The following interview looks at the reasons for the Holocaust. It's easy to think that what Hitler and Germany did to the Jews was an aberration. That Hitler and the Germans did things that no normal human would ever do. That what happened in the Holacaust is so far removed from reality that we don't need to look at it too closely. I think it does bear a close look, for what Germany did was to slide unchecked down a very slippery slope. The same slippery slope that Israel is currently sliding down. Germany did not start out with a plan to exterminate all the Jews. It was a case of one step following the other without thinking of where the path was taking them. It was a case of a multitude of decisions made by ordinary people. Look carefully at both cases — Germany in the late 30s and Israel today. Lets hope that someone will stop Israel from ending up where Germany was in the 40s. Israel is in the containment phase. Who will stop them from sliding all the way to the execution phase?

An Insidious Evil
Christopher Browning, the author of The Origins of the Final Solution, explains how ordinary Germans came to accept as inevitable the extermination of the Jews

This book goes into the minutest details about the unfolding of the Final Solution, focusing on everything from the train schedules to the different kinds of gas tested by the Nazi technicians. What is the value of quantifying evil in this way, breaking it down into small details rather than only looking at the bigger picture? It's always easy to identify the Holocaust with Hitler, which is certainly not wrong. He was, as I argue, the prime decision maker and instigator in this. But if we want a fuller picture of how these things came about, then we need to get at the layered, complex reality in which all sorts of people made incremental contributions. It's important to see the impulses toward the Final Solution as having come not only from Hitler from above but from many other people below. We may, in the end, conclude that the Holocaust has very unique characteristics among genocides. But to be unique in some ways is not to be unique in all ways. The various perpetrators who became involved in the Final Solution and their decision-making processes were not unique. In fact, I would argue that many of the elements in this were a coming together of quite common factors and ordinary people. That, I think, is very important to recognize if we don't want to place the Holocaust apart as some kind of suprahistorical, mystical event that we cannot fathom and shouldn't even try to understand.

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  thanks to Conscientious

Elite Israeli troops reject Gaza violence

The three men sitting in the corner of a busy cafe are unremarkable as they talk among themselves, sipping coffee and blending with the rest of the customers. But they are members of a remarkable group, the Sayeret Matkal, Israel's equivalent of the SAS. And what makes them even more extraordinary in a society that holds its armed forces in such high esteem - in fact, what has earned them damnation from all over the country - is that they told their commanders that they refuse to serve in the Palestinian territories. They and 10 others wrote to the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, saying they could no longer serve, 'out of a deep sense of foreboding for the future of Israel as a democratic, Zionist and Jewish state'. The letter stated that they would not take part in violating the rights of millions of Palestinians or provide a shield for Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. It concluded: 'We have long ago crossed the boundary of fighting for a just cause, and now we find ourselves fighting to oppress another people. We shall no longer cross this line.' [...] The commandos were attacked by all sides of the political spectrum for their letter. Avshalom Vilan, an MP for the left-wing Meretz party and a former commando, said: 'Refusal to serve breaks the only common ground that exists between the left and the right, which is very dangerous.' But the commandos feel that they cannot stand by and watch the disintegration of their country. 'We believe that what we are doing now is very Zionist,' said Zohar. 'If a plane is going to crash you can jump out or you can try and prevent it from crashing. That is how we feel about Israel. The reason we were able to withstand the attacks we endured in the Yom Kippur war in 1973 was because we knew we were fighting for a just cause. Many people know that now we have lost the just cause.'

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Here are two eyewitness reports from Palestine...

"Concentration' in Palestine
by Helena Cobban

I've spent most of the past week in occupied Palestine, though with the occasional trip over the Green Line into Israel. While here, I've had ample opportunity, yet again, to see the devastating effects on the lives of the Palestinians of the tight and capriciously applied "movement controls" that the Israeli occupation forces have maintained on the Palestinians here continuously since September 2000 (41 months). Like the building of the ghastly Apartheid Wall, these movement controls have been pursued by the Israelis in the name of a still-elusive search for their own people's security. We could discuss for a long time whether it is only the search for security, and not--in addition--a desire to puruse and consolidate Israel's colonial-style land-grab in the occupied territories, that has motivated these measures. However, regardless of the intentions of the men who decided on them and proceeded to plan their implementation, the effect of the movement controls (as of the Apartheid Wall which is just one part of this inhuman broader policy) has been to concentrate the three-million-plus Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza into a series of scores of disconnected pens. We could call these pens "strategic hamlets", except in some cases they are whole cities. We could call them Bantustans, except that they are far smaller and have far less potential for any kind of self-sufficiency even than those ill-starred exercizes in apartheid-era control and social engineering. We could call them "concentration areas"-- a fine colonial example of domination of another population group, also pioneered in South Africa: its aim was to cut the restive Boers off from any connection with productive economic life. (It notably did not turn most of them into warm, cuddly, peace-seeking people; see 'Bantustans' above.) Or, we could call them ghettoes-- walled-in ghettoes like the ones in Warsaw, Theresienstadt, or other places into which, in the first phase of a process that later ended in the horrendously successful project to physically destroy the Jewish and Roma peoples, the Nazis penned their future victims.

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See No Evil?

Driving along the coastal road in the Gaza Strip, it's easy to forget that theirs is a life under occupation. The taxi driver who just bought me lunch, but whose name I cannot remember, gave up on my Arabic ten minutes ago, and so in silence I stare out at the Mediterranean waters. About 10 kilometers from the refugee camp in Rafah, on a road that is half dirt and half mud, 200 school children appear out of nowhere. The taxi driver playfully leans on his horn, maneuvering our enormous Mercedes through the crowd at a donkey's pace. The kids in their uniforms clear a path, some pretending to dive out of the way just in time. A child with red hair caught my eye - I was told the man I would be meeting in Rafah has red hair, a rarity among Palestinians. We parked on the main street just outside of the camp and got out to wait for Yasser Shaat, the redhead in question. The taxi driver and I talk a bit more, but I'm distracted by popping sounds nearby. He raises an imaginary rifle to his shoulder. "Ezrael," he says, with what seems to be a smile. I can't tell for sure.

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