mrdb44

Hi Dan
Thanks for the comments. I'll try to reply.

"In the 1980's Israel elected Menachem Begin as Prime Minister ...
And it was during the 1980's that Ariel Sharon was found to have personal, but indirect, responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacres.
How could Israel elect such men as Prime Ministers, when they had been shown to be war criminals"

My argument is not that Israel is perfect, rather that it is clearly superior to its enemies, and so superior that all western countries should be allies of Israel.
It is an old parliamentary democracy, with free speech, elections, a free press, freedom of religion and freedom of sexuality.
Its enemies are thuggish police states and religious tyrannies. Check out only this week the PA persecuting an atheist:
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/204909.php
As the Jawa Report says: "Don't expect Free Free Palestine type groups protesting, they don't give a damn about this young man unless they can blame Israel for this."

Israel is not perfect.
But if a country has to be perfect to be supported, then no country can be supported.

I have no defence of Menachem Begin in the 1940s. To use violence against Britain at a time when Britain was defeating Nazi Germany seems obscene to me.

As for Sharon, I do think it is strange the way Sabra and Shatila is pinned on him, given that the massacre was actually carried out by Christians, not by Jews. See my take here:
http://markhumphrys.com/lebanon.html#sabra.shatila


"you say that I and other Non-Israelis have little right to criticise the country."

Well, you paraphrase. All countries can be criticised. But if one writes a paragraph against Israel, one should write a book against Pakistan, another book against Saudi Arabia, and so on.


"I think it is becuase racism is still a problem in Israel."

No country is perfect, but I would say Israel is (by far) the least racist country in the Middle East.


"you say on your site that Communism is also a religion, but surely you can admit that with Communist Albania, an Atheist State, or Cambodia, where people who prayed were shot, that the problem was anti-religious hate."

Can't a religion hate and persecute other religions? Islam persecutes Christianity every day, and Islam is a religion.

Certainly, as an atheist, my sympathies are with the religious people persecuted by the commies. See:
http://markhumphrys.com/communism.html#religious.freedom

Just as my sympathies today are with the Christians persecuted by Islam:
http://markhumphrys.com/islam.killings.html#persecution

Communism was a form of religion, rather than a form of atheism, because it had a pantheon of gods who must be worshipped, a set of doctrinal texts that should not be questioned, a set of beliefs from which deviation was heresy and would be punished, and so on.
And it was all irrational and based on fear and assertion and indoctrination and punishment and violence, rather than on logic and reason and relaxed argument.

The fact that communism didn't technically believe in the supernatural seems unimportant. Everything else about it was like some violent intolerant medieval religion. Communism is rather like Islam, in fact. And there are echoes of that today, in how so many old commies seem to love the modern jihad.

Mark

Thanks for the quick reply Mark,

First, well done.

You've convinced me. Israel is the best nation in the Middle East, by far.

The more I read, the more I am certain of that.


Second,

I would say that the non-supernatural and anti-supernatural elements of Communism are very important and here is an example of why from another source on your site:


In April 1999 and in May and June 2002, witnesses testified before Congress on the treatment of persons held in prison camps through the early 1990's. The witnesses stated that prisoners held on the basis of their religious beliefs generally were treated worse than other inmates. One witness, a former prison guard, testified that because the authorities taught "all religions are opium," those believing in God were regarded as insane. He recounted an instance in which a woman was kicked repeatedly and left with her injuries unattended for days because a guard overheard her praying for a child who was being beaten.</q>

http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2003/23833.htm



It's worth noting that the guards are taught that religious people are insane or like drug addicts.

Why not just say 'they do not worship our god'?

I am an atheist, and I don't want to make us atheists look bad, but North Korea is officially an atheist state.


Also,

I read your pages on Fascism, and Nazism and the Church.


You claim that Nazism was a Christian movement, and although I agree that many Nazis were Christians, many were also anti-Christians.

Here are some quotes from Nazis or about Nazism:


"National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable ...
When we National Socialists speak of a belief in God, we do not understand by God, like naïve Christians and their spiritual opportunists, a human-type being, who sits around somewhere in space . . . The force of natural law, with which all these innumerable planets move in the universe, we call the Almighty or God."

Martin Bormann


Adolf Eichmann:

"If the Christian God is so powerful, why are there so many different faiths and atheists?"

"Why does he not command Universal allegiance?"

"I devised a kind of pantheism to satisfy myself"

"It wasn't forbidden, but it was ridiculed."
(religion in the SS)


317

Eichmann

David Cesarani



Rudolph Hoess,
commandant of Auschwitz:

"I left the church in 1922 and my wife left it in 1935. During my experiences at the front in Iraq and Palestine I thought that there was a lot of humbug connected with the so called holy places and that things were not done right, especially by the Catholic Church, of which I was a member. And that diverted me from my formerly rigid, strict Catholicism ... I have had no time for thinking about religion, but all that money that went to the church, well, it seemed to me to be humbug."

314

The Nuremberg Interviews

Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately



80% of Deaths Head (camp guards) left Church
56% of Waffen SS left Church

Bernd Wegner
The Waffen SS
277


Mark, you do not mention that the Church in Denmark was anti-Nazi or that the Church in Norway was anti-Nazi.

And future Pope John Paul helped the ant-Nazi movement in Poland.

The SS killed 1 in 5 Priests in Poland.


And Himmler was no Catholic as you claim.


"Himmler became a militant opponent of the Church. Later he would have tens of thousands of priests thrown in the camps."


72 Guido Knopp

The SS: A Warning From History



Dachau even had a section for priests, sent there by Nazi "Church Hunters", some had prayed for the Jews in public.


So it is wrong to demonize Christianity with Nazism, Mark.


(Sorry for the long reply.)


Dan

"I am an atheist, and I don't want to make us atheists look bad, but North Korea is officially an atheist state."

Maybe we could agree that communists like the North Korean tyrants are atheists but not sceptics.
They are starry eyed believers in a fanatically intolerant, irrational, and ultra violent, atheistic belief system
that has a lot in common with the worst religions, such as medieval Christianity or modern Islam.

Communists have nothing in common with followers of liberal atheism based on science, scepticism and reason, like Richard Dawkins.
Some theists, I know, expect liberal atheists to feel guilty about communism.
But one might as well expect Christians to feel guilty about 9/11 - after all, it was committed by theists.

"You claim that Nazism was a Christian movement, and although I agree that many Nazis were Christians, many were also anti-Christians."

I don't say that exactly. I say that the church largely disgraced itself over Nazism. In the face of probably the greatest evil ever to visit Europe, the one time when at last a Christian could stand up clearly on the side of good against evil, the main churches of Europe were perhaps 70 percent neutral, 20 percent pro evil, 10 percent against.

While the main Christian churches recognised communism as the evil that it is, they largely failed the fascism test. There were honourable exceptions. The churches could not clearly see fascism as evil because their ideas are not based on human rights and freedom, but on something more complex and morally dubious.

"Mark, you do not mention that the Church in Denmark was anti-Nazi or that the Church in Norway was anti-Nazi.
And future Pope John Paul helped the anti-Nazi movement in Poland."

Fair points, but it hardly makes up for the inaction, neutrality and silence of the church in Rome.

"And Himmler was no Catholic as you claim."

My point is not that he believed in Catholicism, but rather that he was born Catholic and not excommunicated.
Hitler, Franco, Petain, Mussolini, Pavelic, Tiso, Himmler, Goebbels, Heydrich, Rudolf Höss and Heinrich Muller
were all born Catholic and not excommunicated.
And yet if they had staged a blasphemous play or something they would have been excommunicated.
As I say on the site, the list of people excommunicated by the Catholic Church is pretty much random. Clearly the church is not driven by any strong ideas about morality or human rights. The list includes harmless liberals, and people in minor disciplinary disputes and long-forgotten minor political disputes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_excommunicated_by_the_Roman_Catholic_Church

"The SS killed 1 in 5 Priests in Poland."

Yes, but as part of a campaign against the entire Polish elite, not as an anti-Catholic campaign.
They did not kill 1 in 5 priests in Germany.

"Dachau even had a section for priests, sent there by Nazi "Church Hunters""

Yes, but only for priests that criticised Nazism.
You did not get arrested just for believing and worshipping (as you did with communism).
Hitler never declared war on Christianity.
It is incredible in fact to think that the mobile death squads slaughtering Jewish families in villages up and down the eastern front were all accompanied by Catholic and Protestant chaplains.

Mark

Mark,

I don't think it's true that the mobile death squads were all accompanied by chaplains.

These were SS squads and the German SS units would not have had chaplains with them.

The German mobile SS units were the ones who killed many priests in Poland.

As I've said, over half the Waffen SS left the Church.

Again Mark, you're making it seem like this was a very Christian affair, and that's not true.

Hitler never declared war on Christianity.</q>

The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-1945 By J. S. Conway claims that 1 in 5 priests in Germany were at one point locked up by the Nazis.

Nazi chaplains:

Check out this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Good-Old-Days-Perpetrators-Bystanders/dp/1568521332/
There were chaplains with at least some of the mobile death squads as they slaughtered families across the Eastern Front.

The account in the book of the suffering of the children of Byelaya Tserkov, Ukraine, after their parents were killed - and their eventual killing - is particularly harrowing. Catholic and Protestant military chaplains were present here to attend to the death squads. One of the Catholic chaplains present was Joseph Maria Reuss, who was ordained a Bishop after the war, and is still honoured by the Catholic church today:
http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/breuss.html

SS chaplains:

I was curious that you said the SS did not have chaplains. I did a quick search. This chap confirms what you say:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=137865
"The Wehrmacht had chaplains, the SS did not."
That's interesting.

So I'm wrong to say all the death squads had chaplains. Only some of them did:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht

Foreign volunteer SS units apparently had chaplains. Some examples:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=137865

Josyf Slipyj:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josyf_Slipyj
was apparently a chaplain to the Ukraine SS:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&num=100&safe=off&q=Slipyj+chaplain+SS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS_(1st_Ukrainian)
and was made a Cardinal by Rome after the war:
http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bslipiy.html

Persecution of priests:

Do you have any source that says the Nazis targeted priests for their religious beliefs (rather than say for their opposition to Nazi orders)?

I must check out the book you mention:
http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Persecution-Churches-J-Conway/dp/1573830801
One comment I see starts out outraged that people link Christianity to Hitler, and then says this was a "dark period" of church history!

"Incredible as it may seem, some enemies of Christianity have been trying to link Christianity with Hitler ... Conway does not try to minimize the strong support Hitler received from Christians and the church leadership. ... very few Christians who refused to cooperate ... Conway has explored this dark period of church history with great skill and insight."

Richard J Evans says in The Third Reich At War that Hitler in private described priests as
"cockroaches" and
"abortions in cossacks"

Bormann as I've said before was an atheist who hated religion and saw it as unscientific, and Himmler was an atheist and these were the 2nd and 3rd most powerful men in Germany.

Both hated the Church and were very anti-clerical, as most agree.

Also Mark,

did you read about the Israeli soldiers who used a boy, Majed Rabah to check for bombs in Gaza and both were given light sentences by the courts?

They were from the Givati Brigade, and the judge has urged people to understand them.

I feel appalled by that.

I mean they did something terrible and .. this is the way Hamas behave!

What do you think of it?

Dan

"this is the way Hamas behave!"

No it isn't.
If they were Hamas, they would have killed the boy, and his family. In fact, they let him go free.

If they were Hamas, they would never have been put on trial. When has any Palestinian court ever tried a Palestinian for any crime against Israelis? Whereas Israeli courts prosecute soldiers for actions against Palestinians all the time.

Likewise, when Sabra and Shatila happened, 300,000 Israelis demonstrated in protest, even though the Palestinians were their enemies. When have Palestinians ever demonstrated in protest following a killing of Israelis?

My point is not that all Israelis will always be good. Humans are all flawed creatures. (These ones were rightly punished, and yes, I would have jailed them.) My point is not that Israel is perfect, but rather that it is centuries ahead of its enemies, who do not even have a concept of a crime against innocent Israelis. To them, there can be no crime in any attack on Israelis. Israel's enemies have no code of morality in war. They have no concept of war crimes. They have no right to complain about anything until the day comes that they put on trial people who commit crimes against Israelis.

Mark

Hey Mark,

Sorry about cutting off the debate but I had a lot of work to do in the past few weeks.

Looking at you website last week, I read this page:


http://markhumphrys.com/christianity.ww2.html


I do not think you can simply blame Christianity for the Holocaust.

I think I proved to you that the Nazis were not a Christian movement.

You can use the info I showed you, and the comments themselves, on your site, if you want.

Also, you still suggest that Hitler was devout but,

this is a comment he made to Otto Wagener in the early 1930's:


"....If I use the word 'divine', I am not visualizing a god in human form with a long white beard. You know perfectly well what my thinking is on that subject. Somewhere or another Goethe says, 'T'would be no kind of god who only moves from the outside, letting the circle of the universe course round his fingertip!'"

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=13791&start=0


Mark, there's something else we need to talk about.


http://markhumphrys.com/wikileaks.html


You talk about all the people who want to see Bradley Manning killed, but I want to know if you think he should be killed.

I do not think that would be just, but I want to know what you really think about him.

Thanks for a good debate,

Dan

"I want to know if you think he should be killed."

Good question. I am conflicted.

What Bradley Manning (apparently) did is similar to what traitors did in previous wars. It may (and apparently already has) cost lives.

I am sort of glad that the West is so tolerant that it does not execute traitors. But sometimes I wonder if the West can survive if it treats its internal enemies so lightly. Hollywood spends hundreds of millions trying to encourage the enemy to fight. International ANSWER and the Socialist Workers Party cheer them on. Academics justify them. And yet maybe we can still win this war anyway, because the power of sex, atheism and shopping simply cannot be stopped by the primitive ideas of the jihad.

If we can win this war without locking up or executing the traitors, that is wonderful. But they are still traitors whose betrayal of the West I will always despise.

Mark,

I found this on johann hari's website:

"My favourite example, however, comes from far-right columnist Mark Steyn, who attacked the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre. No, that's not a misprint. He said they were "decadent" for not fighting back, and snapped, "They're not 'children.' The [victims] were grown women and - if you'll forgive the expression - men."

http://johannhari.com/2007/06/20/salman-rushdie-is-not-the-criminal


You always link to this guy.

What the hell did he expect from these unarmed people?

Hari has called Steyn disgusting and I think I can see why..


Also, did you watch the John Pilger film the other day on ITV?

If so, what did you make of it?


Dan

Hi again Dan
Steyn's original article is here:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/220650/culture-passivity/mark-steyn

I think it makes a good point - that civilians sometimes have to fight for themselves. (e.g. Flight 93, Richard Reid.)
But I would never criticise those that are too afraid to fight.
I am not obliged to agree with everything Steyn says.

I prefer what Bill Whittle wrote about Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs:
http://pajamasmedia.com/ejectejecteject/2009/10/07/tribes-2/

What Pilger film?
Mark

Mark

It was called The War You Don´t See, and it´s still on Youtube right now.

I know you hate pilger, but it might still be worth watching.

He claims that 70% of Fallujah was destroyed by the United States army, and shows that famous Wikileaks video as proof that Americans have killed thousands of people in "similar incidents".

Don´t know what you´ll make of it, but...

Hope you had a good Christmas

Dan

"He claims that 70% of Fallujah was destroyed by the United States army, and shows that famous Wikileaks video as proof that Americans have killed thousands of people in "similar incidents"."

I would hope so, because the people killed in the Wikileaks video were terrorists:
http://markhumphrys.com/2007.airstrike.html

I would certainly hope the US has killed thousands more people like them.

I can see why Pilger would be angry though, because he supports the terrorists:
http://markhumphrys.com/iraqi.resistance.html#pilger

Mark,

You must have seen this on the news, but I've been watching most of it on Youtube.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxhoUSEf2EE


The republican party tried to block a bill that would give healthcare to heroes who had gone to ground zero.

It had been ignored by Fox, and the right wing media.

all it required was 2 Republican senators to change their minds.

And then Jon Stewart and his team at the Daily Show managed to generate enough outrage to get people at Fox and other senators to speak out.

Now you have to admit that this was a triumph for the American left and a total failure and disgrace for the Right as Mitt Romney and other senior Conservatives have stated.

Dan

Mark!

They got him!

They got the son of a bitch!

And the 1st of May was the same day people found out Hitler was dead!

God Bless America!

And, admit, Obama did good.

Dan

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