politics

Milhemet

 

The Top Five Ways Jewish Law* Justifies Killing Civilians; #5: There Are No Rules in Times of War (I)

by Danios

Israeli soldier posts disturbing Instagram photo of child in crosshairs of his rifle

NOTE:  As you no doubt are aware, LoonWatch just finished raising funds through an IndieGoGo campaign.  Contributors to the campaign will receive an advanced copy of my upcoming book, The J Word: Jihad, Between Hype and Reality.  The book dispels the myth that Islam is the most violent religion on earth.  In it, I not only understand the Islamic tradition and its relationship to violence, but I also look into the other various faith traditions, revealing the uncomfortable truths in them.  The intention here is not to launch an attack against these other faiths, but rather to give the reader some much needed perspective when evaluating the Islamic tradition. In other words, my intention is not to attack these other faiths, but only to prove that Islam is not uniquely violent as claimed by the Islamophobes, many of whom are ultra-Zionist Jews and extremist Christians.

In the media and on the internet, we always hear the uncomfortable truths about the Islamic tradition (and many untruths as well), without ever hearing about many of the uncomfortable truths in other faith traditions, including the dominant Judeo-Christian tradition.  How many countless “What’s wrong with Islam?” talks must we bombarded with, with hardly anyone asking similar questions like “What’s wrong with Judaism?”

In this particular article series, I take a critical look into the Jewish faith tradition.  If the Sharia is to be demonized by so many, then shouldn’t these same people be up in arms about Halakha (Jewish law)?  Naturally, I don’t think any religious tradition ought to be maligned.  Instead, the problematic nature of various religious traditions can be acknowledged, while keeping in mind that no faith has “clean hands.”  This realization ought to make us all a bit more tolerant towards The Other.  (In other article series, I look into the Christian and Buddhist traditions, so this is not meant to target Judaism in specific.)

*  *  *  *  *

* Please make sure to read my disclaimer Why Religious Zionism, Not Judaism, Is The Problem wherein I clarify that “Jewish law” here is not meant to be understood in a blanket way.  Certainly, there exist alternative, more compassionate understandings of Halakha.  I understand that many readers are deeply uncomfortable with characterizing “Jewish law” in such a sweeping manner as we have done in this “thought exercise”–but that’s the point of the article series: if you refuse to do it to Halakha, then why do you do it to Sharia? 

Read the Introduction: Does Jewish Law Justify Killing Civilians?

Previous: Jewish Law*: One Israeli Soldier Worth More Than 1,000 Palestinians

Islamophobes often claim that the Sharia permits almost anything to further the cause of the Islamic religion.  On p.79 of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), Robert Spencer claims that “Islam allows for lying, as well as stealing and killing” in order to advance the religion.  He concludes that “Islam’s only overarching moral principle is ‘if it’s good for Islam, it’s right.'”  Similarly, Pamela Geller–a Zionist Islamophobe–has over eighty posts dedicated to the idea that Islam allows “deception to advance Islam.”

But could the same charge be levied against her own religion?  We have already seen, for instance, that Jewish law* permits:

1)  Targeting and killing civilians

2)  Collective punishment

3)  Ethnic cleansing

4)  Terrorism

With such lax rules of war, one wonders if anything is forbidden in times of war.  In fact, in the introduction to War and Peace in the Jewish Tradition—a book written by the world’s leading Orthodox Jewish minds–there is a confession that in reality Halakha* has norules in war.  Ethics are temporarily suspended in war time.  Whatever needs to be done–to protect the interests of the Jewish religion and nation–can and must be done. In a section entitled “Jus in Bellow: The Conduct of War” (p.xvii), Prof. David Shatz of Yeshiva University admits:

If you can risk people’s lives to go to war in the first place, the argument goes, surely you can take risks with enemy lives to win the war.  In [Rabbi Michael] Broyde’s words: “[O]nce ‘killing’ becomes permitted as a matter of Jewish law, much of the hierarchical values of Jewish law seem to be suspended as well, at least to the extent that the ones who are hurt are people who also may be killed.”  In war we have a type of horaat sha’ah [emergency principle], a temporary measure which partially suspends normal halakhic rules.

Horaat Sha’ah is the “emergency principle” in Jewish law, which permits almost anything under the sun in a time of emergency.  The argument goes like this: if Israel is under attack and its existence is threatened (do Israelis ever think otherwise?) then the normal rules and ethical considerations do not apply any more.  The Jewish state is then given a free hand to do as it pleases.  Certainly, killing enemy civilians becomes permissible.

Rabbi Michael J. Broyde admits on the same page that “Jewish law has few if any rules of battles,” but even these few can become suspended in “an emergency.”  In other words, if the various allowances under Jewish law* (killing civilians who indirectly support the war, collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, and terrorism) are not enough to legitimize killing civilians, then “horaat sha’ah” can be invoked.

Further down the page, we read:

The basis thesis of Broyde’s essay, then, is that the conduct of war is in fact thesuspension of the normative ethics of Jewish law to prevent the eradication of Jewish society.  Ethics in warfare are therefore fundamentally different from ethics in all other situations.  Broyde goes on to note that this explains what he regards as the paucity of halakhic material on the conduct of war.  Since Halakhah envisions war to entail the suspension of all violations–from the prohibition to kill downward–it permits the violation, as military need requires, of every prohibition with the single exception ofavodah zorah [idolatry].  Assessing this need falls under the purview of military leaders, not rabbis or ethicists.

There is a “suspension of all violations” except idolatry, including killing and fornication/adultery (on the same page, we are told that “seducing an opposing general with the aim of discovering war plans” is permitted).  Would this be a form of Huma Abedin style “Stealth Jihad”?

Perusing Judaism’s Orthodox writings on war, I become somewhat accustomed to reading justifications of the murder of civilians (hardly anything can faze after reading that it is permissible to kill a baby in her mother’s arms).  Therefore, I was actually more surprised by the permission to fornicate in order to advance the cause of the religious state.  (One recalls the Islamophobic claim that Islam gives permission to do anything in the cause of Islam.)  On this topic, Ynet, Israel’s most popular news website, reported:

For the love of God (and country)

New halachic study says seducing enemy agents for the sake of national security is ‘going above and beyond’ and an ‘utmost mitzvah’ [religious commandment]

A new halachic study ruled that seducing an enemy agent for the sake of national security is an important mitzvah, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Monday.

The ruling, made by Rabbi Ari Shvat, was included in the latest issue of “Tehumin,” an annual collection of articles about Jewish law and modernity, which is published by the Zomet Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to seamlessly merging Halachic Judaism with modern Israeli life.

Rabbi Shvat explores the issue of women used to seduce enemy agents in order to cajole information out of them or see them captured.

The use of “Valentine operatives” or “honey traps”, as they are called in intelligence circles, was applied in the case of atom spy assassination of senior Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, last January.

Shvat cites in his study the biblical cases of Queen Esther, who slept with Persian King Ahasuerus to save her community, and Yael wife of Heber the Kenite, who seduces and killed the Canaanite general Sisera. He notes that the subject of “sleeping with the enemy” evokes heated arguments in the Talmud, as well.

The latter, Shvat argues, ruled that sexual intercourse with a gentile for the sake of a national cause is not only sanctioned, but is a highly important mitzvah…

Rabbi Shvat concludes his article by saying that not only should such actions be sanctioned, “Our Sages of Blessed Memory elevate such acts of dedication to the top of the Halacha’s mitzvahs pyramid.”

This, even though Orthodox Judaism–like ultra-conservative Islam and fundamentalist Christianity–have been known to have an unhealthy preoccupation with stamping out societal sexuality.  The fact that the Horaat Sha’ah, or emergency principle of Jewish law, permits even this, means that virtually anything is allowed to further the cause of the Jewish nation.

Rabbi Michael J. Broyde writes:

[W]ar has, by its very nature, an element of hora’at sha’ah, in which basic elements of “regular” Jewish law are suspended–once ‘killing’ becomes permitted as a matter of Jewish law, much of the hierarchical values of Jewish law seem to be suspended as well…

We arrive at a somewhat inevitable tautology. In an emergency situation, there is ahora’at sha’ah (suspension of “regular” morality): killing of civilians becomes permitted.  All war is a type of emergency situation.  Ergo, killing of civilians is always permitted in war.

*  *  *  *  *

Halakha* permits killing civilians whenever “military need requires.”  Here, an important distinction is made with regard to civilian deaths: necessary and unnecessary civilian deaths.  This is yet another adjective attached to the word “civilian” by Jewish law*: not only are civilians who “indirectly” or “passively” support the war effort allowed to be killed, but those civilians who are “necessary” to be killed should be killed: “their death, when militarily necessary, is according to Broyde unfortunate but halakhically proper” (p.xviii ofWar and Peace in the Jewish Tradition).

Rabbi Michael J. Broyde writes on p.4:

This view–that all conduct in war that is needed to win is permitted by Halakhah–was adopted by the late Rabbi Shaul Israeli, judge of Supreme Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem, in a famous essay. Certainly there is a deep consensus that every violation of Jewish law other than ervah and idolatry would be permitted in the course of fulfilling valid military orders.

He writes on p.5:

Rabbi Joseph Karo in his commentary to Maimonides’ Code explicitly notes that the power of a beit din (rabbinical court) includes the authority not only to kill people who are guilty of some violation of Jewish law but whose conviction otherwise lacks in technical proof, but also to kill people who are completely innocent, if in the judgment of the rabbinical court the exigencies of the times requires such.  The authority for a beit din to make such a determination stems from its leadership role over the nation (manhigei ha-kehillah).  The same ability thus applies to duly authorized governments (secular and Jewish), and can be relegated to their structures of military command.

Rabbi Broyde concludes on p.7:

Jewish law has no “real” restrictions on the conduct of the Jewish army during wartime.

In other words, anything goes.  This is especially true during Obligatory wars (a special class of war under Jewish law)–which all of Israel’s modern-day wars are considered (more on this later).  During Obligatory wars, the few “restrictions” and ethical considerations are abandoned.  Writes Broyde on p.12:

[M]any of the restrictions placed by Jewish law on the type of conduct permitted by war is frequently limited to Authorized rather than Obligatory wars.

Rabbi Broyde argues that “the Jewish tradition has within it a moral license that permits war (and killing) that differs from the usual rules of self-defense for individuals” (p.7) and “permits even killing of otherwise innocent civilians” (p.5).

On pp.4-5, Rabbi Broyde writes:

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, for example, permits the sacrifice of oneself as a form of hora’at sha’ah [temporary edict/suspension of law] that is allowed by Jewish law to save the community.  While the voluntary act of heroic self-sacrifice and the killing of an unwilling victim are not parallel, I think that one who would permit a Jewish soldier to kill himself to save the community, would permit the killing of “less innocent” enemy soldiers or even civilians in such situations as well.  In grave times of national war, every battle and every encounter raises to such a level, I suspect.

In “every battle and every encounter,” it is permitted to kill “even civilians.”  Broyde goes on to say: “War is the collective battle of societies, R. [Ya’akov] Ariel posits, and thus there are no innocent civilians, even babes in their mother’s arms are to be killed,harsh as that sounds” (pp.23-24).  This is a statement Broyde agrees with in the footnote, saying:

I would apply this rule in modern combat situations to all civilians who remain voluntarily in the locale of the war in a way which facilitates combat.

To translate that into a familiar context: non-Israeli  (i.e. Palestinian) civilians “facilitate combat” (simply by virtue of “remain[ing] voluntarily” in the area being attacked by the Israeli army) and thus ought to be killed.  This is of course another justification for ethnic cleansing.

“The idea of refraining from harming civilian non-combatants,” concedes Rabbi Norman Lamm on p.228, “has no explicit origin in Torah.”  And yet, Rabbi Lamm somehow has the gall to say:

One might say that only the most radical pacifist is entitled to complain about the classical Jewish views of warfare.

Indeed.

*  *  *  *  *

If Halakha* itself does not prohibit killing civilians, wouldn’t Israel’s commitment to international laws and treaties compel it to refrain from doing so?  Rabbi Michael J. Broyde acknowledges that in general a Jewish state should abide by such conventions, but notes that the commitment to do so is “voluntary” and therefore “optional.”  Such treaties and conventions certainly do not apply in Israel’s current conflict with the Palestinians.  Broyde writes on p.11:

Of course, this approach R. Berlin recognizes that treaties restrict the rights of combatants, but that exercise in self-restraint stems from a voluntary decision to agree to such rules and is thus beyond the scope of this paper and of limited applicability to the modern wars against terrorism fought by both America and Israel.

Broyde concludes:

Thus, conventions do not govern many of the unconventional techniques increasingly employed even by national entities, let alone terrorist armies (such as Hezbollah or the Iraqi resistance).

In the introduction to War and Peace in the Jewish Tradition, Prof. David Shatz writes:

As Broyde notes, this position [of following international law and treaties] is of limited relevance to Israel in its conflict with an enemy who does not consent to restraining rules.

Rabbi Jeremy Wieder of Yeshiva University writes on p.245 that “Halakhah would not recognize the international community’s authority to impose any restrictions on unwilling nations.”  In other words, the Jewish nation is above international law.

As I stated previously:

To be fair, [it is not only Orthodox Jews who hold such troubling views.] Israeli apologists from “liberal, secular” Judaism voice similar ideas.  Case in point: Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who is one of Israel’s greatest defenders from the “liberal, secular” spectrum of the Jewish faith.  Dershowitz is credited as being “Israel’s single most visible defender” and “the Jewish state’s lead attorney in the court of public opinion.”

Dr. Norman Finkelstein documents on p.46 of Beyond Chutzpah:

Dershowitz goes on to proclaim that “[t]he time has come for the United States to insist that international law of war be changed” and that for the united States to lead the fight to revise ‘archaic’ international laws and conventions”–in particular, “the Geneva Convention.”  Indeed, in a shocking pronouncement at an Israeli conference, he asserted that Israel isn’t at all bound by international law: “Israelis are obliged to follow the rule of law that exists in the democracy called Israel the way I am obliged to follow the rule of law in the democracy called the United States . . . Your moral obligation to comply with the letter of the rule of international law is voluntary; it is a matter of choice and a matter of tactic, not a matter of moral obligation or democratic theory.”

Dershowitz’s original quote can be found in the article Defending Against Terrorism Within the Rule of Law.  Dershowitz defended himself from Finkelstein’s attack by arguing that he wasn’t asking for Israel to violate international law, but rather to change international law altogether.  As we shall see in the next article, Israel is leading the push to change international law in attempt to eliminate the pesky principle of distinction.

Note:  The next article in the series will be published shortly.

*  *  *  *  *

Danios was the Brass Crescent Award Honorary Mention for Best Writer in 2010 and the Brass Crescent Award Winner for Best Writer in 2011.

Bat Ye’or

Searchlight-Aug-Sept-2013

More on Bat Ye’or.

Bat Ye’or: Theorist of the ‘counterjihad’ movement 

(Via Islamophobia-Watch.com)

The current issue of Searchlight magazine features an interesting study by Dr Paul Jackson of the ”independent historian and writer” Bat Ye’or (Gisele Littman).

As the author of the Muslim-conspiracy “Eurabia” thesis, Littman has served as a major source of ideological inspiration to the “counterjihad” movement, not least to the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik.

You can subscribe to Searchlight here.


Bat Ye’or and far right Islamophobia

By Dr Paul Jackson

A FEW MONTHS AGO, I analysed some of the ideas underpinning Peder Jensen’s writings, and his impact on Anders Breivik [‘Fjordman and fascism: the extremes of the counter-Jihad worldview’, Searchlight, April 2013]. In this article, I want to build on this and set out some of the ideas of a figure that profoundly influenced him, Bat Ye’or. As ideologues such as Jensen, violent extremists such as Anders Breivik, and movements such as the English Defence League all highlight, Europe’s contemporary far right cultures have become steeped in a radical milieu that has become profoundly anti-Muslim in recent times.

In a nutshell, one of the most successful new narratives of the far right is not to reconfigure neo-Nazism, but to reject it. Instead, many activists now argue that western civilisation is facing an existential threat from an invading Muslim hoard, one that is on the cusp of taking over the continent and imposing its ostensibly barbaric and backward way of life on Judaeo-Christian civilisation. This is being allowed to happen by a corrupt, left wing elite who promote multiculturalism.

Defining the new conspiracy
At the heart of this ‘Counter-Jihad’ discourse is a figure of some intellectual sophistication, the independent ‘historian’ and writer of deeply anti-Muslim monographs on European history and politics, Bat Ye’or. This is a pen name, translating roughly as ‘Daughter of the Nile’, adopted by a Jewish, Egyptian-born, British author, Gisele Littman. Her work includes books such as Eurabia: The Euro- Arab Axis and Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilisations Collide.

Many within the Counter-Jihad movement have picked up Ye’or’s conspiracy theory themes. As analysts such as Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens stress, this fuzzy movement spans websites such as Gates of Vienna, far right street movements like the UK’s English Defence League, and US based activists such as Pamela Geller. It even blurs into quite mainstream voices, such as the Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips. For the most part, the highly disparate voices that make up this movement do not actively promote violence. But they do foster a milieu in which, for some, violence towards Muslims and towards left wing figures becomes easier to imagine, and so, again for some, easier to consider as desirable.

The family relationship
Given this spread of figures and organisations, we should be careful not to assert that people within this movement are all the same. Not all voices from within this fuzzy ‘Counter-Jihad’ movement argue the same points, and some are far more extreme than others. Some are bloggers, or self-styled independent voices, decrying the political mainstream for failing to recognise their much-inflated readings of the security threats posed by Muslims. Others are street activists, or even violent extremists. Nor do they all meet together, or have a central coordinated plan, though of course some conferences do occur – such as at Aarhus in 2012.

But despite this being quite a nebulous movement, we can certainly say they all possess some form of ‘family relationship’. To stick with European figures within this movement at least, what tends to unite them is, as they see it, the waning of European national identities as a result of soft, multicultural and left wing politics, which promotes cultural difference over strong national and European traditions, which are identified as Judeo-Christian. This, the Counter-Jihad narrative continues, is seized upon by Muslims inside and outside of Europe, who themselves have an innate desire to conquer and overthrow European culture and society.

The Counter-Jihad movement’s ‘history’ is a future-orientated one too, often presenting scary sketches of the near future that are based on an assortment of migration statistics and projected birth rates of Muslims. The trajectory such voices forecast is one that predicts that Muslims will be running Europe within the next generation or so, having already begun to mount a largely ignored invasion of the continent.

This narrative finds many forms. For example it can be encoded with quite a strong conspiracy theory element, or can develop different readings of just how many Muslims in Europe are involved in such plotting, or what types of activity should be included here. Yet it is always marked by the linking of data and analysis, some more empirical, some more speculative, to some form of repetition this story of Europe on the cusp of Islamisation.

Bat Ye’or’s conspiracy theory
Turning to Bat Ye’or’s approach here, within her overarching conceptual approach we can certainly give her credit for some originality. Her work offers a radical new strain of thinking that helps to style each and every form of Islam as the same, both across the globe, and through time too. A Muslim perpetrator in the Armenian genocide, or a violent thug within a non-democratic regime such as in Sudan, is just the same as a Muslim living down the road.

In particular, she develops a new concept in her work, which she dubs ‘dhimmitude’. Rhetorically, this neologism is quite consciously designed to sound similar to ‘servitude’, and is drawn from simplistic reading of Islamic theology. Drawing on the Arabic term ‘dhimmi’, for Ye’or the term becomes a dubious concept for structuring a far right historiography, and is used to describe the socio-Iegal contexts of Jews and Christians living under Muslim rule.

Via her idea of ‘dhimmitude’, she essentialises, and asserts that relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims always have been, currently are, and always will be, a relationship defined by power. For her, Muslims are driven, through the theology of the faith, to engage in Jihad to establish dominance over Christians and Jews. This is seen as an essential quality within Islam. It is a direct consequence of Jihad, and all those who are deemed ‘Infidel’ will ultimately need to accept a condition of humiliation.

Adding to this theme, she has also developed the concept of ‘Eurabia’, which has become another highly influential buzz term among the anti-Muslim far right. In her analysis, Eurabia refers to a behind-the-scenes conspiracy by leading Arab countries. For her, this developed from the early 1970s and forged clandestine networks of power that promoted pro-Muslim and anti-American values in Europe, and sought to lay the groundwork to establish a longer-term cultural hegemony over European society. For Ye’or, the French lay at the heart of this conspiracy, drawing on De Gaulle’s anti-American legacy and longer-term sympathies with the Arab world.

Then, in 1973, as a result of the oil crisis, an organisation supported by the EEC was created called the Euro-Arab Dialogue. This became the centrepiece of a series of mechanisms for the cowing of all European political structures to follow an agenda set by Muslim nations, especially in the Middle East. Powerful Europeans at the highest level were regularly corrupted, lured by bribes and essentially conned into doing the bidding of Arab nations.

Academic or ideologue?
It is worth bearing in mind that far right activists can develop ideas in a very scholarly-seeming manner. For example, Holocaust denial literature often presents itself as genuinely academic, while really it is simply regurgitating a mythology in lengthy texts with footnotes. Is this the case with Ye’or too?

For the uninitiated, Ye’or’s writings certainly appear to conform to the model of academic texts, albeit of a more polemical kind. Moreover, the backs of her books are adorned with quotes from leading academics as well as fellow anti-Muslim ideologues. For example, according to the high-profile Niall Ferguson:

No writer has done more than Bat Ye’or to draw attention to the menacing character of Islamic extremism. Future historians will one day regard her coinage of the term ‘Eurabia’ as prophetic. Those who wish to live in a free society must be eternally vigilant. Bat Ye’or’s vigilance is unrivalled.

This quote is regularly cited when Ye’or appears on websites such as Jihadwatch, and certainly is used to give her ideas gravitas and respectability. If Ferguson took the time to read her work in depth, he might well be appalled by the ahistorical manner in which a deeply polemical viewpoint is set out. Or he may have done so, agrees with her politics, and so sees nothing wrong with its flawed methodology and dubious arguments.

More sensibly, writing in Race and Class, Matt Carr has described Ye’or’s analysis of recent European history as follows:

To Ye’or, the Euro-Arab Dialogue was the deus ex machina by means of which European politicians and civil servants willingly prepared for the subjugation of Europe and whose ‘occult machinery’ has bought about the ‘irreversible transformation’ of Europe into a ‘new geographical entity – Eurabia’ … a name she randomly applies to the conspiratorial project she describes without offering any evidence that the EAD, or any other organisation, ever used it….

As an analysis of contemporary European history, this is flat-out barking gibberish, which falls somewhere between hyper-Zionist propaganda, crude conspiracy theory and delirious fantasy…. Nowhere in this ideologically driven interpretation of European-Arab relations does Ye’or come close to proving the ‘secret history’ that she professes to reveal.

Conclusion
Now, Matt Carr’s analysis is essentially correct, but it does not mean Ye’or has not been influential. Indeed, adding to Carr’s comments, it is important to stress that Ye’or’s historical methodology is highly flawed, and steeped in a strong, deductive approach typical of conspiracy theories and far right readings of the recent past. She starts with unassailable set of conclusions, and then selects facts that fit them – and not always convincingly.

It is likely that she appeals, then, through an ideological resonance around the sense that Muslims are becoming too powerful, and so this theme ‘rings true’ for her supporters, so they go along with it. She began this agenda ahead of 9/11, but only started to be picked up as a relevant voice in the 2000s. Mainstream academia sees her as of little to no relevance, yet she has now become the darling of the Counter-Jihad movement.

Finally, it is important to stress that Bat Ye’or’s far right agenda is not neo-Nazism, far from it. Her ideas are not compatible with a reworking of Hitler’s creed. Indeed, for Ye’or, the Nazis were in collusion with Muslims, and some of her passages even suggest that Muslims were partially culpable for the Holocaust. So here the Nazis are the bad guys. This theme is unsurprising given the fact that Ye’or is herself Jewish. This does not stop the ideology she presents manifesting many of the qualities of a far right perspective, especially the demonisation of hate figures and revelling in conspiracy theory ideas. Its just one that does not like Nazism and antisemitism

Communism worse than Nazism

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/pat-archbold/the-muslim-world-needs-conversion-not-understanding

Catholic priests do molest children far less than high school teachers (and
fathers, stepfathers, grandfathers, stepgrandfathers, and mothers’
boyfriends, and doctors, and counselors, and EVERYBODY ELSE). It is indeed
like saying that: in both cases, singling out certain groups to condemn
behavior that they do LESS than other groups (especially less than the
groups doing the condemning) is both bigotry and hypocrisy.

The eighth of a billion people that Communism (and Nazism) killed was in
deliberate famines, death camps, gulags, and by purges—not on
battlefields. If we throw in their war-dead—the Soviet Army was the most
murderous in human history, far worse even than the Nazis (and it also raped
well over a million women, not only in Axis countries but in countries it
was “liberating”)—they killed an even FIFTH of a billion, and if we add in
all the abortions in those countries the number reaches over THREE QUARTERS
of a billion (Russia and China have both had hundreds of millions of
abortions since Communism took over).

Comment: This is more or less the ideology I was raised in. However, as capitalism has apparently won, the thirty million starvation deaths and the fifty million abortions each year, must be attributed to capitalism.

No gas chambers? Jews DID die!!!

Holocaust deniers, that is, people who deny that Hitler killed a lot of Jews, get under my skin. This denial is partly caused by systematic hiding of Communist atrocities. If people realize that Communists killed millions of people by working them to death, starving them to death and shooting a bullet through their heads, as well as deporting whole nations like the Crimean Tatars and the Chechens, not mentioning the forced lobotomies in e.g. Cuba, they will understand that it is very possible to kill millions of people in ghastly ways. If Hitler didn’t kill a lot of Jews, but offered them swimming pools and orchestras, he wouldn’t be true to his “tough guy” ideology. Neo-Nazis are contemptible hypocrites. Ridding the world of them is too important to leave to Communists with blood-soiled hands and Anarchists who never set up a large, succesful society. The Radical Left is the useful idiot of the Liberal Left.