[WCUSP] Article: Acting like Nazis

[Tura Campanella Cook]

Circulated by Friends of Sabeel.

Tura

>  
> ACTING LIKE NAZIS
>  
> Collective Punishment Isn't Self-Defense
>
>  
> SAN DIEGO--As commander of a Nazi einsatzgruppen death squad in 
> occupied Poland, Dr. Werner Best came to believe that the most 
> effective response to terrorism was collective punishment. After the 
> fall of France he went on to draft the Third Reich's counterterrorism 
> policy for countries occupied by Germany. Towns where acts of 
> "passive" resistance such as the cutting of telegraph cables had taken 
> place were placed under curfews, fined and slapped with travel 
> restrictions. "Active" resistance--the killing of a German 
> soldier--would be met by reprisal killings of local civilians.
>  
> Dr. Best was trying to protect German troops. Rather than be cowed, 
> however, leaders of European resistance groups saw Best's ruthless 
> policy as their chance to radicalize moderates who were still on the 
> fence about their German occupiers. The insurgents stepped up 
> assassinations of German troops. The killings prompted the Germans to 
> shoot more local businessmen and political leaders. The cycle of 
> violence was spiraling out of control.
>  
> Eventually Hitler himself got into the act. Convinced that collective 
> punishment was failing because it wasn't severe enough, the führer 
> issued a September 1941 order to use "the harshest measures" against 
> civilians in areas where the Resistance was active. Arguing that "only 
> the [collective] death penalty can be a real means of deterrence," 
> Hitler ordered that 50 civilians be executed for each German soldier 
> killed.
>  
> Some in the German high command argued that punishing innocent 
> civilians in large numbers would alienate the local population and 
> lose the battle for hearts and minds. Although they were eventually 
> proven correct, they were overruled. New reprisals, each worse than 
> the last, strengthened the resolve of the resistance and gained them 
> new recruits. By the end of the war, reprisals had assumed grotesquely 
> lopsided ratios of murdered locals to dead Germans. Entire 
> villages--Lidice in the Czech Republic (340 killed), Oradour-sur-Glane 
> in France (642), Kortelisy in Ukraine (2,892)--were wiped out.
>  
> Even right-wingers who'd supported the Nazis were appalled. Support 
> for the Germans and their puppet regimes declined with each new 
> campaign of "counterterrorism." Public opinion wasn't decisive; no 
> nation occupied by the Nazis during World War II could solely credit 
> its resistance for its liberation. Still, collective punishment was an 
> unequivocal tactical failure. Resistance groups and their sympathizers 
> hastened the defeat of Nazi Germany.
>  
> Neither the United States nor Israel is equivalent to Nazi Germany, 
> yet both countries have adopted a Nazi-like obsession with collective 
> punishment. Israeli Defense Forces, which subject centers of 
> Palestinian resistance in the occupied West Bank to curfews and 
> encirclement by barbed-wire fences, taught their techniques to U.S. 
> occupation troops in Iraq. After Islamist suicide pilots killed 3,000 
> Americans in the September 11 attacks, the U.S. government justified 
> the killing of 200,000 Afghans and Iraqis as an act of "self-defense."
>  
> George W. Bush exceeded Hitler's 50-to-1 ratio.
>  
> Now Israel is "reacting" to the capture of two of its soldiers by the 
> Palestinian resistance organization Hezbollah by invading and bombing 
> Lebanon. Death tolls that fall disproportionately heavily upon 
> Palestinians have long been a hallmark of the Israeli-Palestinian 
> conflict. During the 2000-03 intifada, for example, at least seven 
> Palestinians were killed by Israelis for every Israeli killed by a 
> Palestinian. Now, as of this writing, more than 500 Lebanese civilians 
> have been killed by Israeli bombs. On the Israeli side, 15 civilians 
> have died in Hezbollah rocket attacks and 14 soldiers have been killed 
> in combat.
>  
> Current ratio: 30-to-1.
>  
> "Israel has a right to defend itself," Bush said at the start of the 
> current Middle East crisis. No doubt. But the Israelis aren't 
> defending themselves any more than the Bush Administrative is 
> defending us. Each is using a crime--the kidnapping of two soldiers, 
> the 9/11 terrorist attacks--as an excuse to wage war against innocent 
> people who had nothing to do with it. Meanwhile, the criminals--the 
> kidnappers and those behind 9/11--are allowed to get away scot-free.
>  
> In response to criticism that Israel was using "disproportionate" 
> force against Lebanon, its ambassador to the United Nations told a 
> cheering mob in New York: "You're damned right we are!" Rep. Jerrold 
> Nadler (D-NY) chimed in: "Since when should a response to aggression 
> and murder be proportionate?"
>  
> Congressman Nadler ought to catch up on his reading. Article 33 of the 
> Fourth Geneva Convention, which has been signed and ratified by both 
> Israel and the United States and was drafted in response to the kinds 
> of Nazi atrocities described at the beginning of this column, 
> specifically prohibits collective punishment. As a treaty obligation, 
> it is U.S. law. It is Israeli law.
>  
> Nothing prevents a nation from defending itself or going after those 
> who commit heinous crimes--which include kidnapping--against its 
> citizens. Understanding the difference between self-defense and 
> collective punishment is what separates Israel and the U.S.--on paper, 
> anyway--from the Nazis.
>  
> (Ted Rall is the editor of "Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online 
> Cartoonists," a new anthology of webcartoons.)
>  
> COPYRIGHT 2006 TED RALL /TED RALL
>  
> Source: http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/
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