDF civilian volunteer) Representative Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) sent to Israel's Ambassador in Washington, demanding that Israel be more receptive to Sudanese refugees who reach Israel's borders. Another expression was the denunciation (in which Jewcy played no small part) of the Anti Defamation League after its leader, Abe Foxman, came out in opposition to the Armenian Genocide bill presented to Congress by --- you guessed it --- a Jewish legislator. (The bill was defeated for the very reasons on which Foxman based his opposition, but you didn't hear much criticism of its sponsors and of the leadership of the House when they failed to deliver on their unrealistic pledges).

So you see where I'm going with this --- and I hope the readers will spare me comments blaming me for not caring enough about genocide. I'm happy to see the Jewish community as active as it is in humanitarian causes. I do also think, however, that there's some merit to this niggling question that keeps coming back: Will universalist causes eventually replace Israel as the great political cause of American Jewry?

One might suspect that domestic considerations are also in play here. American JewsBeta Israel: The Jews of Ethiopia were always at the forefront of fighting for the rights of African-Americans. They were marching alongside Reverend King in the high days of cooperation between the two communities, but sometimes along the way the bond between Jews and African Americans have soured. The Jewish community has been trying to prove, ever since, that it did not abandon African-Americans for racial reasons --- hence some of the appeal to Jews of Barack Obama, offers the community the intriguing hope of repairing those historic relations.

That's why Israelis interpret the intense involvement of American Jews in shaping the policies toward Ethiopian Jews, as being motivated by domestic considerations. The same logic applies to the very active role Jews are playing in trying to help Darfurians. The Jews, arguably, were not as involved as a group during the crisis in the former Yugoslavia. (Interestingly, Ariel Sharon opposed international involvement in the crisis, fearing it would set a dangerous precedent. He anticipated an effort by the countries in control of international organizations hostile to Israel to influence the outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by the use of international force).

And again, this is not an indictment of the Jewish community for acting for the "wrong" reasons. Motivations that lead to the outcome of fighting genocide are all "good". However, I think one should be able to have an honest discussion of such motivations, because other than implicating the just war against genocide, it also raises issues related to the relations between Israel and Diaspora Jews, especially in cases in which the interests of the communities come apart.

Such contradiction was visible in the case of Turkey and the Armenian genocide, when fighting to establish historical truth ran contrary to Israel national interests (and American interests, to judge by the coverage and the outcome). The case the Ethiopian Jews was a similar story of American Jews pressuring Israel to accept more immigrants than it wanted to.

So: we started with the UN and its inability to stop genocide, and we now turn to explore Jewish involvement with stopping genocide. Is there a special Jewish responsibility here? Does it also apply to Israel? And what happens when the preservation of the State of Israel contradict the cause of stopping genocide?

I'm looking forward to your answers.

Best,
Shmuel

From: Adam LeBor

To: Shmuel Rosner

Dear Shmuel,

Thanks for your perceptive letter, and I think you are right to move the debate along to explore Jewish responsibility for stopping genocide, if indeed Jews have such a responsibility. But before we go there, let me share with you the latest news from the United Nations, which only confirms my increasing belief that the organization is in a terminal political decline.

Each year the General Assembly, which opens in September, elects a president and twenty-one vice-presidents. The General Assembly is dominated by the G77 group, non-aligned states from the developing world, including many Arab and Islamic nations, which accounts for its obsession with Israel, but let's leave that for the moment. The 2008 President of the General Assembly is Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, of Nicaragua. Señor d'Escoto Brockmann, a Catholic priest, is a former Sandinista foreign minister. He does not much like the United States and swiftly condemned what he called acts of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan. So far, so familiar.

Now comes the list of twenty one vice-presidents. Vice-President of the GeneralDevastation In Myanmar: The Junta blocked UN aid to its own citizens Assembly is mainly an honorary position, but still counts for something in the carefully delineated diplomatic hierarchy of the United Nations. The VPs include Egypt, Russia and Afghanistan, as well as the United States and the United Kingdom. And Burma. Yes, Burma. Cyclone-ravaged Burma, which is ruled by a junta so paranoid and downright evil that it deliberately obstructed the flow of UN aid to its own citizens. Burma, which promised Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon that aid would flow freely after his visit, and then immediately reneged on that promise. Burma, whose intransigence forced the World Food Programme, the UN's food agency, to suspend further supplies while the junta simply confiscated its aid and equipment. Burma, which obstructed and delayed visas for UN aid workers. Apart perhaps from North Korea, no other UN government has shown such contempt, even murderous disregard for its own citizens. No matter, for in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of the UN General Assembly, Burma's anti-western credentials make it an honored member.

And this same moral blindness has shaped the United Nations' response to Darfur. I was amazed and depressed to learn, while researching Complicity with Evil, how much reflexive anti-Westernism still shapes international diplomacy there. Colonialism in Africa and Asia ended decades ago, but still shapes the mentality of governments from Jakarta to Algiers. Sudan's greatest defenders at the United Nations are the Arab, Islamic and African blocs, and of course, China, which buys Sudan's oil and so keeps the government in power and funds the genocide. Time and time again, since the crisis in Darfur erupted in spring 2003, Sudan's allies have blocked or watered down attempts by the United States, Britain and France to exert diplomatic pressure on Sudan. (It's fascinating to compare the response of the Arab and Islamic countries at the UN to Bosnia and Darfur. They pressed the West hard to intervene in Bosnia, where Bosnian Muslims were being killed by Serb and Croat Christians. They now try and stymie any attempts to intervene, even diplomatically, where black Muslims are being killed by their own Muslim government.)

So, to a large extent, as you rightly say, it has been left to Darfur lobbying groups, which have a substantial Jewish presence, to take the lead. You ask if Jews have a special responsibility over Darfur? In absolute terms, no. Darfur is the world's responsibility, a moral incumbency no more or less on Jews than anyone else. But perhaps that is mere sophistry. You write that we should feel proud that: "Jews, who suffered the most from genocide feel compelled to raise their voices against such actions in every part of the world. They feel they have the moral authority, and the obligation to do so. And they do." I absolutely agree. While objectively speaking, Jews do not have a special responsibility to combat genocide, they believe they do, and act on it, which should indeed make us proud. (Although it's notable that in my homeland of Britain, Darfur has never become a hot-button issue, neither among Jews nor the wider population.)

I thought your second point was especially interesting: that American Jews got tired of investing all their political capital in supporting Israel. Especially, in my opinion, when it has become impossible to justify Israel's actions in the Occupied Territories, and the endless, creeping wave of settlements and annexations. It seems to me, Shmuel, that you are right, that there is a drift, even a movement away from the Israel-right-or-wrong school of thought and towards a more independent position, which can only be healthy in the long run. But here's an idea: maybe Jews support the 'Save Darfur' campaigns for another reason, so that they can argue that however bad things are in Palestine, they are nowhere near as bad as what is happening in Darfur. Which is true.

You ask what happens when the preservation of Israel contradicts stopping genocide.Yad Vashem: "Never Again" means more than remembering the six million I don't see a contradiction here, at least in today's world. Such a dilemma, thankfully, has not arisen. But I do think, that Israel, whose coming into existence was to some extent accelerated by the Holocaust, has a special responsibility to act humanely and with compassion towards refugees. I am critical of the way, for example, that foreign dignitaries are taken to Yad Vashem by Israeli government ministers. It's good that Yad Vashem exists, but it should be independent of politics. These visits seem to me an almost cynical attempt to draw a historical continuum between the Holocaust and the need to support Israeli government policies. And considering Israel's patchy record in dealing with refugees from a current genocide, Darfur, such visits could even be distasteful. Consider the Prevention of Infiltration Act, which has already passed a preliminary reading in the Knesset.

It allows the expulsion of refugees without judicial process, and seven year prison sentences for refugees from Sudan. It even allows for 'hot returns,' meaning that Israeli soldiers would force the refugees back over the border into Egypt, to face imprisonment or execution. Israeli soldiers have repeatedly witnessed and testified to how Egyptian troops deal with fleeing Sudanese: they shoot them.

Shmuel, we've covered a lot of ground in this enjoyable and thoughtful exchange, despite its depressing subject matter. But I leave you with this thought about Jews and Genocide. The Holocaust was the determining event in modern Jewish history, and has greatly shaped Israeli identity. But if 'Never Again' means anything, it means not just memorialising the six million, but also trying to stop present day genocides, or at least helping their victims. And that's true in Jerusalem as much as Washington DC.

Yours,

Adam

From: Adam LeBor

To: Shmuel Rosner

Dear Shmuel,

Thanks for your thoughtful response. Once again you raise some good points, the most crucial of which is the Big Question: the United Nations -- Angel or Satan? The case for the prosecution is heavy indeed: Bosnia, Rwanda and now, Darfur. And, as you say, the same mechanisms that prevented, and prevent, any meaningful action on these crises still hampers any decision on Iran. No matter how many times the International Atomic Energy Authority warns that Iran is not co-operating over its nuclear programmes the UN seems powerless to act. Member states -- and especially the five permanent members of the Security Council: the US, Great Britain, Russia, China and France -- still act in accordance with their national interests and realpolitik triumphs over any hazy ideas of humanitarian internationalism. We live in a world of nation-states, and have done so since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which set out the principles of territorial integrity and non-intervention.

Except when the opposite suits. Jumping back to Bosnia, you absolutely right toTreaty Of Westphalia: Where the trouble began point out that "Clinton didn’t really move in the Balkans until he was certain that political damage will be greater if he didn’t act, than the possible damage if he does." By the summer of 1995, it was clear that the daily humiliations that the Bosnian Serbs were meting out to NATO troops were severely damaging the western alliance's credibility and self-respect. Moscow was watching and laughing. Clinton finally pushed to bomb the Bosnian Serbs as much to save NATO as to save Bosnia. And here, once again, the UN's report into Srebrenica, provides an interesting footnote.

The war in Bosnia began in spring 1992. Western powers repeatedly argued that there was no mandate to intervene to stop the killing. But when NATO did finally bomb the Bosnian Serbs, they needed some legal authorisation. They found it in Security Council resolution 836 that mandated UN peacekeepers to "deter attacks" on the safe areas such as Srebrenica. Resolution 836 was passed in June 1993. For two years American, British and other diplomats had argued that this resolution (which they had more or less crafted) did not provide a mandate to intervene in Bosnia. But when NATO's credibility became the key issue -- instead of the lives of starving, ragged, Bosnians -- Resolution 836 was suddenly re-interpreted. A miracle! It did allow for intervention.

The pattern continues today. Let's focus briefly on Darfur as an example. For the past five years Sudan has been carrying out a campaign of genocide in Darfur. And yes, it is genocide. Contrary to popular belief, genocide does not mean mass extermination, either industrial, such as the Holocaust or, by hand, such as happened in Rwanda in 1994. It means the intentional destruction of a group. The group here is the civilian population of Darfur, of whom about 300,000 have been killed, or died of hunger or disease, and more than two million displaced from their homes. This campaign is thoroughly planned and executed by the Sudanese government, using its own armed forces and paramilitaries known as the 'Janjaweed.' Just as happened in the Holocaust, many of the victims die from the decisions of the 'desk-murderers,' in this case the Sudanese officials and ministers who deliberately obstruct relief and medical supplies to the victims.

Meanwhile China bankrolls Sudan, supplies its weapons and military equipment, and keeps the Sudanese economy afloat by buying its oil. The US, and to a lesser extent Britain and France, make a lot of noise about Darfur and the need to stop the killing. Even the Bush administration has talked tough on Darfur. It's to America's credit that unlike in Europe, where the left is obsessed with Israel/Palestine to the exclusion of almost everything else, there is a vocal Darfur solidarity movement. But one not powerful enough to actually influence policy.

The west is complicit in the genocide in Darfur. The key to stopping the slaughter inDarfur: The west could stop this, but won't Darfur lies in Beijing as much as Khartoum. Western diplomats would have you believe that China is some great, immovable behemoth, impervious to criticism and incapable of altering her policies. That's complete nonsense. China has never been as vulnerable: under the human rights spotlight during the preparations for the Olympics, its coming-out on the world stage.

Now is the time for sustained pressure from the United Nations, to get the peacekeepers into the field, to get the relief supplies to those whose lives depend on them. And for sustained pressure on China to stop bankrolling Sudan. Neither of these are happening. Western governments play safe with China because it is the biggest market in the world. We need to sell to China, sure, but China also needs our computers, aircraft and cars. But tragically, there is no political will to even use the leverage that we have.

Faced with these circumstances it's hard to be optimistic about any kind of meaningful reform of the UN. The new Human Rights Council, which replaced the discredited Human Rights Commission, shows how western concepts of human rights are being ever more marginalised. The council, whose agenda is dominated by Islamic and Arab countries, is obsessed with Israel. Only a handful of resolutions passed at the May 2008 session were concerned with specific countries. Four of these condemned Israel. Sudan, and Burma, for example, got one each.

We can doubtless look forward to more of the same, when, next year, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Cuba take their seats. Increasingly, it seems to me, that the United Nations, which was supposed to unite the world in a drive to protect human rights, is now the forum where human rights abusers find support and sustenance. All of which raises the question of why the west, and the United States in particular, which pays 22 per cent of the UN's budget, keeps funding hate-fests for those states who have diametrically opposed ideas to ours about the meaning of the words 'human rights.' I have always thought the UN could be reformed but increasingly, I am starting to have doubts. Perhaps it's time to start thinking about an "League of Democracies" after all.

Very best,

Adam

From: Shmuel Rosner

To: Adam LeBor

Dear Adam,

Thank you for your letter. I now see that it was probably an error not to first detail more of the stories highlighted in your book, and only then move to ask the grand-question of "the UN, an angel or Satan."

So now you corrected my structural mistake, and we can go back to this question. You say that you'd first like to see a "a system of internal UN accountability that calls to account those officials involved in the UN’s failures" – but that is not a real answer to my question.

Or maybe it is; if one wants to see more accountability at the UN headquarters, oneAli Khamenei: Can the UN stop him from going nuclear? can still see the benefit of having the organization function properly. However, this is not an obvious conclusion for the reader of your book. As you rightly blame the permanent five members of the Security Council for failing to meet their duty, you also reveal the incoherence that is inherent to the process necessary to achieving any goal through this paralyzed body.

Consider a problem that we're all familiar with by now, sanctions on Iran. Whether it is wise or not to sanction Iran, whether sanctions can really stop Iran from pursuing its nuclear goals, whether it is even necessary to stop Iran from achieving its goals – all these are beside the point. We are now looking at the mechanism at the heart of every decision reached by the UN, and what you've masterfully detailed in regard to genocide in Rwanda is repeating itself in regard to Iran: an inability to reach a decision and to act upon it decisively that originates with the domestic considerations of the different members, and their conflicting interests in dealing with the world.

In his book A War In A Time Of Peace, the late David Halberstam was quoting an interview with Canadian General Romeo Dallaire – the one commander that was left in the field in Rwanda whom you mention in your letter. "Rarely had a commander at such a tragic venue" writes Haberstam, "been so unsparing of himself, even though his superiors had not listened to his warnings." Here is what Dallaire had to say:

I haven't even started my real mourning of the apathy and the absolute detachment of the international community, and particularly the western world, from the plight of Rwandans. Because fundamentally, to be very candid and soldierly, who the hell cared about Rwanda? I mean, face it. Essentially how many people remember the genocide in Rwanda?... Who comprehends that more people were killed, injured and displaced in three and a half months in Rwanda than in the whole of the Yugoslavian campaign in which we poured sixty thousand troops and the whole of the western world was involved there?

So yes – in theory they are all against murder and rape and violence. I'm sure they are. But you'll have hard time convincing Dallaire that they care enough. Not enough for the Chinese to support a more robust response to stop the atrocities in Darfur, not enough for Russia to stop Slobodan Milosevic, and apparently, not enough for Bill Clinton to support a military response in Rwanda. Washington, wrote Halberstam, "wanted no part of Rwanda. The political fallout from Somalia had caused enough damage."

Damage – political damage at home. And Clinton didn't really move in the Balkans until he was certain that the political damage would be greater if he didn't act, than the possible damage if he did. Political considerations at home were always a decisive factor for any government. When the British government headed by Tony Blair was reluctant to deal with Darfur, you write, "several British members of Parliament began to press the Blair government, which had once proudly announced a new, ethical, foreign policy, on its unwillingness to take a robust stand."

Now, you highlight the fact that careers were not hurt by the failure to preventBill Clinton With Rwandan Children: Ballsy catastrophe, but why would they be if, as you write in the book, "the Secretariat takes its cues from the P5." On the one hand you blame the countries represented at the Security Council, but on the other hand – lacking the means to punish them for their deeds or lack thereof – you want the bureaucrats to pay a price.

So maybe the problem is with the way this system was devised. Maybe we should stop hoping that the UN will somehow miraculously improve, and be more realistic about it. Maybe genocide can only be stopped if someone is willing to pick up the tab and pay the price of stopping it. Maybe sharing the power in a parliament-like world institution is the less efficient way of dealing with the horrors of the world.

And if that is the case – no technical fine-tuning of the way the UN operates can fix the problem. This can only be fixed by an overhaul of the international system. It could be this old-new idea of League of Democracies now promoted by presidential candidate John McCain, or it could be a decision by powerful countries, like the US, or powerful organizations, like NATO, that preventing genocide is a cause important enough as to justify circumventing the UN. This means unilateral action – an idea that was discredited by the Iraq war and that people here have no appetite for.

My grim conclusion will be this: as soon as the next genocide starts to take shape, you can start working on your new book. Unfortunately, it will be very similar to the one you already wrote.

Best,

Shmuel

From: Adam LeBor

To: Shmuel Rosner

Dear Shmuel,

Many thanks for your thoughtful letter. Yes, you are right, Complicity with Evil is a very depressing book. Depressingly compelling, and even essential, I hope. It chronicles the United Nations' failures in Bosnia, Rwanda and, even as you read this, Darfur. So catastrophic are these that we may rightly ask what is the point of the United Nations' continued existence? It was founded by the Allies in 1945, in the shadow of the Holocaust, and with the noblest of ideals, as its charter details: to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war" and "reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights." The United Nations’ key documents—the Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights and genocide convention—are the most advanced formulation of human rights in history. And they have been flouted by UN member states for decades.

Much of the blame for the UN's failures in Rwanda and Bosnia lies with theKofi Annan: Preferred "neutrality" to stopping genocide permanent five members of the Security Council: the United States, Great Britain, Russia, China and France—the victors of the Second World War. If they had wanted to stop the slaughter, they could have. Was there any more shameful decision in modern American history than President Clinton's demands that the UN actually pull out the 2,500 UN peacekeepers deployed in Rwanda in early 1994? None of whom were even American? After pressure from the Clinton administration just 250 remained, under the command of the Canadian General Romeo Dallaire.

To understand these tragic events we need to peer inside the UN building in NYC and examine the role of the Secretariat, the body of permanent officials who advise and serve the member states—for as you say, the devil is in the details. Secretariat officials often claim to be impartial. But they are not. And I wanted to investigate how, in the age of mass communications and transport, two genocides occurred: one lasting months, in Rwanda, and one that just took a few days, in Srebrenica, and how we—the world—could stand by and do nothing. No one involved can say they did not know; both genocides took place where the United Nations had deployed both peacekeepers and relief workers, in regular contact with their headquarters in New York.

Many of the answers were quite easy to find in the United Nations' own reports into Rwanda and Srebrenica. The reports on the UN's role in the genocides in Rwanda and Srebrenica are in the public domain; they are extremely detailed, offering a day to day, sometimes hour by hour, chronology account of these grisly events. The United Nations is no good at stopping genocide but its officials are skilled at recounting and explaining its failures. The Rwanda report details the decisions made by Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) officials in New York, led by Kofi Annan, then DPKO chief. It shows how his and his colleagues' obsession with guarding the UN's neutrality—rather than enforcing the humanitarian principles on which the organisation was founded—was part of the chain of events that led to the deaths of 800,000 people.

By January 1994 General Romeo Dallaire, the commander of UNAMIR, the UN peacekeepers in Rwanda, had received detailed information about the planned mass murder of Tutsis from a source inside the Hutu militia, known as "Jean-Pierre." General Dallaire asked the DPKO for authorisation to raid the Hutu arms caches. On January 11 he cabled New York: "Since UNAMIR mandate the informant has been ordered to register all Tutsi in Kigali. He suspects it is for their extermination. Example he gave was that in 20 minutes his personnel could kill up to 1000 Tutsis." Annan's office replied, in a cable signed by his deputy, Iqbal Riza: "No reconnaissance or other action, including response to request for protection, should be taken by UNAMIR until clear guidance is received from Headquarters." When Dallaire repeated his request, Annan again refused. "The overriding consideration is the need to avoid entering into a course of action that might lead to the use of force and unanticipated repercussions," his cable concluded.

Srebrenica was one of five UN-declared 'safe areas' in Bosnia, islands of besieged,The UN's Disgrace In Rwanda government-controlled territory, surrounded by the Bosnian Serbs. The term had been agreed after much finely-calibrated diplomatic wrangling in the Security Council, but was meaningless. The Serbs launched their final attack early on Thursday 6 July 1995 and Srebrenica fell the following Tuesday. UN commanders refused the Dutch peacekeeper's repeated requests for air-strikes—on one occasion because they had completed the form incorrectly. It was common knowledge at the DPKO in New York that Srebrenica was not viable. DPKO officials had even been briefing the UN press corps that something might happen. They said that the Serbs might attack the southern part of the enclave, and attempt to capture a road. So it was not surprising that initially, the Serb attack on Srebrenica caused few ripples at the half-empty DPKO office.

Despite the judicious leakings, Annan was away as the Serbs advanced. So was Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali, traveling in Africa. Shashi Tharoor, the DPKO team leader on Yugoslavia, was on leave. So was General Rupert Smith, the British commander of peacekeepers in Bosnia. On Saturday July 8, Boutros-Ghali, Annan, General Smith, and other senior UN officials met in Geneva. They barely discussed Srebrenica. Incredibly, they sent General Smith back on leave. By the time Shashi Tharoor finally returned to his desk on the Monday, Srebrenica had virtually fallen. The killing started immediately and over the next few days up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were slaughtered by the Bosnian Serbs.

None of which hindered the careers of any of the DPKO officials. Annan, as we know, served two terms as secretary general. Shashi Tharoor was repeatedly promoted, and with Annan's behind the scenes backing, nearly succeeded him as secretary general. Iqbal Riza, who signed off the cable to General Dallaire, became Annan's chief of staff, one of the most influential positions in the UN. So in answer to your question, Shmuel, as to whether I would like a more efficient UN, or a more robust response to genocide from countries like the US, I would first of all like to see a system of internal UN accountability that calls to account those officials involved in the UN's failures. And one which stops promoting them.

Very best,

Adam

In researching Complicity with Evil, Adam LeBor discovered that the three great killing fields of the last decade—Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur—were not only ravaged by murderous convulsions (still ongoing in the case of Darfur), but abetted in doing so by the appalling negligence of the United Nations, which sat idle without shutting the killing fields down. LeBor's bleak conclusion is that the UN, at present, is simply incapable of fulfilling its foundational obligation to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." Shmuel Rosner, Haaretz's chief U.S. correspondent, has seen his share of war-zones as well, and explores the questions of genocide, the duty to stop evil, and the legitimacy of international institutions with LeBor in the dialogue below.

From: Shmuel Rosner

To: Adam LeBor

Dear Adam,

That is one depressing book.

Complicity with Evil you call it, but it is also complicity with hypocrisy, withMass Graves At Srebrenica cynicism. "The United Nations in the age of modern genocide" is an example of complicity with mediocrity. Your book is the story of an institution incapable of doing the one task that is important enough to justify its less than obviously justified existence. A depressing book. I will recommend it to anyone who's still idealistic enough, or naïve enough, or stupid enough, to think that the United Nations has the power of moral authority. Amazingly, I do meet such people from time to time.

This story has been told before in many ways. How the world failed to defend the people of Srebrenica, and the people of Rwanda, and the people of Darfur. Samantha Power, in her masterful work, A Problem From Hell, was pointing at America and asking, essentially, the questions you're asking now. Her work was extraordinary, but I find yours more persuasive in at least one respect. That is, one can claim that America has no duty to stop all evil, and that its policies are justifiably aimed at maximizing American interests. But one can not say the same of the United Nations.

You make this point right at the beginning of this book: "If the United Nations, whose very raison d'être is the maintenance of international peace and security, does not bare some responsibility for failing to stop the slaughters… than who does?"

The power of this book is the way it assembles the details, the everyday decisionsRwanda's Killing Fields that made genocide possible. "Bosnia could not be saved because it was small and mountainous. Darfur cannot be saved because it is large and flat." A couple of months ago, writing for Slate about Darfur, I angered some activists by stating that "The campaign to save Darfur is alive, but it is no longer kicking. You could say that it has achieved all its stated goals: public awareness, international pressure, congressional action, the administration's involvement. Well, all but one: The crisis in Darfur is not yet solved, and the campaign to save Darfur is running out of options."

Sadly, I do not see a reason to change even one word in that paragraph. But after reading your book I now understand even better why this campaign—to save Darfur—was probably doomed to fail before it even started.

When I was interviewing President Bush in mid May at the Oval Office, one of the questions he was asked referred to recent events in Lebanon: "We have in place U.N. resolutions, Security Council resolutions that were meant to deal with the problem of Hezbollah. Nevertheless, it has not seemed to help." Unfortunately, only by translating the President's body language to words can one convey his response. "If you're going to pass a resolution, you better mean it," he said. In the case of Lebanon—a country suffering from the aggression of Hezbollah, but that cannot be compared to a country in which a genocide in taking place—the UN has proved incompetent. In many ways, this incompetence is no different in nature than the ones you describe in your book. The UN is hesitant whenever there's an aggressor involved, whenever there's a threat of violence involved. The UN can only keep the peace in places of—well—relative peace.

But here is the question I have for you, the expert on UN incompetence. It is actuallyRemnants Of Darfur a dilemma on which I also wrote in the past. Reading your book, one might conclude that what the world needs is a more vigorous, more determined world body. But I have my doubts, and the reason is simple: I do not believe such body will be more moral—and if I do not trust it to be more moral, why would I want it to be more competent?

Here is the way I framed it, writing to an Israeli audience about the Security Council, Lebanon and Iran:

A powerful and effective Security Council is a double-edged sword. More than once in the past Israel benefited from the fact that the council did not press for the implementation of resolutions less favorable to it. The U.S. administration, which has a complex relation with the UN and its institutions as well, also faces a similar dilemma… Use the Security Council for your needs, but do not seek to make it more powerful than necessary so that it will not turn around and bite you.

So: this will be my question for this first session of our dialogue: Do you want a more efficient UN, or would you prefer a more robust response against genocide from countries like the US, while giving up on this righteous-UN idea once and for all?

Best,

Shmuel

Max Mosley: discretion, or dehumanization? Henri is a Jew. He operates a semi-private BDSM bar in Berlin. The first night we met, he wept into my camera. We drank shots of Campari and I promised to keep rolling as he kept talking. The bar was loud, had about a half dozen other kinky people in it flirting and drinking, and some details of our conversation were lost in the classic rock soundtrack. Henri told me, "My parents took part in a mapping project. This was right before the war. They knew what it was for. How else were they going to get the money to get me out of Germany? When I came back, in the '60s, no one in the community would speak to me. The perverts were the only people who took me in."

He told me that he doesn't believe there's such a thing as a really dominant woman.

"They're only acting what men tell them to, even bossing the men around."

Would apparent Nazi roleplay fetishist and (soon to be former) Formula One mogul Max Mosley agree? Would he also tease me, the (almost former) professional fetish mistress, the fair-skinned, blue-eyed, passably WASPy blonde who can carry off a whip? Would he want to hire me, too? I very rarely whipped anyone, and of all my clients, only one ever asked me to play the "cold German type"—nervous and novice submissive client code for "Nazi She Wolf."

That client's name was David, and he used to make appointments with me from a number identified on my phone as the Jewish Community Center. I kept the rosary he brought me to wear when we played. He was never one to step back from his fantasy, to dissect it. The intellectual part of me would have wanted to ask him about the death wish implicit in his desire for me to play the role of a calculating gentile woman seeking to overthrow the JCC. To ask that wasn't my job. I would never demand he let me hold his hand as he reckoned with genocide just to make myself feel less complicit—and as anti-Semitic roleplay goes, the JCC seemed the quaintest target he could choose.

David is a submissive, a bottom.  Henri is a top, which means he gets off on being in erotic control.  But Mosely appears to be a switch. Outside of my professional persona, I'm a switch, too. Switches confuse our myths about SM. When someone claims as a part of their sexual identity that they like to be mostly in charge, or mostly overtaken, we understand that. It already fits a neat power law around intercourse, where one person, even in the vanilla sense, is doing the other.

To watch Mosely go from victim to perpetrator in the course of this SM scene (and we can, thanks to the leaked lo-fi video still online) makes no easy sense, especially to a viewer unfamiliar with the cues of sensual power play. There's something in his ability to take both roles that only throws the theatre of historic cruelty in our face.

I wish I could have introduced Henri to one of my lovers, the only man who exclusively topped me. His father was black, and committed suicide after never being able to really make sense of his life after the Vietnam War. His mother's parents are Polish Jews, Holocaust survivors who came to America to start over. My lover told me he knew a little German because, on a long car trip as a kid, his grandfather had taught him a work song. It turned my lover on to sing this. When he gave me an SS pin to wear to a sex party with him, I didn't know whether to thank him for confiding in me about the fantasy, didn't know if I could do right by it without breaking down utterly. We parted ways before I ever found the words for where the sex we had—rough, passionate, brutal, raw, connected to something bigger than we could bear as just two people—took us. Maybe that's why he wanted to see me gangbanged in a uniform. It wasn't only to see me used and on display. The act and what it signified just needed that many witnesses.

If Max Mosely had that kind of trusted access to people who understood and accepted his fantasies, we'd have no reason—other than those demonstrated by history—to call him monstrous. Whatever demons he had to face, be they his family's fascist past or the annoyance of an afternoon hard-on, he made the choice to hire players and a beige-carpeted "torture chamber" in which to enact his sex games. More power to the man for trying to carry out this encounter with an effort towards minimizing real harm to anyone. Mosley thought he was paying for discretion, not dehumanization. Of course, how well or not he treated the sex workers who entertained him isn't the story of dehumanization anyone is interested in telling—maybe because it's clear he was very fair with them. If there's one thing we can fault him for, it's imagining that his "transgressions" weren't a story worth telling anyone but the women he paid to enact them with.

Related: Howard Jacobson on the British Race Car Nazi Sex Scandal

Protesters in London: express their feelings for the Party As the Chinese Communist Party attempts to shove its Olympic Flame down the world’s throat, it is encountering something it finds shocking: Resistance it cannot shoot. Protesters against the Party’s recent massacres in Tibet have hindered the Olympic Flame in London and Paris. Today the “Grab the Torch” game moves to San Francisco. Party hacks are responding to protesters with outrage and hubris. They have branded those who freely express their opinions through protest as “vile.”

“No force can stop the torch relay of the Olympic Games,” Sun Weide, spokesman for the Beijing organizing committee, said in Beijing on April 9. Oh, really? No force? Rather confident, are we? No surprise here: The Party does not respect the power of democracy; it does not recognize its legitimacy, thus it does not exist.

In fact, citizens of France and England did stop the torch relay in their countries through massive public protests. These protests are expressions of a growing tide of outrage that the Chinese Communist Party was invited to host the 2008 Olympics in the first place. There is a growing sense that if the Beijing Olympics must go forward at all, they should be used to expose the nature of the dictators in Beijing. The major issue for anyone who believes in democracy is simple: This is not about the games, it’s about democracy; the protests are not against the great nation of China, they are against the Chinese Communist Party. Now, in light of recent and continuing massacres in Tibet, the goals and methods of the Party have been exposed yet again.

But If You Go Carrying Pictures of Chairman Mao: you ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow. Why are citizens of democracies allowing the largest mass murderer in human history to wrap itself in the Olympic Flag? You cannot blame the Party. The Party is simply doing what it has always done. It is currently mounting its largest propaganda effort ever. In the past, the Party mounted such campaigns only in China: Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom, The Great Leap Forward, and so on. For those of us outside of China, there are two essential aspects to these campaigns:

1. They resulted in the death of at least 30 million Chinese, making the Party the largest mass murderer in history.
2. Their primary purpose was to strengthen the Party’s grip on power.

So, what's the Party’s Olympic propaganda campaign all about? The Party wants to convince its own people that it is the legitimate ruler of China. It wants them to forget Tiananmen. It wants to make them ignore what the Party is doing now (and has done for 50 years) in Tibet. It is using propaganda in China to convince Chinese that Tibetan thugs were murdering poor Chinese in Lhasa, and the party had to crack down on them. The Party wants Chinese—and supporters of democracy around the world—to recognize that it is the legitimate ruler of China, even though it has acquired its power by mass murder, and has never been freely supported by those whom it rules.

The Party's Answer to Student Protest: tiananmen square, 1989 Modern nations—a status to which China aspires—recognize that legitimacy cannot be conferred by force of arms. The founding principle of modern democracy is that a government acquires legitimacy from the will of the people, as expressed through free elections. There is no substitute for a popular mandate. It is the only currency of political legitimacy. Any régime that acquires and maintains political power through the barrel of a gun—as Chairman Mao so famously expressed it—is ipso facto illegitimate.

The sad fact that all athletes preparing to compete in Beijing must recognize is this: When you hold up your medal, you are pinning it onto the chest of the Chinese Communist Party. You are helping the Party convince its own people that it's rule has legitimacy. You are helping the Party hide the facts of history from its own people, and the people of the world.

The facts of history are plain to see. The Party executed up to 3 million small landlords in 1953. The rational was simple: You cannot make an omelet without cracking a few eggs. They could not establish communism in China, and they could not create economic equality amongst all classes, until the petty bourgeois were murdered. That was just one of many such propaganda campaigns, which went on for decades. At least 30 million (and perhaps as many as 70 million) people died to establish the ideals of communism in China. How has that worked out? Well, today the Communist Party has dropped Communism as a realistic ideal. State-managed capitalism and crony capitalism are now the driving engine of China’s march to super-power status. The Party serves as the slave master for foreign corporations: Our shoes are cheap in America because the Party forces Chinese to work without free unions.

Hitler at the Olympics: Berlin, 1936 Hosting the Olympics is the Chinese Communist Party’s conscious attempt to confer legitimacy to its rule, methods, and goals. It seeks legitimacy in China and around the world. Sound familiar? The Nazi Party tried this in 1936. Western athletes who claim we must not taint the Olympics with politics are speaking from ignorance or self-interest. Is that what they would have said to homosexuals and Gypsies who were already being rounded up by the Nazis, even as the world gathered to celebrate the 1936 Olympics in Berlin? Is that what they would have said to German Jews, in 1936, who though not yet being arrested, were already forbidden to enter stores or restaurants?

Just what part of “Never Again” do those in Europe and America, who accept the Party’s Olympic propaganda campaign, not understand? Samantha Power has quoted author David Rieff's suggestion that, "'Never again' might best be defined as 'Never again will Germans kill Jews in Europe in the 1940's.'” I suggest that “never again” means we cannot allow the Party—already guilty of mass murder in Tibet and China—to host the Olympics even as it supports genocide in Sudan and Burma.

That’s the Party that is just dying to meet you in Beijing: A Party that is even now massacring Tibetans, once again, while our governments do nothing. The Party is doing the same thing it has been doing for the last 50 years, and with the Olympics on the horizon, the situation bears an increasingly eerie resemblance to Berlin in 1936.

Time to stand up and be counted.

What You Can Do
Start A Conversation: When you buy a pair of shoes, explain to the clerk that you need them to help you find a pair that were not made in China. They will ask why, and you can explain that the Chinese shoes are cheap because the Chinese Communist Party:

• Prevents its laborers from forming unions
  
• Does not enforce China’s EPA regulations (which American manufacturers are required to do)

If You Had to Walk a Mile in Tibetan Shoes: you'd definitely boycott the Party This education process can work in any store. Educate yourself about why Chinese goods are so cheap. When you go to Whole Foods, and cannot find frozen edamame except from China, ask to see the Manager. Explain to them why you will not buy the edamame from China, and ask why Whole Foods is not supporting American farmers.

Whenever you have time, every purchase, in every store, can be a moment to spread the facts about the Party. The real strength of a democracy is educated citizens.

Protest: If you're in San Francisco, you can protest against the Olympic Torch.

Get involved with Students for a Free Tibet and join in some of their actions.

The Story of Tibet: the first-ever history of Tibet written with a Dalai Lama Educate Yourself: Thomas Laird worked with the Dalai Lama over the past ten years to write a popular history of Tibet. The Story of Tibet: Conversations with The Dalai Lama is the first-ever history of Tibet written with a Dalai Lama. This is required reading if you want to know what’s happening in Tibet and China during this Olympic year. You can read reviews of the book and a sample chapter here.

Laird contributed interviews to this interesting Australian radio piece on Chinese and Tibetan History.

You can also hear him n the Paula Gordon show, and on WHYY, Philly.

Watch this chilling, detailed, covertly-made documentary about what the Party is doing in Tibet.

One of the most amazing video reports about the recent protests in Tibet is here.

China Tibet War on Youtube:
See The Party version of history and recent events here.
Watch a rebuttal here.

Keep abreast of Tibetan news here.

Here is a story to start with: The Party thugs who are providing security to the running of the Olympic Flame through the streets of San Francisco were selected from a special unit of the People’s Liberation Army. This same unit is used to suppress Tibetans in Tibet. Imagine that Nazi Party Brown Shirts were running an Olympic Flame through a US City in 1936. That’s what’s happening as we sit and watch. See the facts, here.

Ask yourself: Who made the decision that it was okay for these thugs be on the ground in a US city? Find out, and protest directly to them. What message does that send to the Party? That their actions in Tibet are legitimate?

Links to Follow:

Tibet Justice Center
Students for a Free Tibet
International Campaign for Tibet
International Tibet Support Network
Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy
Human Rights in China

Sad stories: The Holocaust isn't cheery Apropos of Sarkozy’s insistence that every French child learn about a kid who died in the Holocaust, the New York Times takes a look at various methods of teaching ten-year-olds about genocide and concludes that there’s no humane way to do it. Well, right? 

The Sierra Leone political activist Zainab Bangura recently said, “People say China is a sleeping giant, but it’s wide awake. It’s the elephant creeping up behind us. Only, it’s so big we can scarcely see it moving.”

That the editorial staff of the International Herald Tribune failed to see the elephant squat across the cover of their print publication this morning is an inexcusable disgrace. The paper ran this morbid headline “Hunger outpaces UN efforts in Darfur” right next to this cheery one “Chinese products change lives for neighbors” without the slightest hint of connection, let alone irony. Anyone who pays attention to world affairs for a living should know that the why? raised by the first headline is directly answered by the second one.

The five-years-and-counting genocide in Darfur owes its longevity (and apparently recent up-tick in child malnutrition) to the protective interest of Chinese capitalism. Every UN effort at intervention has faced either a de-clawing at Chinese insistence or the threat of a Chinese veto. This covers five Security Council resolutions aimed at disarming the Khartoum regime, imposing sanctions on them, or sending forces into the region to protect civilians. Consider Resolution 1706, for example, which:

authorized more than 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers and civilian police to protect civilians and humanitarian workers in Darfur. China abstained, and would have vetoed the measure had language not been inserted that “invited” the consent of the Khartoum regime. The National Islamic Front declined the “invitation” and refused to accept the U.N. peacekeeping force.

China’s motivation in all this can’t get any more basic: they have astronomically lucrative oil deals with the Sudanese government. These asymmetrical contracts permit China to suck the country dry of reserves claimed as their exclusive property in exchange for their promised veto. What’s more is that the oil relationship has fostered a secondary arrangement whereby the Sudanese government has contracted Chinese companies (many state-subsidized) to build bridges, roads and other infrastructure that facilitate the extraction and export of their purchased oil. Most sickening is that China’s not merely content to protect their death squad business partners in the UN; they also sell them the very weapons used in the ongoing slaughter. (At one time I could have sworn there was an army of Americans for whom “No Blood For Oil” seemed a mission statement. I’ve yet to see them or their placards swarm Union Square for an anti-China rally.)

That’s China, but what about the rest of the UN? From the first Tribune story: “For the first time since 2004, the malnutrition rate, a gauge of the population's overall distress, has crossed what UN officials consider to be the emergency threshold.” A non-stop massacre has been running longer than the television series Lost and the UN just decided that it’s an emergency. The story goes on, “As a result, people in Darfur are beginning to lose hope, and that may be another factor taking a toll on their health, several aid officials said.” That reminds me of a line from Jimmy Breslin’s comic mobster novel, The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight: "He died of natural causes as his heart stopped suddenly when six men stuck knives into it."

What does this have to do with China’s “life-changing” products? The knives that China’s stuck into Darfur contribute to what’s known as the “China Price.” This is the low, low manufacturing cost China’s able to maintain and use to lure foreign investment. According to Business Week, “In general, it means 30% to 50% less than what you can possibly make something for in the U.S.” Obtaining their natural resources from countries that others refuse to patronize is one of the many unscrupulous ways that China keeps costs down. This contributes to their ability to sell cheap goods to their neighbors. From the second Tribune story:

Cheap Chinese products are flooding China's southern neighbors and consumers in Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia are laying out the welcome mat.

The products are transforming the lives of some of the poorest people in Asia, whose worldly possessions only a few years ago typically consisted of not much more than a set or two of clothes, cooking utensils and a thatch-roofed house built by hand.

The article is positively celebratory. It does allow this: “The enthusiasm for Chinese goods here is tempered by one commonly heard complaint: maintenance problems.” Well, there are a few more complaints. Aside from the Darfur genocide, here’s what else goes into the production of cheap Chinese goods: industrial slavery, intellectual piracy, environmental catastrophe, and an absolute disregard for health and safety standards.

China is indeed awake. As for the staff of The International Herald Tribune –it’s hard to say. The paper is a hodgepodge of international stories, and is presented as a resource for the global community. In that way it’s sort of the United Nations of newspapers. Which explains everything.

"Thou shalt not stand against the blood of thy neighbor." — Leviticus 19:16

As editor of the Armenian Weekly, I often receive calls from journalists seeking the perspective of the Armenian community. These days, they frequently ask me whether the Anti-Defamation League is damaging relations between the Armenian and Jewish communities. My answer is always a resounding "no."

Yes, the Armenian community is upset that a prominent Jewish civil rights organization supports Turkey's campaign to the deny the Armenian Genocide, the great tragedy that haunts our community. But we are also aware of the Jewish-American writers, bloggers, and activists who speak out against ADL's hypocrisy.

Armenians also know that throughout the 20^th century there was never a shortage of righteous Jews, individuals who spoke out against the Armenian genocide. Here, I present three such righteous Jews, whose efforts will always be treasured by the Armenian community.

Continue reading...

After years of being constantly annoyed and often angry about the historical denial built into Thanksgiving Day, I published an essay in November 2005 suggesting we replace the feasting with fasting and create a National Day of Atonement to acknowledge the genocide of indigenous people that is central to the creation of the United States. I expected criticism from right-wing and centrist people, given their common commitment to this country's distorted self-image that supports the triumphalist/supremacist notions about the United States so common in conventional politics, and I got plenty of such critique. But I was surprised by the resistance from liberals -- even some on the left, including a considerable number of my friends. The most common argument went something like this: OK, it's true that the Thanksgiving Day mythology is rooted in a fraudulent story -- about the European invaders coming in peace to the "New ...

The Armenian Genocide Resolution (H.Res.106) has attracted enormous media attention since it was passed by the House International Affairs Committee on October 10. However, the content of many of the articles, columns and stories make one thing clear: Writers across the United States were ill-prepared to tackle the issue of the Armenian genocide, simply because they knew very little about it.

One case in point is Richard Cohen's article in the Washington Post, titled "Turkey's War on the Truth" (Oct. 16, 2007). Cohen makes arguments based on false premises. After conceding--with condescension--that what happened to the Armenians in 1915 was "plenty bad," he concludes that it falls short of genocide "because not all Armenians...were...affected." Clearly, if we follow his train of thought, Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur and several other cases should not be labeled as "genocide."

Cohen's standards are clearly different from those of the UN Convention defining genocide, but Cohen doesn't just introduce his own novel definition of genocide, he also creates his own facts. He suggests that jurist Raphael Lemkin, the author of the Genocide Convention, coined the term "genocide" based solely on "what the Nazis were doing to the Jews." This is blatantly wrong. Although this factual error was pointed out by many--including myself--to the editors of the Washington Post, no correction was issued and, to this day, no letter to the editor on this issue has appeared in the paper.

To set the record straight, the horrors of the Armenian genocide--and not only the Holocaust--played a central role in Lemkin's lifelong pursuit to find a name for the ultimate crime against humanity--the cleansing of a group--and to incorporate into international law the prevention of this crime and the punishment of its perpetrators.

The destruction of the Armenians came to Lemkin's attention when, in 1920, Soghomon Tehlirian--an Armenian whose entire family was killed during the genocide--assassinated Talaat Pasha, the mastermind behind the Armenian genocide, in Berlin. Lemkin read about Tehlirian's trial and, during a discussion with his professor at the University of Lvov, asked, "It is a crime for Tehlirian to kill a man, but it is not a crime for his oppressor to kill more than a million men?" His professor argued that states are sovereign and they can do what they want to their citizens. "Consider the case of a farmer who owns a flock of chickens. He kills them and this is his business. If you interfere, you are trespassing," his professor argued. Lemkin was proud of Tehlirian for defending "the moral order of mankind," but wanted international law--and not individuals--to punish the perpetrators.

Continue reading...

I feel about atheists the way I feel about people who wear leggings. I disagree with their choices, but it doesn’t keep me up at night. Apparently, though, atheists these days don’t feel the same way about me, and their angry tirades against anyone who’s religious are topping the best seller lists and getting people all hot and bothered. Here’s a couple of excerpts from an article on this new phenomenon in the Chicago Tribune:

The time for polite debate is over. Militant, atheist writers are making an all-out assault on religious faith and reaching the top of the best-seller list, a sign of widespread resentment over the influence of religion in the world among nonbelievers.

Atheists: giving God the finger

Christopher Hitchens' book, "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," has sold briskly ever since it was published last month, and his debates with clergy are drawing crowds at every stop.

Sam Harris was a little-known graduate student until he wrote the phenomenally successful "The End of Faith" and its follow-up, "Letter to a Christian Nation." Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" and Daniel Dennett's "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon" struck similar themes -- and sold.

"There is something like a change in the Zeitgeist," Hitchens said, noting that sales of his latest book far outnumber those for his earlier work that had challenged faith. "There are a lot of people, in this country in particular, who are fed up with endless lectures by bogus clerics and endless bullying."

Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, a prominent evangelical school in Pasadena, Calif., said the books' success reflect a new vehemence in the atheist critique.

"I don't believe in conspiracy theories," Mouw said, "but it's almost like they all had a meeting and said, 'Let's counterattack.'"

The war metaphor is apt. The writers see themselves in a battle for reason in a world crippled by superstition. In their view, Muslim extremists, Jewish settlers and Christian right activists are from the same mold, using fairy tales posing as divine scripture to justify their lust for power. Bad behavior in the name of religion is behind some of the most dangerous global conflicts and the terrorist attacks in the U.S., London and Madrid, the atheists say.

As Hitchens puts it: "Religion kills."

This is certainly not the first time I’ve heard this argument. In my annoying ‘Islam isn’t that bad’ class this semester the professor was fond of telling me that he thought religion was to blame for most of the suffering in the world. And he said it in this cocky way, like he expected me to completely break down and suddenly have some kind of atheist epiphany and leave Judaism far behind.

Here’s my argument with this line of reasoning: Humans are pretty good at killing and torturing each other even in the absence of religious conflict. The genocide in Rwanda wasn’t religious, it was tribal. The millions of people who died of starvation under Stalin didn’t die because Stalin disagreed with their theology. Even the Holocaust was lead by someone whose religious convictions seemed to be purely anti-religion. Hitler may have been interested in the occult, but he wasn’t acting on religious motives.

This isn’t to say that religious violence is insignificant. I’m just suggesting that God doesn’t appear to be nearly as blood-thirsty as mankind. So why are angry atheists cashing the cow at bookstores these days? Here’s another excerpt from the end of the Trib article:

Mouw said conservative Christians are partly to blame for the backlash. The rhetoric of some evangelical leaders has been so strident, they have invited the rebuke, the seminary president said.

"We have done a terrible job of presenting our perspective as a plausible world view that has implications for public life and for education, presenting that in a way that is sensitive to the concerns of people who may disagree," he said. "Whatever may be wrong with Christopher Hitchens attacks on religious leaders, we have certainly already matched it in our attacks."

Finally, Muow hits the nail on the head. If religious people want to be taken seriously, and want to stop fighting with ‘frum atheists’ they have to pay a little more attention to what they’re saying and in what context they’re saying it. Constantly preaching fear and hatemongering is not going to churn out happy engaged and innovative community members.

This is the ultimate un-winnable fight. Let’s neither of us waste our time or energy, okay? Religious people need to stop shoving Bibles down the throat of the secular world, and the secular world needs to chill out about the ten commandments. Frightening how the voice of reason ended up coming from a Christian Conservative…

Six Million: And countingWith the taste of matzoh still in your mouth, it's time for your next Jewish holiday.  This Sunday is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.  The holiday has been around since 1959, and according to this site:

In the early 1950s, education about the Holocaust emphasized the suffering inflicted on millions of European Jews by the Nazis. Surveys conducted in the late 1950s indicated that young Israelis did not sympathize with the victims of the Holocaust, since they believed that European Jews were "led like sheep for slaughter." The Israeli educational curriculum began to shift the emphasis to documenting how Jews resisted their Nazi tormentors through "passive resistance"--retaining their human dignity in the most unbearable conditions--and by "active resistance," fighting the Nazis in the ghettos and joining underground partisans who fought the Third Reich in its occupied countries.

Which I find meaningful. That it was not only created as a day on which to mourn the deaths of our victims, but as as a day on which to celebrate the resistance and spirit of those victims.  I think this is an important distinction to make as Jews. Especially considering that our  culture offers such a wealth of oppression/victimization stories. 

I think it's useful to think about how we can see our history as one of passive resistance, and not just  a story about getting our asses kicked over and over.

But what can we do to celebrate this holiday, to pull the theme of resistance forward?

I've only ever celebrated it in one way.  As a Hillel director, at two different campuses, where my students (and I) read the names of the dead over and over for a 24 hour period.

Which always seemed appropriately somber, meaningful.  It felt like a funeral, and that seemed about right.  Until now.

But maybe that's NOT how I want to celebrate Yom HaShoah.  Maybe instead I want to find a way to resist something I dislike about the world I live in... in the name of the six million.

I'm imagining something like the Day of Silence.  Or the Immigration Boycott.  Something big and passive... to showcase how the Jews resisted, in the only ways they could, the atrocities of Hitler's Germany...

By resisting something else unspeakable-- the genocide in Darfur.  Which  some people are thinking about this weekend already.

Obviously it's too late this year, but I'll encourage everyone to make a donation this Sunday, in the name of the six million.  A donation from the Jewish people to Darfur.  Or sign a petition, or two.

And I'm wondering, if I wanted to start something moving... would people play along? Would Jewcy readers help turn Yom Hashoah 2008 into a day for Darfur?

He's In There Somewhere...Picking a random number from his ass (Michael must be rubbing off on me), Alan Dershowitz has decided that an additional six million more people have died on account of our universal preoccupation with Israel in the past 50 years.

Addressing a rally, organized by Canadian Jewish Community organizations, in Toronto, Dershowitz said:

"Six million additional people have died since the end of the Second World War because of this obsessive focus on Israel," Dershowitz was quoted as saying, citing global inaction over the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and the slaughter currently taking place in Darfur.

That's what Peter Beinart says in the new issue of Time.

There's only one way to save Darfur: tell Sudan it can either accept the U.N. force or face war against the world's most powerful military alliance.

As he points out, NATO didn't prevent the genocide of the Albanian Kosovars by sending in a small peacekeeping force. They did it by bombing Belgrade and preparing for a ground invasion.

He goes on to say,

You could fill volumes detailing the geopolitical reasons America should abandon Darfur to its fate. The argument for military action, by contrast, rests on just two tarnished words.

Those words, of course, are "Never Again."

For someone else who thinks those two words are tarnished by our inaction in Darfur, check out Jewcy's Tikkun Olam Radical, Ruth Messinger.

Maybe if the U.S. came out in favor of the janjaweed extermination of black Muslims in Sudan, the rest of the world would gear into action to stop it. Here's David Aaronovitch in The Times:

This week the United Nations must insist that Sudan accept the UN force, or we must accept that the UN can offer no protection from genocide.

There are plenty of countries, such as Germany, Spain, India, Turkey and Sweden, who are not militarily over-committed and who could take the leading role in saving the Darfurians from their own Government. A long commitment of forces is better than sharing historic guilt.

As Johann Hari pointed out almost a year ago, the good news in this terrible region is that the killing is almost over. There are hardly any victims left.

Over President’s weekend of 2003, New York hosted a huge rally against the war in Iraq. I didn’t go. Instead, I spent the weekend holed up in my friend’s house in Vermont, baking rum cakes and sledding. The war happened anyway. I still feel guilty about it, but I’m pretty the ensuing mess would have occurred even if I had shown up to the protest.

By that logic, it didn’t seem to matter much that I got to the Save Darfur rally in Central Park yesterday two hours late. I already think Darfur should be saved. I can’t imagine what kind of callous person would think otherwise. Who’s for genocide, other than genocidaires?

But when I finally arrived at the East Meadow, I had an absurdly melodramatic change of heart. Here’s how it started, and please don’t laugh: a little kid sold me a cup of 50 cent lemonade, with proceeds to benefit Darfur. “Whose idea was this?” I asked his mom. She said he’d come up with it himself, though he’d been inspired by the kid down the block who was selling juice to raise money to fight leukemia. It’s treacly, I know (so was the lemonade) but as hot new fads among Manhattan eight-year-olds go, philanthropy is a lot better than Pokemon, or SAT prep.

Inside the meadow, a country duo called Big and Rich sang songs about Jesus. They sounded lovely, but it’s not hard to sound good in Central Park on a late summer afternoon. Then they stopped playing and said something idiotic: “This isn’t about politics, y’all.”

This is sort of true. Genocide isn’t a partisan issue. Members of both US parties have embraced the cause. Again: nobody likes genocide.

But we’re not talking about Darfur, Minnesota here. Just because it’s not an issue that fits neatly into US politics doesn’t make it unpolitical. In fact, calling it that produces the kind of attitude I keep struggling with—the sense that your opinion is so obviously right that you don’t need to argue it; that obviously, anyone who disagrees with you is so patently bad and evil that you’re better off ignoring them to go bake cakes in the New England woods. If it's not about politics, then what is it about?

So I was psyched when Imam Talib Abdur-Rashid of Harlem’s Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood pointed out the layers of nuance in this issue. “This is a diverse group,” he said of his co-speakers. “If we were all in the same room, we probably wouldn’t agree on many things. But we do agree on this.” Then he warned us against those who are calling for justice in Sudan only because they’re after Sudanese oil, or because they’re always looking for a cause in which Muslims are the bad guys, before calling on his fellow Muslims in Darfur to end the violence.

I suppose it's not a shocker than the religious leader had a more complex take than the pop-country duo. Still, the imam articulated a reason to show up (and to show up on time) to Save Darfur rallies and the like. This stuff isn't obvious. Not being for genocide isn't the same thing as being publically against it.

Eddie Izzard has a routine about how there’s no such thing as Anglican fundamentalism because the whole religion is based on offering people cake. "Cake or death? That's a pretty easy question.” But it’s not, really. Nobody chooses death over cake for themselves, but we’re always choosing it for other people.

Remember the good old days in Iraq? When the helicopter gunships ran on time, and the sweet smell of nerve agents filled the Halabja air? Sigh. What a time it was. NYT:

“Why did he try to see Saddam Hussein?” Mr. Hussein said. “Wasn’t Saddam a dictator and an enemy to the Kurdish people, as they say?”

The judge, Mr. Amiri, replied to Mr. Hussein: “I will answer you: you are not a dictator, not a dictator, you were not a dictator.”

Smiling, and visibly pleased, Saddam took his seat and said "Thank you."