Methodist Church missionary calls for boycott of Holocaust events

Good article on Elder Of Ziyon about a Methodist missionary, who spent over a decade in Israel and Palestine, who calls for boycott of Holocaust events. Her name is Janet Lahr Lewis, and she is the new "Advocacy Coordinator for the Middle East" for the United Methodist Church. She wrote in a recent article:

Don't participate in Holocaust Remembrance Day without participating in Al Nakba Remembrance Day. Don't visit a Holocaust museum until there is one built to remember the other holocausts in the world: the on-going Palestinian holocaust, the Rwandan, the Native American, the Cambodian, the Armenian ... You could be waiting a long time!

She wants people to remember the Nakba, but illogically calls for people not to honor the memory of the Jews and others killed by the Nazis. Her "pro-Palestinian" advocacy thus consists of antisemitism. It's ignorant, too - there is a Native American museum on the mall in Washington, which covers the history of Native peoples, including genocide, as well as being a truly magnificent museum of Native American culture and art. It is well worth visiting on its own.

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has an new exhibition on the Cambodian genocide - Cambodia 1975-1979. In addition, there are many memorials to the genocide in Cambodia itself. The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, in Britain, also covers the genocide in Cambodia, as well as Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur. In Rwanda, there are also memorials to the genocide, including an important one in Kigali. There are also many memorials to the Armenian genocide around the world, both in Armenia itself and in countries of the Armenian diaspora, including one in Watertown, Massachusetts, close to where I grew up in Cambridge. There is a significant Armenian population in Watertown, and the memorial was put up in 1965.

Clearly, Ms.Lewis is abysmally ignorant of how the many peoples who have been subjected to genocide have remembered their own suffering. She is ignorant as well of museums and institutions that remember the Holocaust among the other instances of genocide and mass murder. It's rather appalling that the Methodist church thinks of her as an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

September 1, 1939

I should be grading map exercises, but instead I've been reading blogs, and like other people, have found George Orwell's entries in his diaries (now being posted daily on the Orwell Diaries website) very poignant. For September 1, 1939, the day that Germany invaded Poland, he wrote:

Invasion of Poland began this morning. Warsaw bombed. General mobilization proclaimed in England, ditto in France plus martial law. [Radio]
Foreign & General
1. Hitler’s terms to Poland boil down to return of Danzig & plebiscite in the corridor, to be held 1 year hence & based on 1918 census. There is some hanky panky about time the terms were presented, & as they were to be answered by night of 30.8.39,[1] H.[2] claims that they are already refused. Daily Telegraph [a]
2. Naval reservists and rest of army and R.A.F. reservists called up. Evacuation of children etc. begins today, involving 3m. people & expected to take 3 days. [Radio; undated]
3. Russo-German pact ratified. Russian armed forces to be further increased. Voroshilov’s speech taken as meaning that Russo-German alliance is not contemplated. Daily Express [b]
4. Berlin report states Russian military mission is expected to arrive there shortly. Daily Telegraph [a]

The site includes PDFs of the newspaper articles he refers to in the diary.

This is a good counter to Pat Buchanan's retrograde America-First anti-semitism, most recently expressed in a column published on his website and others, which contends that "Hitler did not want a war with Poland." The only possible response to this comment, it seems to me, is "why the hell did he invade Poland then?!" Why does MSNBC retain him as a commentator? How much more blatant does his anti-semitism and pro-Nazism have to get before they decide that he's more of a liability than a draw?

Update: see this good TPM article on Buchanan. Commenter jeffgee reminded us of Molly Ivins' stellar line describing Buchanan's speech at the '92 GOP convention: it "sounded better in the original German."

And here's a good takedown of Buchanan by Orac.

This is the stanza of W.H. Auden's poem about the beginning of the war that I find the most moving:

Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

And again, today was a beautiful early September day - not a cloud in the sky, warm but not too warm, the sky a beautiful blue as it was on that Tuesday eight years ago in New York City and Washington.

Genocide in Gaza?

Terry Glavin, in his essay "The Debasement of Language: 'Israeli Genocide,'" succinctly discusses the use of language equating Jews with Nazis and accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. This is relevant to a conversation I just overheard today.

I went to a local cafe this morning for a nice cup of coffee and to read a heavy tome on Angelomorphic Christology (for an article I should be writing on "Divine Beings"), and was sitting and sipping the coffee when I heard a couple of people at another table discussing the Gaza War. One of them started going on about Israeli genocide in Gaza - how Israel had already killed over 500 Palestinians and that this was genocide. Only my desire not to make a scene in public prevented me from going over to them and asking them what did they really think genocide was? And to add the comment that if the Israelis really wanted to commit genocide in Gaza, they were doing a really poor job at it. And that if the Israelis needed any models for how to go about it, they should consult the Syrians, who killed between ten and twenty thousand people in Hama, or perhaps Saddam Hussein and "Chemical Ali" for their Anfal campaign against the Kurds.

None of this should be construed, however, for support of Israeli bombing and killing of civilians - I am still deeply ambivalent about the Israeli assault on Gaza, at this time leaning towards being against; this is why I keep posting about demonstrations against the attacks in Gaza, in the hope that maybe I'll find one I might actually want to attend, were I to be present in the relevant location at the right time.

Unfortunately, while there has been a local demonstration against the Gaza War, I didn't see that I could support it, even though I agreed in part with the organizers' statement. It calls for, among other things, a complete halt to American military aid to Israel, which I do not support. It also very much dismisses the impact of the constant rocket attacks on Sderot and other Israeli towns near Gaza. While I think that one could argue that the Israeli response to those attacks is wrong and counterproductive, it is also incorrect to dismiss the suffering that the residents of Sderot have endured, even if the magnitude is much less than that endured by the people of Gaza.

I would ask the organizers of the demonstration to consider how they would feel if Ithaca had received rocket fire from nearby towns for several years - I think that they would not be inclined to dismiss the ill effects upon us even if only a few people were killed. The statement that "The airstrikes, which stoke the Palestinians' anger and desire for revenge, in no way contribute the security of Israelis," could equally well be turned upon Hamas - rockets upon Israelis also stoke their anger and desire for revenge, and do not contribute to the security of Gazans. There is no acknowledgement of any responsibility of Hamas for this horrible situation. I would prefer to see signs denouncing Hamas along with those denouncing Israel.

Update, a little later - I'm listening to the evening news show on Israel channel 1, Mabat, which is going back and forth between the anchors in the studio and reporters in Sderot and Ashkelon. As they were talking to the reporter in Ashkelon, the air raid sirens came on - warning of incoming rockets from Gaza, and they're now talking about the rockets that just landed. Mabat is a live news show, so this just happened - it's very scary to listen to, I can just imagine being there.

Ramsay Clark

(Ramsay Clark defending Saddam Hussein at his trial for crimes against humanity - cartoon lifted from Slate.com).

In the last couple of days I've gotten a lot of referrals for people looking for information about Ramsay Clark. I would guess that this is because of the posting of Saddam Hussein's letter on the internet. The letter, written in response to his death sentence, apparently refers to those who supported him, including Clark, who was on his defense team.

Clark is also noted for defending others accused of crimes against humanity and genocide - for example, he defended Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, a Seventh-Day Adventist minister who was convicted of involvement in the Rwandan genocide. A Feb. 20, 2003 New York Times article provides more information:

A Protestant clergyman and his son, a physician, were convicted yesterday of genocide and sentenced to prison by the United Nations tribunal dealing with the Rwandan killing frenzy of 1994, in which members of Hutu gangs killed an estimated 800,000 minority Tutsi and moderate Hutu over three months.

The Rev. Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, 78, the former head of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in western Rwanda, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for aiding and abetting genocide. His son, Dr. Gérard Ntakirutimana, 45, who worked at the church's hospital, received a total sentence of 25 years for the same charges and for shooting two people to death.

With the verdict, Mr. Ntakirutimana became the first clergyman to be convicted of genocide by an international tribunal....

The three judges, led by Eric Mose of Norway, found that the pastor and his son had led attackers to the Mugonero Adventist church and hospital complex in Kibuye, where hundreds of unarmed Tutsi families, including Adventist ministers and their relatives, had sought refuge from the violence. The judges found that father and son also joined and guided vehicle convoys carrying attackers to nearby towns.

The judges, who dismissed other charges against the two, said that during the attacks, the physician had shot one man at close range in the hospital courtyard and another who had taken refuge at a school. ''As a medical doctor, he took lives instead of saving them,'' Judge Mose said in the court's summary.

Ramsey Clark, the former United States attorney general, who was defense counsel for the elder Mr. Ntakirutimana, called the verdict ''a tragic miscarriage of justice.'' He said both men would appeal.

The clergyman's case first gained attention in March 2000, when he became the first person handed over by the United States to an international tribunal....

Mr. Ntakirutimana is not the first member of the clergy to be held on genocide charges. Church workers, including two Catholic priests, have been convicted by local courts in Rwanda. In Belgium, two Rwandan nuns received long prison sentences for crimes against humanity for collaborating with Hutu militias.

But this case became known above all because of the astonishing letter that six Tutsi pastors wrote to him while they were at the church compound caring for refugees. The letter begged him for help, saying, ''We wish to inform you that we have heard that tomorrow we will be killed with our families.'' The group was indeed killed. During the trial, the letter was used as a prosecution exhibit. A witness, the son of one of the six clergymen, said the letter had received a cold reply saying nothing could be done.

While those accused of crimes against humanity and genocide also deserve competent legal counsel, Clark's wholehearted partisanship for those accused of such crimes is a revolting spectacle.

A statement issued by his office on November 29, 1996 on the International Tribune for Rwanda explains something of his enthusiasm for these cases:

Excerpts From A Statement On The International Tribunal For Rwanda

The International Tribunal for Rwanda is an extension of colonial power in Africa, which can threaten every African leader. There was never such a court during the colonial wars in Africa which could punish European powers for atrocities against the African people, or against apartheid leadership in South Africa; or the U.S. for its aggressions in Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Libya, Panama, or Iraq, or the U.S.S.R., or Russian Federation in Afghanistan, Chechnya, East Europe, or the Baltic states.

The Tribunal is foreign power intervention taking sides to maintain its control over the majority Hutu through Tutsi surrogates. No country should surrender an accused to such a Tribunal until it is a permanent court that will deal equally and fairly in all cases worldwide against the powerful not only the weak, and act on truth alone, not political interest. The International Herald Tribune on November 23-24 reported on the slaughter of 298 Hutus in a Seventh Day Adventist Church after their return from the exile abroad. This Tribunal cannot protect these Hutus, or tens of thousands of others. Do the rich and powerful countries really believe they can do justice, or help Africa by prosecuting a select few while arming all sides to kill Africans and millions of Africans face starvation? It is their earlier interventions that have created these conditions.

Ramsey Clark, November 29, 1996

In response to these sentiments, Ken Harrow of Amnesty International wrote:

What an irony that Ramsey Clark would evoke the weak and the helpless in his defense of a man accused of genocide, would turn the blame outside Africa to absolve one who might well have assumed the guilt for the worst of crimes. Africa does not need any more defenders whose defense functions to deny Africa agency, responsibility for actions committed by Africans. It does not need Westerners to tell it that the powerful West is only and always responsible for crimes committed in Africa. The really weak and helpless victim here is justice, and the International Court is the first modest attempt to extend the concept of justice beyond national borders. Considering the crimes of our century committed by xenophobic nationalists, and the continuing crimes committed in the name of national interest, it is time for enlightened people to throw their support to international institutions based on premises of equity. ken harrow