Tag: Genocide

2025-03-26

Israel – Beacon of Western (White) Values in a (Dark) Middle East

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
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Western support for Israel, I have heard, is in large measure rooted in an identification with a state that represents our Judeo-Christian heritage, our values. But on to another topic….

From https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-24/truth-yoorrook/105090138

ELIZABETH BALDERSTONE: There’s many historians who’ve written a lot on this and researched in depth the story of what happened here. There were clearly issues and skirmishes between the traditional owners and the settlers and culminated in mid-1843 the murder of a fellow, Ronald Macalister, who was the nephew of a very wealthy pastoralist from New South Wales. In retaliation for the murder of Ronald, it’s understood that a group of settlers known now as the Highland Brigade got together and came upon a large group of Brataualung people camped at Warrigal Creek at the waterhole.

BRIDGET BRENNAN, REPORTER: Historical records are patchy. University of Newcastle researchers now estimate that at least 125 men, women and children were shot dead in a five-day rampage in the area. In 1925, a Gippsland magazine published this anonymous account of the massacre.

MASSACRE ACCOUNT: “Some escaped in the scrub, others jumped into the waterhole, and, as fast as they put their heads up for breath, they were shot, until the water was red with blood… I knew two blacks who, though wounded, came out of that hole alive. One was a boy at that time, about 12 or 14 years old. He was hit in the eye by a slug, captured by the whites, and made to lead the Brigade on from one camp to another.“

The media cheered the war on “the savages”, praising the heroic efforts of the defenders of white Judeo-Christian values. Addressing similar massacres in Queensland….

As he set out for Cardwell, newspapers were still applauding the exploits of this “most indefatigable and energetic officer”. The story of the Hermitage campaign reached Scotland, where the meaning of “prompt justice” had to be spelt out for readers. The Perthshire Journal wrote: “Prompt justice was done to them, and the blood-thirsty cannibals, one and all, bit the dust.” Once in Cardwell, Uhr swiftly won the approval of The Port Denison Times: Our black brethren have been keeping quiet lately, and I have not heard of any depredations having been committed by them; no doubt they have been kept in awe from the fact of our gallant Sub-Inspector and his ‘brave army’ having been amongst us, preventing them from ‘kicking up a row.’ (Marr, Killing for Country, 286)

Newspapers published condemnation of “bleeding hearts” who protested the violence whenever it came to their attention. The protests were too few and isolated. Overall, silence prevailed. Ignorance was a virtue.

Philip Sellheim had tramped the bush with Dalrymple and endeared himself to the Commissioner of Crown Lands by writing to newspapers pouring scorn on city folk who, blind to “the savage character of the aborigines”, were agitating for the removal of the Native Police from the Kennedy: “The pioneer settlers of the north will not tamely allow their risks and arduous labors to be undervalued by any ignorant individual, living in a well-protected township, who, to further his own private ends, perverts truth and risks the lives of his fellow-creatures.” (Marr, 270)

The blacks, of course, killed only out of hatred for the whites, not for any conceivably justifiable reason:

“Psalm-singing hypocrites”, D’arcy called them and returned fire: These men, Mr. Editor, speak without experience, speak as their mind guides them; such is the case now in the moral city of Adelaide. Morality amongst the wild tribes is not known. I thoroughly endorse Mr. Alfred Giles’s sentiments, and say that all the tribes that I have met with—and I have made the acquaintance of a few—nearly always try to force you to take their women as a peace offering, or decoy to get a good opportunity of attack… I could, Mr. Editor, relate dozens of instances where men have been murdered without any cause. (Marr, 381)

Silence, the Enabler

The silence was so pervasive that subsequent generations simply did not know that the massacres had happened. Later scholars would attempt to look into how this country was built and were denounced by the Prime Minister John Howard as creating a negative “black arm” version of history. Still today many cannot bring themselves to believe that their ancestors took this land through genocide.

I was watching a youtube video of a recent episode of the Steven Colbert show. He tackles any controversial topic except one. Though to his credit he did mention the ongoing Gaza slaughter in a sanitized quip: he said something to the effect, “No matter what your views are on the current….” — as if different views were like supporting different sports teams. All equal: just differing opinions that we don’t want to intrude and spoil the show. One more brick in the wall of silence.

I’ve sometimes heard condemnation of Germans in the Nazi era keeping silent though they are said to have known what was happening to Jews who were being transported out of their neighbourhoods. I can understand the thread of deportation making one think twice before speaking out. But the rest of us today…. what excuse is there?

2023-11-30

When the Genocide Stops

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Ethics & Human Nature, Politics & Society
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Before we begin, let’s be clear about what the word genocide means. The following is from the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect

Genocide

Background

I have superimposed on to the UN page’s image the cover of the book on which this post is based.

The word “genocide” was first coined by Polish lawyer Raphäel Lemkin in 1944 in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. It consists of the Greek prefix genos, meaning race or tribe, and the Latin suffix cide, meaning killing. Lemkin developed the term partly in response to the Nazi policies of systematic murder of Jewish people during the Holocaust, but also in response to previous instances in history of targeted actions aimed at the destruction of particular groups of people. Later on, Raphäel Lemkin led the campaign to have genocide recognised and codified as an international crime.

Genocide was first recognised as a crime under international law in 1946 by the United Nations General Assembly . . . . .

Definition

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

Article II

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

  1. Killing members of the group;
  2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
  3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
  4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
  5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Elements of the crime

The Genocide Convention establishes in Article I that the crime of genocide may take place in the context of an armed conflict, international or non-international, but also in the context of a peaceful situation. The latter is less common but still possible. The same article establishes the obligation of the contracting parties to prevent and to punish the crime of genocide.

The popular understanding of what constitutes genocide tends to be broader than the content of the norm under international law. Article II of the Genocide Convention contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide, which includes two main elements:

  1. A mental element: the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”; and
  2. A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:
    • Killing members of the group
    • Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
    • Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
    • Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
    • Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

So the actual killing may have its limits. Genocide does not necessarily mean that every single person of a group has to be killed. There can come a time when the targeted group is so reduced that the group doing the killing starts to feel actual pity for the remaining few.

Case in point: Australia, 1860s.

Uhr and his men set up camp at Pelican Lake in Valley of Lagoons in about September 1865. In theory, he was responsible for a vast territory stretching from the Pacific to the Gulf of Carpentaria and miles north towards Cape York. But his essential task was to police the country seized by Herbert, Dalrymple and the Scotts. That meant tangling with the Gugu Badhun, whose country covered about 3500 square miles running west from the Seaview Range. In Valley of Lagoons, they hunted kangaroo, trapped fish and harvested water-lily seeds in streams that never ran dry. It is thought that over a thousand Gugu Badhun were on country when the invaders came. The Scotts derided them:

I am sure they have not as keen senses as humans higher in the scale of humanity. “Like beasts, with lower pleasures; like beasts, with lower pains”. They have not the slightest sense of gratitude, in any kind of way; far less than a dog, or horse. Of course they know where they are well-treated, and well-fed. I believe fish, even, learn that.

The Scotts set about getting rid of them. In Gugu Badhun: People ofthe Valley ofLagoons, it is written: “After the establishment of the pasto­ral stations, any Gugu Badhun person who ventured into those areas risked being shot and killed.” But their resistance was strong. The coun­try favoured them. “Their lands… included a good deal of rough, basalt country unsuitable for grazing sheep or cattle, but still holding water and food resources.” In that broken landscape, horses could not give chase to the Gugu Badhun who could hide in caves, biding their time until they emerged to attack again.

Arthur Scott, back in England to become a fellow of All Souls, was deeply worried about the run. At that point they had ninety white men on the payroll. He thought perhaps it was time to stop driving the blacks away and start putting them to work. He remarked that the Gugu Bad­ hun had already been given a “dressing” and believed that was enough to keep them in line.

I am rather sorry about those blacks; I think the time has now come to try & be friendly with them, we are strong enough now to defend ourselves & they would do a lot of work in washing… Certainly the best way will be to bring in some gins and boys & we shall soon make the others understand what we want. I am convinced that with our scrub & lava it is far more dangerous to keep them out than to let them in.

And so it was. Not quite as simply as might be implied by the above extract. Those habituated to killing needed more time to be persuaded. But the voices that had long been protesting the killing of the blacks throughout the early and middle decades of the nineteenth century did win out — but only after there were so few left that further killing seemed pointless; better to use the remaining few to do the menial work on the outback properties. Much cheaper than white labour, too, of course. When orphaned black children, helpless elderly, and struggling mothers dominated the remaining few, it was easy to have feelings of pity for them. So humanity “triumphed” and further killing was steadily, albeit slowly, forbidden in reality, not only in empty words of protest.

Quote, and the specific notion that the genocide of Australian aborigines only stopped, at least in the state of Queensland, when numbers of blacks were so few that enough whites began to feel sorry for them, is from:

  • Marr, David. Killing for Country: A Family Story. Black Inc, 2023. pp 287f

P.S.

It was coincidence that I happened to be reading Killing for Country at the time when Israel began its bombing of Gaza. The idea for this post, however, was initiated through reflection on current events in the State of Palestine.

2009-01-19

Latter day biblical genocide against wicked canaanite surrogates

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
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May last year a reader took strong exception to my use of the word “genocide” to describe the Israeli policies towards Palestinian Arabs since 1948 (the original post and comments where the word arose are here) — comparable to the policies of whites towards American and Australian aboriginal peoples in earlier generations. My use of the word was carefully chosen to conform to the Geneva Convention and UN definitions of this term that emerged out of the many atrocities of World War 2.

Article II of the Genocide Convention defines the international crime of genocide in relevant part as follows:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:

(a)  Killing members of the group;

(b)  Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c)  Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

Anyone who finds the use of the word “genocide” extreme or in any sense racist I would invite to read / view and think through two recent web articles / videos:

One by Professor Francis Anthony Boyle.

A second by British Jewish MP Gerald Kaufman who said:

“My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed,” said Kaufman, who added that he had friends and family in Israel and had been there “more times than I can count.”

“My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza.”

. . . .

He said the claim that many of the Palestinian victims were militants

“was the reply of the Nazi” and added: “I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.”

and that the Israeli government has

“ruthlessly and cynically exploiting the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians.”

Successive Israeli governments (left and right wing) have all consistently pursued the goals of Zionist founding fathers in expanding their “living space” to eventual biblical proportions (since 1967 this has been done with the ongoing creep and expulsions of Palestinians from their West Bank homes to make way for Jewish “settlements”) and to declare the indigenous inhabitants a non-people. (Edward Said nailed it when he showed that antisemitism has since WW2 flipped and bifurcated into Jews unrealistically good, Arabs — the other semitic wing — unrealistically bad). The Israeli beseiging and blockading of Gaza, along with continual terrorizing low flying (with sonic boom) war planes over the population, not to mention regular bombings called “targeted killings” that more often than not killed more than their so-called intended targets, and rejections of Hama offers to end rocket attacks in return for a lifting of this blockade, have not managed to cower the Palestinians — they still prefer to die standing on their feet than live crawling on their knees before those who expelled them to that barren overcrowded Gaza strip.

And the myth of vulnerable David facing ever present threats of total extermination from swarthy Goliaths is continually recycled. I hope in future to cite the evidence that shatters this myth as so falsely applied to the wars of 1948 and 1967 — evidence that few American in particular have had opportunities to see.