The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising took place in 1943. Essentially, some of the Jews who had been trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto took up arms against the German army. They were aware that Jews from the Ghetto were being systemically taken to death camps.
This essay is about comparing the current militant movement in Gaza, and more broadly among non-Jews in Palestine/Israel, to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. There are some similarities and many differences. A lot can be learned about people by noting how they interpret this data.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising took place in the context of World War II and the Holocaust, which was Adolf Hitler's plan to exterminate the Jews. The situation in Gaza today is in the context of the aftermath of the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, known as Israel, and the contemporary U.S.-led "War on Terror."
While Adolf Hitler was raised as a Roman Catholic in Austria, where anti-Semitism (more properly, anti-Judaism) was virulent among the Church hierarchy, his stance towards Jews was essentially racist, not religious. While Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church agreed on many things in the 1930's (notably the need to exterminate socialists, atheists and communists), they disagreed on the disposition of the Jews in Europe. The Catholic Church sought to convert them.
Hitler, who had added racist doctrines to the Church's anti-Judaism, thought the Jews were genetically inferior (actually, different in a dangerous way). Converting them would simply allow their genes to mix more with his beloved concept of the Aryan race. Hitler and his more radical followers within the National Socialist Workers Party (Nazis), decided to exterminate the Jews in the midst of World War II.
Anti-jewish laws came first, in the mid 1930's, but they were not much different than similar anti-Negro laws in the U.S., or discriminatory laws common in most of the world's nations at the time. Then came concentration camps, at first used to house political prisoners (atheists, socialists and communists), and then increasingly to use Jews for slave labor. Ultimately some of the concentration camps became death camps.
The Warsaw Ghetto, created in 1940, was effectively a concentration camp within a city. Perhaps 300,000 Jews were packed into about 1.25 square miles of city. Gaza is much less densely populated, currently estimated to have a population of 1.8 million enclosed in an area of 139 square miles. However, because Gaza is desert terrain, most of the population lives in Gaza City and other urbanized areas. In both the Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza the citizens were (or are) not free to travel outside of the designated limits.
The Warsaw Ghetto was meant to be temporary; its residents were meant to be deported to death camps beginning in 1942. The residents of Gaza have been there, for the most part, since 1948 and have hereditary refugee status. They are being confined, not exterminated.
The "uprising" began around January 18, 1943. Only a small percentage of Jews, perhaps 1000, appear to have fought the Germans. This may have been partly due to a shortage of weapons. Still, the German army needed only about 2000 troops to regain enough control of the ghetto to continue the deportations.
The same is true of Gaza. While people, when given the opportunities in elections, voted for Hamas, and to a lesser degree for the PLO, the number of active Hamas militants is estimated at about 10,000 (estimated by Israel), but that includes irregular volunteers. The other resistance groups in Gaza appear to be much smaller than Hamas.
Tunnels played a crucial role in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Tunnels were used to bring in food and weapons. Without tunnels, the earlier death rate in the ghetto from malnutrition and consequent disease would likely have been higher. In the end, many of the fighters used the tunnels to escape the fate of those who did not fight: transit to a death camp.
The various groups in Gaza did not build tunnels because the like to dig. The were dug for the same reasons the Jews had in Warsaw: to get supplies. And both some of the Jews and some of the Palestinians used the tunnels to get the weapons they needed to fight the army of the nation that had put them in their respective ghettos.
Very few German soldiers, officially just 17, were killed by the Warsaw Jewish resistance, and it is unlikely that the real total was over 100. The Germans disproportionately killed civilians, most of whom died from fires or smoke inhalation.
The army of Israel, and its air force, have elected to fight in a manner that kills far more civilians in Gaza than actual Hamas militants.
In both cases the resistance fighters were poorly armed compared to the army they fought. The Polish Jews had only one machine gun and a limited number of small arms. Gaza is confronted with an Israeli army far better armed than the German army was. In addition, Israel conducts much of its war on non-Jewish Palestinians from the air. The use of (mostly inneffective) rockets launched from Gaza is also a new phenomena.
So we have a paradox. In matching the contenders up, Hamas gunmen match up well with ZOB and ZZW, the Jewish Warsaw gunmen. The civilians of Gaza match well with the civilians of the Warsaw Ghetto.
And the Israeli state matches the Nazi German state well. And the Israeli Army matches the German army quite well.
But once racism, religious intolerance, or even nationalism enter the picture, this obvious way to connect the dots goes out the window. Racism makes it impossible to do a rational analysis of who is in the right, and who is being wronged. See my recent essay Ethical Asymmetry [July 22, 2014] for a treatment of the ethical problems resulting from bias.
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Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Gaza
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Showing posts with label Gaza. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gaza. Show all posts
Saturday, July 26, 2014
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Gaza, Blockades, Embargoes, Pirates and Privateers
Some people are in an uproar because Israel used what anyone else would call excessive force to capture a Turkish aid ship headed for Gaza in Palestine. Some people are just beginning to notice that most post-Holocaust Israelis adopted the core Nazi values of racism and killing anyone who gets in your way (which were core American values until the 1960s, truth be told). Palestinians just happened to be in the way of Jews who wanted to resurrect the ancient kingdom of Judea.
My analysis is that the Israeli high command probably gave advance orders to their gunmen raiding the charity fleet to use lethal force because they wanted to disrupt the impending settlement talks with the Palestinians. They think President Barack Obama will be weakened by the November elections in the United States. They think they can get another postponement, or a better deal after November. They are willing to take the short-term hit for the perceived long-term gain.
If indeed some of the passengers on the Mavi Marmara tried to stop the Israeli gunmen from boarding their ship, it was within their rights of self-defense. Pacifists would say it was wrong, and with their weird non-violence logic (see Non-violence and its Violent Consequences) would have blamed the victims on the ship, not the gunmen. If the point was to show the brutality of the State of Israel and bring attention to its illegal blockade of Gaza, however, those who defended themselves, and made the ultimate sacrifice, did the right thing.
Turn it around to see the justice. A bunch of German liberals decide to take supplies to a concentration camp or ghetto to feed Jews during World War II. Nazi gunmen stop them, first with beatings, then with bullets. Who would justify such Nazi actions, except the Nazis themselves?
Many wars have started with embargoes or blockades at sea. Embargoes are not in themselves acts of war, although they certainly can provoke wars. Blockades are acts of war. If a war has not already begun, a blockade is a good start. Remember the American War of 1812? The British blockade of Europe (they were at war with France and its allies) was one of the main factors.
The American Revolutionary War is thought of as a time of sacrifice, and for most of both the terrorists (I mean patriotic ancestors) and those Americans who remained loyal to Great Britain it was. But some Americans made out like bandits: privateers. They were authorized by Congress to seize British ships, and captured a lot of profits in the process. If the loyalists had won the war, in retrospect we would call them pirates.
Self-defense is a right, but it is a tricky right that runs up against the self-defense and private property rights of others. Surely Jews in Europe had a right to defend themselves against Adolf Hitler and his gunmen in the 1930s and 1940s. Surely the Palestinians had a right to defend themselves against the mainly German, Jewish invaders in the 1940s. So where should the Jews in European camps have gone? In retrospect, back to Germany. Anti-semitism was discredited and the Nazi Party was banned. They would have been safe there, but they did not feel they would be safe there, which is understandable.
As I said, choosing to not sell to a nation through an embargo is not an act of war, whereas a blockade usually is an act of war. But there are gray areas. After World War II started in Europe the United States, the Netherlands, and the British Empire joined in an embargo against Japan. The Japanese felt this was an act of war, since it meant they could get no petroleum, which they needed to defend their own empire. Attempts at negotiations failed largely because President Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted a war to cement American dominance in East Asia, while Great Britain wanted a war because that would also involve America in the fight against Germany. Sure, if the embargo had caused the Japanese to surrender without a fight, America would not need to declare war. In 1812 Britain had the embargo, but America declared war. When you are a global economic superpower, I think it is fair to say that an embargo is a de facto declaration of war.
I believe the United States bears much responsibility for the situation in Gaza. We demanded free elections as a condition for statehood for Palestine. Then, Hamas won the elections. The United States then reneged on its promises. Americans may have missed that hypocritical song and dance routine, but Palestinians and Moslems in general did not.
I see no ethical distinctions between Hamas and Likud. In American politics the practical distinction is in the number of Jewish voters in swing states like Florida and New York, and the ability for American Zionists to contribute to election campaigns.
My analysis is that the Israeli high command probably gave advance orders to their gunmen raiding the charity fleet to use lethal force because they wanted to disrupt the impending settlement talks with the Palestinians. They think President Barack Obama will be weakened by the November elections in the United States. They think they can get another postponement, or a better deal after November. They are willing to take the short-term hit for the perceived long-term gain.
If indeed some of the passengers on the Mavi Marmara tried to stop the Israeli gunmen from boarding their ship, it was within their rights of self-defense. Pacifists would say it was wrong, and with their weird non-violence logic (see Non-violence and its Violent Consequences) would have blamed the victims on the ship, not the gunmen. If the point was to show the brutality of the State of Israel and bring attention to its illegal blockade of Gaza, however, those who defended themselves, and made the ultimate sacrifice, did the right thing.
Turn it around to see the justice. A bunch of German liberals decide to take supplies to a concentration camp or ghetto to feed Jews during World War II. Nazi gunmen stop them, first with beatings, then with bullets. Who would justify such Nazi actions, except the Nazis themselves?
Many wars have started with embargoes or blockades at sea. Embargoes are not in themselves acts of war, although they certainly can provoke wars. Blockades are acts of war. If a war has not already begun, a blockade is a good start. Remember the American War of 1812? The British blockade of Europe (they were at war with France and its allies) was one of the main factors.
The American Revolutionary War is thought of as a time of sacrifice, and for most of both the terrorists (I mean patriotic ancestors) and those Americans who remained loyal to Great Britain it was. But some Americans made out like bandits: privateers. They were authorized by Congress to seize British ships, and captured a lot of profits in the process. If the loyalists had won the war, in retrospect we would call them pirates.
Self-defense is a right, but it is a tricky right that runs up against the self-defense and private property rights of others. Surely Jews in Europe had a right to defend themselves against Adolf Hitler and his gunmen in the 1930s and 1940s. Surely the Palestinians had a right to defend themselves against the mainly German, Jewish invaders in the 1940s. So where should the Jews in European camps have gone? In retrospect, back to Germany. Anti-semitism was discredited and the Nazi Party was banned. They would have been safe there, but they did not feel they would be safe there, which is understandable.
As I said, choosing to not sell to a nation through an embargo is not an act of war, whereas a blockade usually is an act of war. But there are gray areas. After World War II started in Europe the United States, the Netherlands, and the British Empire joined in an embargo against Japan. The Japanese felt this was an act of war, since it meant they could get no petroleum, which they needed to defend their own empire. Attempts at negotiations failed largely because President Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted a war to cement American dominance in East Asia, while Great Britain wanted a war because that would also involve America in the fight against Germany. Sure, if the embargo had caused the Japanese to surrender without a fight, America would not need to declare war. In 1812 Britain had the embargo, but America declared war. When you are a global economic superpower, I think it is fair to say that an embargo is a de facto declaration of war.
I believe the United States bears much responsibility for the situation in Gaza. We demanded free elections as a condition for statehood for Palestine. Then, Hamas won the elections. The United States then reneged on its promises. Americans may have missed that hypocritical song and dance routine, but Palestinians and Moslems in general did not.
I see no ethical distinctions between Hamas and Likud. In American politics the practical distinction is in the number of Jewish voters in swing states like Florida and New York, and the ability for American Zionists to contribute to election campaigns.
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