Never Again? Lets Not Kid Ourselves!

When I studied in the USA, I was constantly told that "never again" was the moral to live by. Holocaust studies, memorials, monuments, documentaries, novels, memoirs dominated and still dominate the Western marketplace and psyche. In that process what is lost is the genocide determinedly practised over 60 years by survivors of the Holocaust.

Like children of abusers and alcoholics, the survivors of the Nazi Holocaust have grown to refine and put into practice the very atrocities they suffered from and apparently fought against. And they have had their cheerleaders and enablers to continue their abuse, as is borne out by the most recent massacre in Gaza.

For the past week, I have been sickened by the hypocrisy and hubris displayed by Western politicians and press over the massacre in Gaza. Again and again, we are told that Hamas is to blame. That they "started" it by lobbing rockets at Israeli towns - which just for the record have killed all of FOURTEEN Israelis in the past SEVEN years. Compare that to Israel's record of killing over 5000 Palestinian civilians in the same period.

The same press and politicians care not to talk of overt acts of war practised by Israel in breach of all international law including:

1. Blockade of sea/land/air in Gaza
2. Collective punishment by denying basic amenities to civilian population whose only crime is to vote against Western wishes, and for the party that provides them the basic modicum of education, health-care, social services.
3. Assassination and kidnapping of elected leaders of government, which would be considered acts of war against any "sovereign" state.
4. Killing of civilians during the same acts of war.
5. Illegal incarceration of thousands of Palestinians with no trial or reason.

And that is not even going back to the simplest point: that Israel has behaved as a racist, imperialist power since its inception. And it flouts all international law with full support of its Western cheerleaders and paymasters who consider the Palestinians simply as Israel's unter-menschen, to be incarcerated, humiliated and killed with impunity. But since words no longer suffice, the picture below speaks loud and clear:



So yes, indeed, Hamas is to blame. As is Fatah. And the PFLP. And every Palestinian who dares to protest the genocide they are being subjected to, and thus challenges the logic of the superior race in the Holy Land!

Never again? Yeah sure, but not when its practised by the worthy heirs of the Nazis!

Torture Relay: Taking Apart Some Spurious Arguments

While Beijing has succeeded in stage-managing enough happy photo-ops for the Olympic torture relay, the tamasha has neither ended, nor has the issue been addressed. The apologists for China are already claiming that “pushing it into a corner” will yield no results. These are the same sages who claimed that “rewarding” China by handing it the Olympics would incentivize the genocidal nuts leading the country to improve their human rights records and provide greater freedoms to its citizenry. It’s a bit like using the Olympics to incentivize Hitler into not building gas chambers!!!

In the past few weeks, I have had lots of emails telling me that “sports should not be politicized.” Should not be? Which planet do these people live on? Sports have ALWAYS been political and none more so than the Olympics.

One of the vocal supporters of the current torture relay has been Siegfried Eifrig, who even at the ripe old age of 98 has been granting TV interviews arguing that “sports should not be political.” Bet few of us remember Mr. Eifrig’s illustrious past.

Eifrig is the “Aryan ideal” who ran the last stretch of the very first Olympic torch relay for the 1936 Berlin games. Photographs and the creepily memorable Leni Reifenstahl film show Eifrig proudly bearing the torch through Berlin streets lined with innumerable Nazi flags and cheering brown shirts. Makes me wonder how photographs of Ravi Shastri bearing the Beijing torch shall be viewed by generations that follow us!

Lets be honest here, the Olympics are not about sports but nationalistic pride. That is why the medal tallies are sorted by nation-states and not individual sportspeople or events. Moreover, the moment a sportsperson puts on the national uniform to compete in ANY sports (yes, this includes cricket!), they are no longer some idealised apolitical apogee of physical prowess. Wearing a uniform means that they are no different from soldiers of a nation-state Albeit, of course, less violent!

So lets have no more spurious discussion of how the Olympics are apolitical. Or indeed how rewarding a murderous, brutal, oppressive regime will somehow incentivize it to changing its policies. NO dictator in history has ever been rewarded into benevolence. And so will be the case with China.

Lets make sure that the torture relay gets the “tunnel of shame” it deserves.
Jai Bharat! Jai Tibet!