We Can Only Depend On Ourselves, But Thanks For The Cheque.

Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister of Israel may be a leader struggling to pull his people out of an untenable, unpleasant, and un-respected situation. He’s add a rough time clinging to power while trying to pull it off, the head honcho of a belligerent little nation surrounded by enemies who hate it. One suspects that there’s some strength to be found in the old guy. He must be a strong leader to have come through so far and he must be a fast talker.

He’s also a colossal Tool.

Auschwitz was liberated 60 years ago today. What went on there and in Birkenau is chilling to think about even so many years later for someone like me, whose father was less than a year old at the time.

In referencing Auschwitz on Wednesday, Sharon told the Knesset that, "The allies knew of the annihilation of the Jews. They knew and did nothing."

The Allied leadership certainly knew, as did some members of the fledgling intelligence community and even select members of certain civilian agencies and corporations knew.

He went on at length, criticizing the actions of the Allies, and the lack of certain actions, and noting that the world doesn’t really like Jews anyway.

"The sad and horrible conclusion is that no one cared that Jews were being murdered… this is the Jewish lesson of the Holocaust and this is the lesson which Auschwitz taught us…The state of Israel learned this lesson and since its establishment, it has done its utmost to defend itself and its citizens, and provide a safe haven for any Jew, wherever he may be. We know that we can trust no one but ourselves."

Let’s just forget that Israel exists as a nation today only because of the collective global guilt of the Allies once the knowledge spread beyond the privileged few of what the Nazis had done to the Jews o Europe. Let’s forget that the Holy Land was staked out and divided up without any respect or input from the people who had been living there for thousands of years. Let’s forget about the big fat handout that Israel still gets from the United States every year to supplement their own budget (it’s currently somewhere in the neighbourhood of $3 billion, and it adds up to a lot more since 1949, and the annual budget of the country was a mere $56 billion in 2002).

Yes, the Holocaust was probably the single darkest event in human history, in scale if not hatred. Yes, there were people who knew what was going on and didn’t act as they should have. But to say that no one cared that Jews were being murdered is a gross exaggeration and does a huge injustice to a world that showed it did care once it knew what had been happening.

You can’t have it both ways, you Tool. If Jews (and it seems to me that you mainly mean Israelis – not quite the same thing) can only depend on themselves, then you’ve got an awful lot of money to give back. Why don’t you start with last year’s $3 billion.

Now if the world could have cared about Rwanda a decade ago or could find more of a heart for Darfur right now.