At 03:29 PM 4/28/2002 +0200, Jeroen wrote: >At 08:55 24-4-02 -0400, Gautam Mukunda wrote: > >>None of them made any effort to save their Jews. The people of Western >>Europe could have fought to protect their Jews - and themselves too, of >>course. Even under occupation they could have tried. But they didn't. > >He who is without sin... > >How hard did the American population try to help the Native Americans when >their fellow Americans tried their best to massacre the Native Americans? >How many of them hid NA's in their homes and fought against their countrymen? > >How hard did the American population try to help the blacks when they were >enslaved? How many of them hid blacks in their homes and fought against >their countrymen? > >How hard did the American population try to help their Japanese citizens >when the US government locked them up in camps? How many of them hid >Japanese in their homes and raided those camps to free their Japanese >fellow citizens? > >How hard did the American population try to help their blacks when racism >reared its ugly head? How many of them protected the blacks and fought >against the racists? > >How hard did the American population try to join the fight against >terrorism after planes crashed into the WTC and the Pentagon last year? > > From all I have seen and heard, not all that many in every single one of > those cases. <snipped>
The issue is not whether or not the US government and its citizens have treated Native Americans, slaves, freed slaves, the descendants of freed slaves, the Chinese indentured railroad workers, immigrants, Jews, the Nisei badly in the past. They did. The issue is not what citizens of occupied countries during WW2 did to resist the Nazis and their program of exterminating not only Europe's Jews, but anyone else they considered to be "sub-human". In the end, whatever was or was not done, the extermination still took place. The issue is not even whether or not it is a sign of anti-Jewish racism to criticize Israel's policies and actions in the Middle East. The question is this: Has there been and does there still exist Anti-Jewish racism in Europe? For me the answer is yes. By this I don't mean to say that every European is an anti-Jewish racist, but the record is clear. Jews have long been treated in Europe as the "other"; someone to be feared and despised. This has happened throughout Europe's long history. The expulsion of Jews from towns, cities and whole countries in Europe; The Inquisition and forced conversion of Jews to Catholicism; The lies told about Jews stealing Christian babies for horrific, barbaric rituals; The enactment of laws aimed solely at Jews, barring them from occupations, restricting them to certain areas, limiting their civil rights; The pogroms in Eastern Europe; The Dreyfus Affair in France, that oh so self-righteous bastion of liberty, equality and fraternity; and lastly, but never finally the extermination camps. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone? Then European governments and its citizens should NEVER criticize the United States for ANYTHING! The vast majority of Native Americans were destroyed by Europeans...after all who "discovered" America but an Italian working for a Spanish king and queen. It was the Spanish conquistadores who killed and enslaved the Native Americans throughout the Caribbean, Central and South America. It was the English settlers who drove the Native Americans from the Eastern Seaboard. It was the English, Spanish (and yes) the Dutch who bought African slaves to America. Yes, Americans have done some pretty bad things, but after all we learned from the masters. YOU! john
