WAR WAS a straightforward matter a hundred years ago. Opposing armies would gather in a field somewhere, thrash it out, and the one left with the most men standing would be proclaimed the victor. Innocent losers back then were trees, grasslands, hedges, crops, wild flowers and the odd bird or hoofed quadrupeds.
Today it’s the turn of civilians, who are crushed to death by falling concrete, cut to death by flying glass, frozen to death by winter nights, starved to death by opposing armies, or rounded up, with women and girls first raped, children abused and entire families shot and left to rot where they fall.
And we have the gall to call superpowers civilised when, in response to accusations of outright barbarity, they justify the slaughter with that throwaway phrase, ‘collateral damage’.
Europe is regarded as the most civilised of continents. But Europe makes promises it can’t keep.
Europe promised to take refugees from war-torn countries, but now wants to send them back to uninhabitable ruins or imprison them on EU borders in what can only be described as conditions worse than Nazi concentration camps, faced by towering barbed wire, locked gates, living in leaking tents, mud and filth – no heat, little food, water or healthcare – held for an undefined period while Brussels bumbles, dallies, conspires and fails miserably in its obligations.
We must never forget that the Allies and the Vatican knew all about Nazi concentration camps as early as 1943 – the Final Solution – but chose to say nothing until May, 1945 when the Allies liberated those ‘few’ survivors, attributing blame for the Holocaust to Nazis alone, and by doing so, exonerating those many others who knew and were, in reality, accessories to the most heinous crime of the Twentieth Century.
We, who were not involved, say naively, ‘But how was this allowed to happen? Who would do such a thing?’
Yet we are involved today.
Civilians in concrete cities are a captive audience and so easy to kill – what the drone drops, the civilian cops.
Today’s concentration camps are towns in the eye of the media, not rows of huts and tall brick chimneys hidden in the desolate countryside.
And this slaughter of the innocent in the Middle East – Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Yemen, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia – since the outset of the Arab Spring nearly six years ago – has become daily media fodder eliciting increasing disinterest.
In its stead we are now fed ‘compassionate photography’ – kids crying kicking mud, kids drowning and kids cold and starving, when the media should be hitting Brussels with daily headlines like, ‘Come on, Brussels! Honour your promises’.
Switch off as we might, we cannot deny involvement in the Middle East crisis and must share some of the responsibility for what’s happening to refugees, unlike our forefathers, who lived in self-denial of the very existence of places like Auschwitz at a time when all media was controlled by the state, whether Nazi or the BBC.
But it is no longer controlled in Europe? So why is it only showing us photos of kids, camps and ruins (compassion at a safe distance) instead of concentrating on finding a solution? Shame on us!
The media seemed more concerned with the destruction of historically dead Palmyra than a living ancient city like Aleppo. And there are tens of cities and hundreds of villages in the state of ruin of Aleppo.
J’accuse World Powers of perpetual genocide; the destruction of populated cities, towns and villages, causing the dispersal of millions – 300,000 dead and over 11 million Syrian homeless to date.
J’accuse Brussels of the unlawful mistreatment of fleeing refugees, who have a legal human right to our protection, rather than being sentenced to indefinite imprisonment in appalling conditions – their sole crime in our eyes that of fleeing war-torn countries to save their lives.
J’accuse disruptive, European right wing political parties of heartlessly refusing to share any part of Europe’s rich ‘cake’ with what they call ‘undesirables’.
There is no judicial error or lack of serious evidence of Europe’s perfidiousness. Shame on us!
Quote: “I want this letter printed on the front page of the newspaper in the hope it will cause a stir in Paris and abroad, even if I am prosecuted for and found guilty of libel.”
Emile Zola was indeed found guilty of said libel in February 1898. To avoid imprisonment, he fled to England, returning home in June 1899.
Today’s world is sewn up so very nicely for some at the expense of others condemned to live a perpetual nightmare.
