Periodically, I get chided by people from all over the world that I am much too regional and focus far too much on Canada and the "minuscule" human rights/free speech struggle around the Zundelsite - compared to the far more important developments going on around the world. Why don't I drop the "Holocaust" and write about what's happening today?
One of the hardest things to explain to people ignorant of history is that what is happening, even as we speak, in regions such as the Middle East, for instance, ties right into the "Holocaust" and must be debited in large part to the appalling ignorance about the "Holocaust".
The letter below comes from a churchly group that I happen to know very well - the Mennonite church in which I grew up. As many know, I have been spoken out against some some of the church's leaders and doctrines for reasons much too complex to explain, but I have retained most of their values and mores and have close ties to many of my old-time Mennonite friends. I have always told Ernst that the Mennonite people are exceptional people - fair, principled and decent.
I have also told him that for years I have watched how this church has been infiltrated and subverted systematically to serve the enemy's aims and make the congregations work against their own best interests. I have known this long before the word "political subversion" was even a concept in my mind or a part of my vocabulary. The goyim? Just visit my people - and listen!
As a writer, I have been a thorn in the hierarchy's side for a very long time because I have been critical of some past and present decisions of their leadership which, as one case in point, to this day deliberately withholds and thus censors important information about their own role vis-a-vis the enemy and treatment by the enemy in recent history.
In the leadership's mind, it is politically incorrect to even talk about what happened when the Wehrmacht came to Russia and liberated us. It makes them exceedingly squirmy. That a lot of things happened in Europe for very good reasons, and that grown people should be allowed to look at this period and draw their own conclusions, is for this churchly hierarchy a real bugaboo.
A few weeks ago there was a very nasty book review about my trilogy in one of their mainstream papers in which a history professor made the charge that my description of what happened to the Germans generally and to the Mennonites specifically in World War II was ". . . not grand tragedy but petty comparative victimhood."
Elsewhere, this paragraph occurs:
"Rimland believes the Jewish Holocaust is of minor moral significance compared to the Holocaust which Josef Stalin and his allies wreaked . . ."
So that was then, and now is now. Just this morning, I received through a Mennonite channel the following description out of the Middle East. The person who wrote this apparently belongs as a volunteer to a relief work organization called Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) which tries to ease the suffering of people in the occupied territories. This letter was titled "Reflections on a home demolition":
"On February 4, we received a phone call that a house was being demolished in the Beqa'a valley, just east of Hebron. (F)ive of us quickly took a taxi to the site, but the home was already demolished and the bulldozer gone when we arrived.
A group of women sat in front of the ruins and a group of men sat on top of the collapsed roof. I sat with them on that roof for most of the day. It felt like a funeral. Everyone was in mourning. I sensed we were on holy ground.
Many thoughts went through my mind as we sat there in silence. How can people be so cruel as to demolish someone's home? Lots of feelings of anger and disgust welled up in me.
Fayez and Hudda Jabber are a young couple starting a new home. Their dreams and hard work were smashed, but they told us they will rebuild. They will not give up. I picked up an olive branch, a symbol of peace and hope, that had been broken off a tree by the bulldozer.
The family explained to us that they have documents for their land, dating back to the Ottoman period, and from the British period. This was the fourth time this family has had a home demolished. The first was in l982,then 89, then 96, and now. Ten other homes within eyesight have been demolished, and 52 more have demolition orders. Some of their land has been confiscated and more is threatened.
The Israeli settlements of Kiriat Arba and Givat Harsina on either side of their land want to expand. The goal is to remove the Palestinians from this area. ***I call it ethnic cleansing***. (Emphasis mine)
On Saturday, a group of Israelis from ICAHD came down from Tel Aviv to visit the Jabber family. These Israelis came to apologize for what their country had done to this family and offer support in rebuilding. I felt overwhelmed with joy as I watched Palestinians and Israelis hugging and kissing each other. This is peace and it is possible. I have seen it.
The ICAHD people have organized an international campaign to stop these home demolitions and land confiscations. It appears that we are at the beginning of a new wave of demolitions and confiscations after the Wye agreement and before the new Israeli elections this spring. Our team has already sent out action alerts asking people to contact US officials and Israeli embassies to demand an end to this nightmare. We are now making plans for this campaign. The Israelis hope to mobilize the American Jewish community and we are being asked to mobilize the churches in America. No, I have not had time to go to the beach. <end>
Now when you read this, you know that this relief worker is genuine. There is nothing but goodwill in this piece.
But what shines through is an appalling ignorance as to exactly why these human rights abuses against the Palestinians are still going on - unpublicized and unchecked.
Unless the root cause is exposed and it is understood beyond a shadow of a doubt that what the Israelis do is going to continue with utter brazenness and total disregard for other people's rights, not much will change. More homes will be demolished. Resentment will not wane. It is the "Holocaust" that gives barbarians licence to do what they are doing. And just as I have stated previously, tyrants are powerful only when they have mobs of fools to carry out their tyrannies. When people understand true liberty - liberty from thought control - tyrants cannot rise to power.
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
"I've always been disturbed that Hiroshima was a crime but Dresden was just another mission."
(Letter to the Zundelsite)
Back to Table of Contents of the Feb. 1999 ZGrams