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TOPIC: genocide

Ideas

From Nazism To Anti-Fascism To Pro-Hamas, Reflections Of A Post-War German

The post-War generation in Germany was shaped politically by one question: Why didn’t our parents prevent the Holocaust? Nowadays, as baby boomers are retiring, the inner political wrestling seems to have fallen out of time, because anti-fascism has long changed sides.

Updated Nov. 14, 2023 at 6 p.m.

-Essay-

BERLIN — These days, one experience keeps coming to mind which apparently has nothing to do with the Hamas massacre on October 7 and its terrible consequences. At the same time, it does — albeit via the winding paths of my biography, which was largely that of an entire generation: the so-called baby boomers, born roughly between 1950 and 1965.

We were the strongest cohort of the post-War period, until the "baby bust."

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Soon we will all be retired — we, the eternal young professionals, forever young. We were the ones who repeatedly confronted their parents with probing questions: What did you do? What did you know? Why didn’t you prevent it? How could this even happen? Aren't you ashamed of yourself?

No matter what the answers were — at that time we made an almost sacred commitment, indeed an inner vow, to fight all forms of anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews in the future, even if all the past could no longer be undone.

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Why Hamas Aren't Nazis — Yet Israel's War On Gaza May Be Genocide

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials have referred to Hamas militants as "the new Nazis." But as horrific as the Oct. 7 massacre was, what does it really mean to make such a comparison 80 years after the Holocaust? And how can we rightly describe what's happening in Gaza?

Updated Nov. 8, 2023 at 5:35 p.m.

-OpEd-

TURIN — In these days of horror, we've seen dangerous equivalences, half-truths and syllogisms continue to emerge: between Israelis and Jews, between Palestinians and Hamas, between entities at "war."

The conversation makes it seem that there are two states with symmetrical power. Instead, on one side, there is a Sunni Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organization with both a political and a military wing; on the other, a democratic state — although it has elements in the majority that advocate for a mono-ethnic and supremacist society — equipped with a nuclear arsenal and one of the most powerful armies in the world.

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And in the middle? Civilians violated, massacred, and taken hostage in the horrific massacre of Oct. 7. Civilians trapped and torn apart in Gaza under a month-long siege and bombardment.

And then we also have Israeli civilians led into war and ideological radicalization by a government that recklessly exploits that most unhealable wound of the Holocaust.

On Oct. 17, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to Hamas militants as "the new Nazis." On Oct. 24, he drew a comparison between Jewish children hiding in attics to escape terrorists and Anne Frank. On the same day, he likened the massacre on Oct. 7 to the Babij Yar massacre carried out in 1941 by the Einsatzgruppen, the SS operational units responsible for extermination. In the systematic elimination of Jews in Kyiv, they deceitfully gathered 33,771 men and women, forced them to descend into a ravine, lie down on top of the bodies of those who were already dead or dying, and then shot them.

The "Nazification" of opponents, or the "reductio ad Hitlerum," to use the expression coined in the 1950s by the German-Jewish political philosopher Leo Strauss, who fled Nazi Germany in 1938, is a symbolic strategy that has been abused for decades to discredit one's adversary.

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Inside Israel's Plans To Transfer Palestinians From Gaza To Egypt's Sinai

Dubbed by some as the 'Eiland plan,' after a retired Israel general, Egypt is vehemently opposed to any attempt to transfer Palestinian refugees from Gaza, which could turn Sinai into a launch pad for operations against Israel, and ultimately redraw the map of the Middle East again.

-Analysis-

CAIRO — On October 24, a document leaked from Israeli Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel detailed that a durable post-war solution for Gaza has to include the transfer of Palestinians to Sinai, Egypt. According to the document obtained by the Israeli Calcalist news website, the move would include three steps: Establishing tent cities in Sinai, creating a humanitarian corridor, and constructing cities in North Sinai for the new refugees. In addition, “a sterile zone” several kilometers wide would be established in Egypt south of the border with Israel to prevent Palestinians from returning.

The ministry, according to observers, doesn’t have a strong weight in government, with intelligence apparatuses operating outside its framework. “The existence of the document and the formal idea is not a surprise. But that it is leaked and the proof it is out there, is interesting,” says Daniel Levy, president of the London-based Middle East Project and former peace negotiator with Israeli Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin.

Shortly before that, on October 18, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi delivered an improvised speech about the ongoing Israeli military assault against the Gaza Strip that followed Hamas’ incursion into Israel nearly two weeks earlier.

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“Transferring [Palestinian] refugees from the Gaza Strip to Sinai would simply amount to relocating their resistance… turning Sinai into a launch pad for operations against Israel and granting Israel the right to defend itself and its national security by conducting strikes on Egyptian land in retaliation.”

Sisi’s vehement rejection of a “second nakba,” especially after U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to pressure Egypt to create a humanitarian corridor, was turned into a quest to elicit public support for his government. With less than a month to go before a presidential election that was hastily announced amid a crippling economic crisis, Sisi then called for popular demonstrations to support his position. His appeal resulted in a few thousand people turning out for protests on October 20, primarily in Cairo.

Sisi’s position is also consistent with a stance long held by previous Egyptian rulers who have historically rejected any Israeli attempts to displace Palestinians into Sinai. Whether or not Israel’s current military campaign against Gaza succeeds in making the relocation plan a fait accompli is yet to be determined.

Against this backdrop, Egyptian media outlets, owned by security apparatuses close to Sisi, have been publishing and airing detailed reports about an earlier Israeli blueprint to relocate Palestinians from Gaza to the Sinai Peninsula. Most of them claim to have revealed what they call the “Eiland plan,” named after a retired major general, Giora Eiland, who served as the head of the Israeli National Security Council between 2004 and 2006. State-aligned media have made sure to highlight Sisi’s uncompromising opposition to the plan, even if it includes offers for debt relief or financial aid packages from the Joe Biden administration.

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Genocide To Ethnic Cleansing, Why Europe Has Forsaken Armenians Again

As Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh are forced to flee their homes, is culture or corruption or something more sinister forcing a people to suffer so greatly a century after a genocide tried to wipe them out?

-OpEd-

TURIN — When we hear that an animal is endangered, — maybe even at risk of being extinct — our collective outrage pushes us to defend its survival, passionately. And yet we can't seem to muster the willingness to do anything about the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The more than 100,000 Armenians who have left their land in a matter of days did not choose to abandon a land to which they have been attached for centuries, nor did they choose to abandon their ancient churches and monasteries, which will be destroyed with bulldozers. They were forced to do so to save their lives.

The European Union has not lifted a finger to protest against the Azerbaijanis or to stop the ethnic cleansing of an ancient people from the land they have occupied for millennia.

In fact, they insist on calling the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh separatists, adopting the Azerbaijani point of view. How can a people who have lived in that territory, without ever leaving it for 2,500 years, be considered separatist?

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Olena Struk

Russian Invasion Should Change How Ukraine Remembers World War II

The images of World War II have been used many times when describing Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But memory can deceive — many Ukrainian victims were forgotten as the Soviet Union spun history for its own purposes.

KYIV — Tetiana Pastushenko has an interest in the fates of forgotten people.

Pastushenko — who has a Ph.D. in History, Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Military and Historical Research at the Institute of History — has been researching the topics of Ukrainians in forced labor in the Third Reich, Soviet prisoners of war, and prisoners of Nazi concentration camps for many years.

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These are often people who have been left out of the official collective memory of the war. Ukraine was one of the most devastated areas in Europe during World War II. It was a principal battleground on the Eastern Front and suffered years of occupation and countless deaths.

She spoke to Ukrainian news outlet Livy Bereg about the stereotypes that still need to be overcome in the European research community, the importance of memory, and how the latest war will affect the global interpretation of World War II.

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This Happened

This Happened - April 24: Armenian Genocide Begins

The Armenian genocide began on this day in 1915, when the Ottoman government arrested and deported hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople (now Istanbul).

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This Happened

This Happened - April 7: Rwandan Genocide Begins

The Rwanda genocide started on this day in 1994, and lasted for approximately 100 days until mid-July 1994.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Boris Grozovskiy

How A 1930s Soviet Famine Targeted Ukraine — And Why It Matters More Than Ever

Ukraine and countries around the world recognize the Holodomor, the famine which killed millions of Ukrainians in the early 1930s, as a genocide caused by Soviet authorities. But Russia still refuses to admit responsibility. A new study uses agricultural records and mathematical modeling to show that the famine clearly targeted Ukrainians.

KYIV — The Holodomor was one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of the 20th century. In the course of just two years, from 1932 to 1933, between 5 and 10.8 million people died of hunger in the Soviet Union — at least 2.6 to 3.9 million of them in Ukraine alone.

Until the 1980s, the Soviet government denied that the tragedy happened at all. Modern Russian historians now agree that the famine was caused by human action. But while Ukraine, the European Parliament, the U.S. and Canada, among other countries, have all recognized Holodomor as a genocide, most Russian historians still disagree, arguing that people also died in other grain-producing regions of the Soviet Union.

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This historical dispute has strong political significance. The Ukrainian government often repeats its demand for apology and restitution from Russia, the legal successor to the USSR, for orchestrating the famine. The Kremlin says describing the Holodomor as a genocide is anti-Russian propaganda. After its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian forces dismantled memorials to the Holodomor in occupied cities of Mariupol and Kreminna.

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This Happened

This Happened - February 12: Milosevic On Trial

On this day, 21 years ago, the trial of Slobodan Milošević began in the Hague, Netherlands.

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In The News
Cameron Manley, Shaun Lavelle, and Emma Albright

Macron Calls Putin’s Airstrikes On Civilian Infrastructure A War Crime

The French President leads a growing chorus of outrage against Russia, including the strongest condemnation to date from Pope Francis.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday led a rising chorus of outrage after unprecedented Russian air attacks on civilian infrastructure targets, which left up to 75% of Kyiv residents without power and water, and killed 10 people across Ukraine.

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“Strikes against civilian infrastructures are war crimes and cannot go unpunished,” Macron said.

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Turkey
Philipp Mattheis

On China's Leash: Why Erdogan Stays Silent On Muslim Uyghurs

Turkey is home to the largest Uyghur diaspora in the world. The Muslim minority group, which is persecuted in China, sees the Turks as “cousins”. But as the country’s economy grows increasingly dependent on Beijing, Erdogan is holding his tongue about human rights abuses — and he is not alone.

ISTANBUL — Omer Faruk is a serious-looking man. He stands very straight and speaks clearly. The 32-year-old Uyghur has laid out photos in front of him – his mother in her wheelchair and baby pictures of two of his daughters.

For a few years now, Faruk has run his own bookshop for Uyghur literature in Istanbul. In 2016, along with his wife and two older children, he fled oppression and violence in the Chinese region of Xinjiang.

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In The News
Shaun Lavelle, Cameron Manley and Emma Albright

Is Kyiv Ready To Risk Taking War Into Russian Territory?

While Russia is accusing Ukraine of carrying out attacks on its territory, the U.S. is set to send rocket launchers that could fire into Russian territory. But Washington is also warning Kyiv of the high risks of escalation.

Russia accused Ukraine of carrying out attacks on its territory, the latest indication that the war may be escalating dangerously across the border. The head of the Border Service of Russia’s Federal Security Service, Vladimir Kulishov,claimed that Ukrainian militants were trying to enter the country disguised as refugees.

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In an interview with government-owned Russian daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Kulishov said the situation at the border was difficult and that “additional temporary border posts were deployed.” He said that such actions preceded the invasion: “From 2014 to February 2022, the Ukrainian side undertook over 40 anti-Russian actions on the state border.”

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