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Sunday 12 October 2014

Moral Equivalence: The Fall of The Turkish-Syrian Border Town of Kobani and The Fall of The Warsaw Ghetto

Moral Equivalence:

The Fall of The Turkish-Syrian Border Town of Kobani and The Fall of The Warsaw Ghetto 9


Flashback
It is not now inevitable that the Syrian-Turkish border town of Kobani, mainly occupied by Syrian Kurds, will fall to ISIL forces.  
This whole event brings back memories of my childhood when I met families who were survivors of the Holocaust where I was growing up.
I was always struck by their very deep sense of emotions when talking about what life was like in Europe before, during and after the Second World War Nazi years.
All had been evacuated after the war to various parts of Europe with little but identity cards and some money by an International Relief Agency (either U.S. or Red Cross) for food and travel. Nearly all had arrived in host countries with just the clothes they and their children were wearing.
It's probably for such reasons that I have always had great sympathy for all refugees, regardless of color, race or religion who, through no fault of their own, are exiled from their birthplace and beloved country.
As I grew up and learned more, it was apparent that the Allies (Churchill and Roosevelt and Stalin) had known about the Concentration camps from the earliest times of Nazi implementation of medical extermination programs (forerunners of the Death Camps) but choose to keep silent.   Besides, they had enough of their own Jews - without wanting to offer sanctuary to any more in flight from pogroms in Russia nor from Nazi-controlled Europe.
While this is all now public knowledge nobody really seems to care that probably millions of lives could have been saved and, perhaps, even the Second World War itself prevented, if leaders had the moral courage to stand up to Nazism. All lacked the courage of true leadership. All were consumed with their own prejudices and selfish interests and saw all the minorities in Europe as expendable. 
 
For myself, Pastor Martin Niemöller got it spot on when he said:

'' First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.''1

It's Not Just Intellectual Cowardice
It is not just cowardice of intellectuals but a general cowardice of political will because it lacks all morality and spirituality and is consumed in the selfishness of materialism and ethnocentricity which caters for the lowest common base and never for the highest common shared universal ideals and values.  It's a cowardice which wraps itself with all the legal trappings of morality and justice whilst secretly working to undermine all those very same values.
As the town of Kobani falls, should we impose any higher standards of morality on Turkey than on, say, the United States for the My Lai Massacre5, or Israel for Sabra and Shatila6 or the perpetrators of the Rwanda4genocide or the genocides of Serbs7, Croats7and Bosnians7or the murder on the streets of Paris of 200 hundred Algerians and the throwing of their bodies into the River Seine?2; or the untold stories of how every Jew has been ethnically cleansed from North Africa, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan?8.     How can we hold the Turks to any higher standards than we hold ourselves?   We have already failed in that regard so have lost all moral authority and credibility to condemn their failure of compassion and mercy in dealing with their refusal to allow the relief nor directly assist - thereby aiding and abetting - the ultimate fall of Kobani and inevitable massacre of it's heroic defenders by ISIL butchers?

How can we ever expect to defeat ideologies such as those of ISIL when we ourselves do not even fight to defend  those we purport to uphold and cherish - perhaps because we do not even believe in what we publicly profess?; preferring instead, appeasement, until our own, very selfish and very narrow tunnel-vision interests, are threatened ?

The Shape of Things To Come - And How Did Things Come To Where They Are?

Al Qaeda and ISIL forces and subsidiaries are all across North Africa : – you haven't heard?   You need to be better informed than the sources from where you are currently getting your news.    And who brought them there?   We (the West) did.    Through our failed policies.   Now our politicians (the ones who got us all into these messes) haven't a clue how to get us out – other than turn industrial Europe into an armaments manufacturer for the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
Have our politicians really decided that guns and bullets are more profitable than (non-GMO) seeds and plowshares for our neighbors in the Muslim world and the East?

Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil
I have many criticisms of Salafist Erdogan's government but because he will not survive politically there is little to be gained through further criticism of his policies.
What I can say in the case of the Syrian-Turkish border town of Kobani is that the Turks, as a government and as a nation, are no less nor more morally culpable of the genocide of this town and it's brave Syrian-Kurdish defenders than our own politicians are for the many times they shut their eyes, shut their ears and stayed silent, hearing no evil, seeing no evil  when all about them was evil.

Update at 20th October 2014:
A major change in policy in the past 48 hours has seen Turkey now being prepared to engage ISIL forces at Kobani.    It appears that international pressure is, in part, responsible for this development.   From Turkey's perspective to (temporarily) choose the lesser of two evils (Kurdish Separatists) is a matter of national security and the more immediate and visible danger, the Salafist Erdogan government has finally realized, is ISIL  - that very same group it was previously encouraging in it's bid to break up Syria.


Patrick Emek


updated 15/10/2014  with reference 9 (earlier omitted in error)







 ''First They Came.......''
1



35 Years ago the "Battle of Paris": When the Seine was full of bodies
Hakim Sadek, Liberté, 17th October 1998

4

5


6

7Massacre of Serbs:

7Cover Up of Serbian Organ Harvesting:

7Massacres by Serbian Forces:

7Genocide Watch:

8Islamic Ethnic Cleansing of Jews:

9

9


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