Gideon Polya , “Pro-Zionist Media Holocaust Ignoring. UK Guardian Censors Civilian War Dead on Remembrance Day”. MWC News, submitted 12 November 2008.
Pro-Zionist Media Holocaust Ignoring. UK Guardian Censors Civilian War Dead on Remembrance Day
November 11 is Remembrance Day in which we Remember the Allied World War 1 dead. However the pro-Zionist UK Guardian has sullied this Remembrance Day by Censorship of reportage of civilian war dead.
Remembrance Day – also known as Armistice Day, Poppy Day (after the facsimiles of the red Flanders poppies that people wear) and Veterans Day (in the US) - is the anniversary of the German signing of the Armistice that ended major hostilities of World War I at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918.
Remembrance Day is devoted to the memory of the huge British Empire and Allied casualties of World War including (in descending order of deaths), 885,000 (UK), 117,000 (the US), 74,000 (British India), 65,000 (Canada), 64,000 (Australia), 18,000 (New Zealand) and 9,500 (South Africa). The Allied military and civilian dead totalled
5.7 million and 3.7 million, respectively, and the German-allied (Central Powers) military and civilian deaths totalled 4.0 million and 5.2 million, respectively (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties ).
It is notable that the “death ratio” of “enemy civilian dead”/”Allied military dead” in World War 1 was 5.2 million/5.7 million = 0.91 was about the same as the ratio of “Allied civilian dead”/”Germany-allied military dead” = 3.7 million/4.0 million = 0.92. However this changed enormously with the transmission of the virulent Spanish influenza (flu) virus around the world in the period 1918-1920 (20-100 million deaths world-wide, an estimated 17 million deaths in British India alone).
In World War 2 there were total military deaths of 25.3 million versus 66.4 million civilian deaths (this figure assuming 35 million violent and non-violent war-related deaths in China and 7 million deaths associated with the Bengal Famine atrocity in British India), with an overall “death ratio” of “civilian deaths”/”military deaths” of 66.4 million/25.3 million = 2.6, about 3 times higher than for World War 1 (excluding the war’s end and post-war flu epidemic) (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties ).
World War 2 concluded with the horrific, civilian targeting US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These nuclear atrocities (about 0.2 million civilians killed) set the scene for huge increase in the “’enemy civilian”/”US military” death ratios due to remote, aerial bombing technology and other strategy changes aimed at minimizing politically-sensitive military deaths at the expense of “enemy” civilian deaths. Non-violent and violent Indigenous excess deaths (avoidable deaths) in post-1950 US Asian Wars can be estimated from UN Population Division data (see “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007) and military deaths can be obtained from a variety of official sources.
The ratio of “enemy excess deaths”/ “US combat deaths” successively increased from 24 in the Korean War and 277 in the Indo-China War to about 500 in Occupied Iraq. The ratio of “Palestinian excess deaths”/”Israeli military deaths” since the Israeli invasion and occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories is about 0.3 million/3,000 = 1,000. In Operation Enduring Freedom in Occupied Afghanistan the ratio of “enemy excess deaths”/ “US alliance deaths” is currently 4-6 million/1,000 = 4,000-6,000.
On Remembrance Day it is about time that holocaust-ignoring Mainstream media, politicians and academics started REMEMBERING the huge number of CIVILIAN WAR DEATHS in post-1950 US and US-backed wars. Thus the post-invasion under-5 year old infants deaths in Occupied Afghanistan now total 2.1 million (90% avoidable and due to war criminal non-supply of life--sustaining requisites demanded of Occupiers by the Geneva Convention) i.e. about 30-50% of the total 4-6 million post-invasion violent and non-violent excess deaths. Unfortunately, as exampled below, media look the other way and, worse still, ignore or censor those “bearing witness” to the Awful Truth. .
The UK Guardian’s “Comment is Free” has just published an article by a former British member of the US-funded Israeli Defence Force, one Seth Freedman. I commented on what I described as a “thoughtful article” which simply made the point that in remembering the Allied war dead in World War 1 on Remembrance Day one should give pause to think of the Other Soldiers in that conflict and indeed in what the author euphemistically describes as the “Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio”. What Freedman refers to as the “Israel-Palestine imbroglio” is in horrible reality an over 40 year Occupation involving the continuing, illegal, highly abusive imprisonment without trial of 4 million Occupied Palestinians in defiance of the UN Charter, the 1968 UN Security Council Resolution 252, the Geneva Convention, other International Laws and Conventions and the International Court of Justice.
My comment about this article on the Guardian “Comment is Free” was about our inescapable obligation to observe the key injunctions from the Jewish Holocaust of "zero tolerance for racism", "never again to anyone" and "bear witness". My “bearing witness” to the millions of Women and Children victims of post-1945 Western high technology wars and occupations (including the continuing illegal and war criminal Apartheid Israeli Occupation of Palestine) lasted less than an hour before being spotted and completely CENSORED by “a moderator” (see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/11/firstworldwar-israelandthepalestinians ) . My comments, that finished with a call for Peace Now with non-racism, equity, justice and reconciliation in the Holy Land, are reproduced below.
Comments by Dr Gideon Polya CENSORED by UK Guardian Comment is Free
A thoughtful article by Seth Freedman - we are obliged to put ourselves in the other person's shoes. However one must object to his using the minimizing euphemism "Israeli-Palestine imbroglio" to describe the over 40 year illegal, genocidal, UN Security Council- and ICJ-defying Occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (post-invasion excess deaths 0.3 million, post-invasion under-5 infant deaths 0.2 million, 85% of Christians ethnically cleansed, 7 million refugees, 2,400 Occupied Palestinian infant deaths ANNUALLY due to Apartheid Israeli war crimes in gross violation of the Geneva Convention).
An outstanding American analysis of our obligation to understand both Ourselves and the Other is "Death's Dream Kingdom. The American psyche since 9-11" by Walter Davis (Ohio State U). In short, Professor Davis says we need to understand ourselves by earnest, honest introspection and to empathize and understand the Other. Unfortunately this fundamental obligation is negated by religious fanaticism, nationalism, exceptionalism and what outstanding French-Jewish writer Emmanuel Todd in his "After the Empire" calls "differentialism" (i.e. "racism", as opposed to "universalism").
Davis' analysis is best seen in terms of the cartoon of the American Bush-ite, neo-Bush-ites, Zionists and Religious Right: they are "saved" by born-again religion or the blind dogmas of the Right (now sorely tested by "socialist" Bush intervention in the market meltdown) - they don't need to painfully introspect, dogma answers all, they are good, they are "saved". Similarly these fanatics have no need to empathize with the heathen Other (e.g. a swathe of Occupied Subjects of the American Empire now encompassing the foreign-occupied Occupied Territories of Occupied Haiti, Occupied Somalia, Occupied Palestine, Occupied Syria, Occupied Iraq, Occupied Diego Garcia, Occupied Afghanistan and US-invaded and robot-bombed Pakistan) - the Other is met with hatred and violence.
Understanding the Other and DEFENDING the other are implicit in the core messages of "zero tolerance for racism", "never again to anyone" and "bear witness" from the Jewish Holocaust (6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) - and indeed also deriving from the generally minimized or forgotten World War 2 Western Theatre Holocaust in general (30 million Slav, Jewish and Roma dead) and the World War 2 Eastern Theatre Holocaust (35 million Chinese dead under the Japanese, 1937-1945 and 6-7 million Indian dead from the man-made Bengali Holocaust in British India) (see: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/bengalfamine_programme.html ).
These sacred injunctions from the WW2 holocausts of of "zero tolerance for racism", "never again to anyone" and "bear witness" are grossly violated by the anti-Arab anti-Semitic Zionist fanatics running Apartheid Israel and their genocidal, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, war-mongering, Bush-ite, neo-Bush-ite and neo-con supporters (excess deaths in the 1990-2009 Bush Wars now total 9-11 million, mostly women and children; see "9-11 Excuse for US Global Genocide. The real 9-11 atrocity: Millions (9-11 million) Dead in Bush Wars":
http://sites.google.com/site/palestinegenocideessays/9-11-excuse-for-us-global-genocide
).
The Other in wars do not merely include the opposing soldiers - since WW1 modern technology has involved the deliberate mass targetting of civilians as a deliberate part of military strategy to minimize politically-unacceptable military deaths. In WW2 the "civilian/military Death ratio" of "enemy civilian deaths"/own military deaths was about 10 for both Germany and Britain. Indeed Hitler advocated precisely such a ratio in killing reprisals responses to Italian partisan killing of German soldiers (this order leading to the the Ardeatine Caves Massacre by the Nazis).
In Occupied Afghanistan there have been 4-6 million post-invasion excess deaths as compared to about 1,000 Coalition deaths i.e. a "death ratio" of 4,000-6,000. In the Occupied Palestinian Territories the "death ratio" is about 0.3 million Palestinian excess deaths/3,000 Israeli military deaths i.e. 1,000 or about 100 (ONE HUNDRED) times the death ratio advocated by arch-fiend Adolph Hitler.
Despite this horror, its minimization as "2-sided" and its euphemization as a mere "imbroglio", anti-racist humanitarian people such as myself can identify with the fears of the Zionist perpetrators - thus Peace with equity, justice and reconciliation is possible TOMORROW in the Holy Land with the simple, Holocaust-instructed acceptance of non-racism by the Zionists (e.g. for a "seeing the Other" Peace Plan see "HUGE HUMAN COST OF ISRAEL BUT INTERIM PEACE IS POSSIBLE ": http://mwcnews.net/content/view/533/26/ ).
END of CENSORED comment
The problems with such censorship is that one does not know who did the censorship and what the presumed pro-Zionist moderator objected to. One is reminded of the extraordinary conversation reported in Philip Knightley’s book “The First Casualty” - during the First World War, Prime Minister David Lloyd George told C P Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian (precursor of the present UK Guardian) : "If the people really knew [the truth] the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don't know and can't know" (see outstanding UK-Australian writer John Pilger’s review “The people don’t know and can’t know”: http://evatt.labor.net.au/news/201.html ).
The Nazis wiped my family from the face of Europe and, in addition to fundamental humanitarian obligations, I am accordingly utterly OBLIGED to adhere to the core messages from the Jewish Holocaust of “zero tolerance for racism”, “never again to anyone” and “bearing witness”.
In relation to the invasion, occupation and devastation of other countries (such as Palestine), I take my cue from outstanding Jewish scholars such as Professor Noam Chomsky (MIT) who has described the Occupied Palestinian Territory as a “Prison” and “the constant intense repression; plenty of abductions; plenty of atrocities in Gaza; the steady takeover of the West Bank, which, in effect, if it continues, is just the murder of a nation, the end of Palestine“ (see: http://www.democracynow.org/2006/7/14/noam_chomsky_u_s_backed_israeli ); Professor Bertell Ollman (New York University) who has stated that “the Zionists are the worst anti-Semites in the world today, oppressing a Semitic people as no nation has done since the Nazis” (see: http://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/resignation.php ); and Professor Jared Diamond, who in his exceptional book “Collapse” (Prologue, p10, Penguin 2007 edition), unequivocally refers to the “moral principle, namely that it is morally wrong for one people to dispossess, subjugate, or exterminate another people.”
Censorship is an active form of lying by omission. However in the Scientific Culture there is an absolute “zero tolerance for lying”. Censorship of horrendous human rights abuses is a particularly evil form of lying that is essentially holocaust denial (a crime punished by 10 years in prison in Austria and lengthy custodial punishment elsewhere in Europe in relation to denial of the Jewish Holocaust).
The fundamental message of Remembrance Day is to REMEMBER, to "bear witness" about the horrendous suffering of both soldiers and civilians in war - NOT to censor. We are obliged to inform others about the appalling slaughter of the innocents in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and in the other Occupied Territories of the egregiously violent and racist American Empire. With the world facing acute nuclear, greenhouse and poverty threats (as perceived by the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science), Humanity must adopt “zero tolerance for lying” in addition to the post-holocaust imperatives of “zero tolerance for racism”, “never again to anyone” and “bearing witness”.