(The Conversation) – Mark Raphael Baker began writing his final book, A Season of Death, from his hospital bed, in the wake of his terminal pancreatic cancer diagnosis. His second wife, Michelle, would later observe: “More than a comfort or distraction, in him it was a need.” The renowned Jewish Australian author and academic died a year later, after 13 months of illness, aged 64.

In 2022, after nearly four months of misdiagnoses and inaction from doctors – despite persistent complaints of unbearable abdominal pain – an MRI had finally revealed the grave news. Cancer would claim his life, as it had his first wife Kerryn in 2016 (aged 55), and his brother Johnny in 2017 (aged 62).

He wrote:

I kept thinking, this can’t be happening. I was invulnerable. The odds of another person in one family being hit by terminal cancer seemed impossible.

How does one write the essence of a life once it has come to an end? Baker was no stranger to this question.

Review: A Season of Death – Mark Raphael Baker (Melbourne University Press)

His first book, The Fiftieth Gate: a journey through memory (1997), is an exploration of his parents’ Holocaust survival, told through the eyes of a son grappling with his connection to their trauma. When it was reissued for its 20-year anniversary in 2017, it had sold over 70,000 copies. His second book, Thirty Days: A Journey to the End of Love (2017), was written after his first wife, Kerryn, lost her ten-month battle with stomach cancer.

Death shaded much of Baker’s life. Writing was his salve, a window to understanding and hope.

Baker was director of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation and associate professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Monash University. Religion, which was central to his family and intellectual life, is woven throughout the memoir.

Liminal grief

A Season of Death is short, at 253 pages. It is structured in five parts: Regeneration, Remarriage, Re-Creation, Retribution and Revelation. The repeated prefix “re” (meaning again, or back) speaks to the cyclical nature of life as Baker lived it.

The book begins with Kerryn’s cancer diagnosis, seven years prior to his own. Baker writes, “That experience followed me; every breath I took felt like Kerryn’s last breath.” He continues:

Death and life became inextricably bound; I was unsure which world I belonged to, and in my dreams at night I danced with her spirit, sang the songs of our courtship, reanimated her in my mind and eventually rushed to write a version of our life story, which I completed in thirty days.

Baker writes beautifully and eloquently about the liminality of existing in grief after such a profound death. Less than two years after Kerryn’s passing, Baker’s brother, Johnny, also died of cancer. This death was particularly difficult for Baker’s parents, who both survived the Holocaust.

For many survivors of genocide – who’ve lost their family, their sense of place, everything – children become the centre of their universe. This was certainly the case for Baker’s parents:

What to say to these people whose entire existence revolved vicariously around the successes of their two sons? When my mother was asked about her idea of revenge for what she had suffered, her answer came back without hesitation, “You, my children, are my revenge.”

‘Something was seriously wrong’

The book is written in a fragmented style, traversing past and present, shimmering between early childhood memories and life as an adult.

We are with Baker through his courting of Michelle Lesh, who he had first known as the stepdaughter of his close friend, Raimond Gaita. Their relationship transformed and deepened through their shared intellectual and political interests, particularly concerning Israel-Palestine, and centred around travel and their respective careers. They were married in 2018 and in 2021 welcomed a daughter, Melila.

“Fifty Gates,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

We are with him as he reflects on his parents’ survival of Holocaust Europe and the trauma they experienced. (Baker’s father died in 2020, three years after his brother Johnny. Baker’s mother, Genia, was 88 when he died in 2023.)

And we are with him in the doctor’s office as his worst fear becomes reality.

The best word for my reaction was one of bewilderment. Something was seriously wrong. We’d talked about pancreatitis but that was different from pancreatic cancer. I was numb. It didn’t feel possible, but I immediately pictured my death. The only question in my mind was if I would last as long as Kerryn and Johnny.

For anyone touched by cancer, this feeling of bewilderment is familiar. Few diseases have a more profound physical and psychological impact. Baker observes, often with searing clarity, his own corporeal degeneration and his thoughts as he confronts his own mortality.

“While no number of deaths could make me indifferent to what awaits me, watching a sequence of deaths in the family has made me more prepared,” he writes.

I feel as though I have been trained or mentored in the art of dying. My fear is less the prospect of my ultimate demise than the pain I will endure reaching the end.

What is surprising is Baker’s persistent humour and palpable energy, despite the pain and despite the closeness of his ultimate demise.

An act of love

A Season of Death is not an easy read. It is an intimate, at times harrowing portrait of grief and of death. What Baker has written is a final observation of his life, offering a rare perspective on death – and life as it comes to an end.

To persevere with a writing project in the midst of such bodily trauma, to write through and towards death for his children, for his family and descendants, is an incredibly courageous feat.

“Over the course of his illness Mark wrote almost every day, despite the ravages and debilitating side effects of his treatments, which often left him weary in body and mind,” write Lesh and his friend Raimond Gaita, in the book’s postscript.

Baker passed away before the book was published, and Lesh and Gaita brought it to publication in his absence. In their postscript, they observe:

Writing the memoir was an act of love that took possession of him. It gave him comfort and energy. He sacrificed sleep, physical and mental rest, and refrained from engaging with people and aspects of the world to which he had previously given so much of himself.

What lingers with the reader is a sense of the fragility and miracle of being alive for the very short time we each have. We are all going to die, and whether or not this fact is a preoccupation, it is moving to witness, through writing, an at once introspective and philosophical mind work through his imminent death.

There is no linear story, or discrete chapters. There is no Before or After. There is only the projection of what was and what might have been: memory – fickle, pliant, circular, fragmentary.

Tess Scholfield-Peters, Casual Academic, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In addition, at least 14 countries have requested the International Court of Justice to allow them to intervene on behalf of South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, including Ireland, Spain, Belgium, Mexico, Türkiye, Nicaragua, Colombia, Libya, Egypt, Cuba, Palestine, Chile, the Maldives, and Bolivia. Spain, Mexico and Türkiye are in the G20.

On the other hand, the most powerful man in the world, Joe Biden, insisted that what Israel is doing in Gaza is not genocide. In fact, most US politicians of both parties have either issued similar denials or have just been quiet on the issue. US so-called cable “news” has barely mentioned Gaza at all this year, despite the daily carnage wrought by the Israeli military there, and typically does not invite on as commentators guests that might use the “G-word.” I did a database search in broadcast transcripts. CNN mentioned on December 6 that the US State Department had denied an Israeli genocide in Gaza. On November 1, CNN anchors reported that a UN official had resigned, calling Israeli actions in Gaza a textbook case of genocide. On May 24, CNN reported on the South Africa case against Israel at the ICJ for the crime of genocide. In January CNN reported two or three times on the ICJ case pursued against Israel for the alleged Gaza genocide. These six or so mentions seem to be the extent of CNN broadcasting on the genocide issue for the entire year, and mostly they covered denials or things that other people said.

Many of those contesting the charge of genocide against Israel do not understand the current technical definition of the term. It does not require killing millions of people. It cannot be excused by war-fighting, since the laws of war require that everything possible be done to minimize civilian casualties. If a country cavalierly throws aside this requirement and deliberately and consciously adopts rules of engagement allowing a hundred civilian casualties for each high-value militant killed, as both Israel’s +972 Mag and the New York Times say Israel has done, that course of action could fall under the heading of genocide.

“Genocide,” Digital, Midjourney, 2024

Polish attorney and academic Raphael Lemkin, of Jewish heritage, coined the term “genocide.” It is from the Greek genos or people, race, or tribe, and the Latin -cide, having to do with killing. (The modern Greek is γενοκτονία (yenoktonía), from genos and ktonia, which means ‘killing.’ In my view it would have been better to have an all-Greek term rather than a Greek-Latin hybrid.) Lemkin used it in his 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. He also invoked it at the Nuremberg war crimes trials and worked to get the 1948 Genocide Convention passed and ratified, in which he succeeded by 1951.

In Axis Rule, Lemkin wrote,

“New conceptions require new terms. By “genocide” we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. This new word, coined by the author to denote an old practice in its modern development, is made from the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing), thus corresponding in its formation to such words as tyrannicide, homocide, infanticide, etc. Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.

The following illustration will suffice. The confiscation of property of nationals of an occupied area on the ground that they have left the country may be considered simply as a deprivation of their individual property rights. However, if the confiscations are ordered against individuals solely because they are Poles, Jews, or Czechs, then the same confiscations tend in effect to weaken the national entities of which those persons are members.”

In contemporary Ireland, government officials are pushing back against Lemkin’s emphasis on intent and a “coordinated plan,” which are almost impossible to prove. They argue that genocide should be defined not by the intentions of the perpetrator but by the harms experienced by the victim.

This Google Books ngram shows how the use of the term skyrocketed after 1945:

Google Books Ngram for “Genocide.”

Unfortunately, the mentions may be increasing so much because the crime is becoming more common. In 2009 and 2010, the International Criminal Court issued warrants against then dictator Omar al-Bashir of Sudan that included 3 counts of genocide because of his brutal repression of the Fur people in the western Darfur province.

In this century, as Alexander Wentker points out, genocide is increasingly being litigated at the International Court of Justice, which was established by the United Nations to adjudicate disputes between member states. Gambia has filed a case against Myanmar (Burma)’s military junta for genocide against the Rohingya Muslims. Nicaragua filed a case against Germany for abetting Israel’s Gaza genocide, but the ICJ judges turned it back on the grounds that Germany has a robust judiciary that can decide this matter itself. Nicaragua, undeterred, is interested in prosecuting Britain and Canada for complicity in the Gaza genocide, which Wentker suggests may help explain the Labour government’s tepid announcement that some 14 weapons export licenses were being withdrawn from firms selling to Israel.

As South Africa noted in arguments before the ICJ, Article II of the Genocide Convention says,

“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;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”

This language was adopted into the Rome Statute that underpins the International Criminal Court.

The ICJ judges have taken special interest in the Israeli destruction of hospitals and their displacement of pregnant women to unhealthy rubble and tents, noting that “The WHO has estimated that 15 per cent of the women giving birth in the Gaza Strip are likely to experience complications, and indicates that maternal and newborn death rates are expected to increase due to the lack of access to medical care.” The point is that these actions might constitute “Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”

He nevertheless had the gall to accuse the Prime Minister of Ireland of being a bigot, closing the Israeli embassy in Dublin on the grounds that he views virtually all Irish people as racists. Hmm. There must be a word for when you negatively stereotype an entire people…

Likely the move came in response to Ireland’s recent decision to join in South Africa’s complaint against Israel for genocide with the International Court of Justice. Even more dangerous for the government of Benjamin Netanyahu and Gideon Saar, Ireland is seeking a more practicable definition of genocide. Current international legislation puts too much emphasis on intent and sets the bar for finding genocide so high it is almost impossible to meet.

Deputy Prime Minister Micheál Martin complained, “a very narrow interpretation of what constitutes genocide leads to a culture of impunity in which the protection of civilians is minimised.” He said the Irish view of the genocide convention is “broader” and prioritizes “the protection of civilian life.”

Some things about Saar should be remembered. In his youth he was a member of the far right Tehiya Party and he actively protested the 1982 Israeli withdrawal from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula as a result of the Camp David peace accords. In other words, Saar has all his life held anti-Arab views and he wants to occupy and colonize the lands of his neighbors. The United Nations Charter, to which Israel is a signatory, forbids acquiring the territory of neighbors through aggressive war, but that was what Israel did in 1967 when it launched an invasion of Egypt, which had not militarily attacked it.

As Interior Minister, Saar rounded up African migrants in Israel and put them in a detention camp. He defended it and wanted to expand it. The camp was just for Africans. Hmm. There must be a word for when you target a particular racial group for collective punishment …

Saar opposed then President Trump’s “Deal of the Century” because it implied some form of a Palestinian state. Saar says Israel must remain the only state “from the river to the sea” (alert American university presidents, who seem to think this diction is racist). He firmly rejects any state for a Palestinian, insisting that they must remain stateless and under Israeli control forever. He says there can never be “two states for two peoples.” He wants to annex much of the Palestinian West Bank, a violation of international law. He considers Hebron (al-Khalil), a major Palestinian city in the Palestinian West Bank, to be part of Israel.

He said that Gaza “must be smaller” after the war, another advocacy of a war crime.

Let’s just imagine an American politician who wanted to occupy Manitoba or Tijuana militarily, who rounded up migrants and put them in camps, and who declared that there can be only one sovereign country in North America and it must be White. Those would be the US equivalents of Saar’s politics. Those politics, in our context, would be forthrightly characterized by everyone as racist.

It is one of the great ironies of our time that a man with these views can have the temerity to brand Irish President Michael D Higgins and Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Simon Harris racist bigots who are prejudiced against Jews.

Higgins gave as good as he got, saying “I think it’s very important to express, as president of Ireland, to say that the Irish people are antisemitic is a deep slander. To suggest because one criticises Prime Minister Netanyahu that one is antisemitic is such a gross defamation and slander.”

Juan Cole, “Pot’o’Gold,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v. 3, 2024

Higgins came to the same realization as everyone else who has been gaslighted by right-wing Zionists with their phony (and cynical) charges of Jew-hatred whenever anyone objects to Israeli war crimes:

“Originally… I put it down to lack of experience but I saw later that it was part of a pattern to damage Ireland.”

It is sort of like if families of victims murdered by mid-twentieth-century Vegas hit man Bugsy Siegel were accused of only complaining because they didn’t like Jews.

Higgins insisted that Ireland “cannot be knocked off our principle[d] support of international law.” He pointed out that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the one who has broken international law. [The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu.]

The Irish president pointed out that the Israeli government is currently violating “the sovereignty of three of his neighbours.” That would be Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. If Saar had his way it would be four, and would include Egypt.

Higgins made the remarks as he accepted the credentials of the new Palestinian ambassador to Ireland. Ireland, Spain and Norway reacted to Israel’s Gaza genocide by recognizing the state of Palestine last May.

The Irish equivalent of The Onion, WW News, made up some amusing reactions. They had one person, asked about the departure of the Israeli embassy from Dublin, say, “Is this the first time the Israeli government has actually given up property?”

Another joke: “Since the embassy will be going spare, we can probably let Palestinian refugees move in?”*

—–

*Revised.

( Middle East Monitor ) – It was bound to happen. With continuing operations in Gaza and increasingly violent acts against Palestinians in the occupied territories, human rights organisations are making progressively severe assessments of Israel’s warring cause. While the world awaits the findings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on whether Israel’s campaign, as argued by South Africa, amounts to genocide, Amnesty International has already reached its conclusions.

In a 296-page report sporting the ominous title “You Feel Like You Are Subhuman”, the human rights body, after considering the events in Gaza between October 2023 and July 2024, identified a “pattern of conduct” indicating genocidal intent. These included, among other things, persistent direct attacks on civilians and objects; “deliberately indiscriminate strikes over the nine-month period, wiping out entire families repeatedly launched at times when these strikes would result in high numbers of casualties”; the nature of the weapons used; the speed and scale of destruction to civilian objects and infrastructure (homes, shelters, health facilities, water and sanitation infrastructure, agricultural land); the use of bulldozing and controlled demolitions and the use of incomprehensible, misleading and arbitrary evacuation orders.

The report does much to focus on statements from the highest officials to the common soldiery to reveal the mental state necessary to reveal genocide. One hundred two statements made by members of the Knesset, government officials and high-ranking commanders: “Dehumanised Palestinians, or called for, or justified genocidal acts or other crimes under international law against them.” The report also examined 62 videos, audio recordings and photographs posted online featuring gleeful Israeli soldiers rejoicing in the: “Destruction of Gaza or the denial of essential services to people in Gaza, or celebrated the destruction of Palestinian homes, mosques, schools and universities, including through controlled demolitions, in some cases without apparent military necessity.”

From its alternative universe, the Israeli public relations machine drew from its own agitprop specialists, working on mangling the language of the report. The formula is familiar: attack the authors first, not their premises. “The deplorable and fanatical organisation Amnesty International has once again produced a fabricated response that is entirely based on lies,” came the howl from Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein.

Other methods of repudiation involve detaching Hamas and its war with Israel from any historical continuum, not least the fact that it was aided, supported and backed by Israel for years as a counter to Fatah in the West Bank. Isolating Hamas as a terrorist aberration also serves to treat it as alien, artificially foreign and not part of any resistance movement against suffocating Israeli occupation and strangulation. They, so goes this argument, are genocidal, and countering such a body can never be, by any stretch, genocidal. The pro-Israeli group NGO Monitor abides by this line of reasoning, calling allegations of genocide against Israel: “A reversal of the actual and clearly established intent of Hamas and its allies (including its patron, Iran) to wipe Israel off the map.”

Israel’s closest ally and sponsor, the US, proved predictable in rejecting the findings while still claiming to respect the humanitarian line. The US State Department’s principal deputy spokesperson, Vedant Patel, expressed disagreement with: “The conclusions of such a report. We had said previously and continue to find that the allegations of genocide are unfounded.” Patel did, however, pay lip service to the: “Vital role that civil society organisations like Amnesty International and human rights groups and NGOs play in providing information and analysis as it relates to Gaza and what’s going on.” Vital, but only up to a point.

Far less guarded assessments can be found in the US pro-Israeli chatter sphere. These follow the usual pattern. Orde Kittrie, senior fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a name that can only imply that crimes committed in such a cause are bound to be justifiable, offers a neat illustration. Amnesty, he argues: “Systematically and repeatedly mischaracterises both the facts and the law.” Kittrie suggests his own mischaracterisation by parroting the Israel Defense Forces’ line that Hamas had: “Increased casualty counts by illegally using Palestinian civilian shields and by hiding weapons and war fighters in and below homes, hospitals, mosques, and other buildings.” This conveniently ignores the point that the numbers are not necessarily proof of genocidal intent, though it helps.

“Crimes against Humanity,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

The report also notes that, even in the face of such tactics by Hamas, Israel was still: “Obligated to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians and avoid attacks that would be indiscriminate or disproportionate.”

Amnesty International’s report is yet another addition to the gloomy literature on the subject. Human Rights Watch, in November, pointed to violations of the laws of war, crimes against humanity and the provisional measures of the ICJ issued urging Israel to abide by the obligations imposed by the United Nations Genocide Convention of 1948. The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem stated in no uncertain terms in October that: “Israel intends to forcibly displace northern Gaza’s residents by committing some of the gravest crimes under the laws of war.”

Battling over the designation of whether a campaign is genocidal can act as a distraction, a field of quibbles for paper-pushing pedants. The “specific intent” in proof must be unequivocally demonstrated and beyond any other reasonable inference. A smokescreen is thereby deployed that risks masking the broader ambit of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But no amount of pedantry and disagreement can arrest the sense that Israel’s lethal conduct, whatever threshold it may reach in international law, is directed at destroying not merely Palestinian life but any worthwhile sense of viable sovereignty. Amnesty Israel, while rejecting the central claim of the parent organisation’s report, did make one concession: the country’s brutal response following 7 October, 2023: “May amount to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.”

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Via Middle East Monitor

(The Conversation) – Germany was a significant – and often brutal – colonial power in Africa. But this colonial history is not told as often as that of other imperialist nations. A new book called The Long Shadow of German Colonialism: Amnesia, Denialism and Revisionism aims to bring the past into the light. It explores not just the history of German colonialism, but also how its legacy has played out in German society, politics and the media. We asked Henning Melber about his book.

What is the history of German colonialism in Africa?

Imperial Germany was a latecomer in the scramble for Africa. Shady deals marked the pseudo-legal entry point. South West Africa (today Namibia), Cameroon and Togo were euphemistically proclaimed to be possessions under “German protection” in 1884. East Africa (today’s Tanzania and parts of Rwanda and Burundi) followed in 1886.

German rule left a trail of destruction. The war against the Hehe people in east Africa (1890-1898) signalled what would come. It was the training ground for a generation of colonial German army officers. They would apply their merciless skills in other locations too. The mindset was one of extermination.

The war against the Ovaherero and Nama people in South West Africa (1904-1908) culminated in the first genocide of the 20th century. The warfare against the Maji Maji in east Africa (1905-1907) applied a scorched earth policy. In each case, the African fatalities amounted to an estimated 75,000.

“Punitive expeditions” were the order of the day in Cameroon and Togo too. The inhuman treatment included corporal punishment and executions, sexual abuse and forced labour as forms of “white violence”.

During a colonial rule of 30 years (1884-1914), Germans in the colonies numbered fewer than 50,000 – even at the peak of military deployment. But several hundred thousand Africans died as a direct consequence of German colonial violence.

Why do you think German debate is slow around this?

After its defeat in the first world war (1914-1918), the German empire was declared unfit to colonise. In 1919 the Treaty of Versailles allocated Germany’s territories to allied states (Great Britain, France and others). The colonial cake was redistributed, so to speak.

This did not end a humiliated Germany’s colonial ambitions. In the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) colonial propaganda flourished. It took new turns under Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime (1933-1945). Lebensraum (living space) as a colonial project shifted towards eastern Europe.

The Aryan obsession of being a master race culminated in the Holocaust as mass extermination of the Jewish people. But victims were also Sinti and Roma people and other groups (Africans, gays, communists). The Holocaust has overshadowed earlier German crimes against humanity of the colonial era.

After the second world war (1939-1945), German colonialism became a footnote in history. Repression turned into colonial amnesia. But, as Jewish German-US historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt suggested in 1951 already, German colonial rule was a precursor to the Nazi regime. Such claims are often discredited as antisemitism for downplaying the singularity of the Holocaust. Such gatekeeping prevents exploration of how German colonialism marked the beginning of a trajectory of mass violence.

How does this colonial history manifest today in Germany?

Until the turn of the century, colonial relics such as monuments and names of buildings, places and streets were hardly questioned. Thanks to a new generation of scholars, local postcolonial agencies, and not least an active Afro-German community, public awareness is starting to change.

Various initiatives challenge colonial memory in the public sphere. The re-contextualisation of the Bremen elephant, a colonial monument, is a good example. What was once a tribute to fallen colonial German soldiers became an anticolonial monument memorialising the Namibian victims of the genocide. Colonial street names are today increasingly replaced with names of Africans resisting colonial rule.

Numerous skulls – including those of decapitated African leaders – were taken to Germany during colonialism. These were for pseudo scientific anthropological research that was obsessed with white and Aryan superiority. Descendants of the affected African communities are still in search of the remains of their ancestors and demand their restitution.

Similarly, cultural artefacts were looted. They have remained in the possession of German museums and private collections. Systematic provenance research to identify the origins of these objects has only just begun. Transactions such as the return of Benin bronzes in Germany remain a matter of negotiations.

The German government admitted, in 2015, that the war against the Ovaherero and Nama in today’s Namibia was tantamount to genocide. Since then, German-Namibian negotiations have been taking place, but Germany’s limited atonement is a matter of contestation and controversy.

What do you hope readers will take away from the book?

The pain and exploitation of colonialism lives on in African societies today in many ways. I hope that the descendants of colonisers take away an awareness that we are products of a past that remains alive in the present. That decolonisation is also a personal matter. That we, as the offspring of colonisers, need to critically scrutinise our mindset, our attitudes, and should not assume that colonial relations had no effect on us.

Remorse and atonement require more than symbolic gestures and tokenism. In official relations with formerly colonised societies, uneven power relations continue. This borders on a perpetuation of colonial mindsets and supremacist hierarchies.

No former colonial power is willing to compensate in any significant way for its exploitation, atrocities and injustices. There are no meaningful material reparations as credible efforts of apology.

The colonial era is not a closed chapter in history. It remains an unresolved present. As the US novelist William Faulkner wrote:

The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

—-

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Al Jazeera English: “Namibia: The Price of Genocide | People and Power”

Layers of censorship imposed on Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices in corporate and social media seem to have blurred the judgment of some. They continue to speak of a “conflict”, calling on “both sides” to use “restraint” and, partly, blaming the Palestinian resistance for the ongoing Israeli massacres.

Though such language is expected from the “sensible” few of mainstream media, there are those who are counted as “pro-Palestine” intellectuals, journalists and activists who often use similar language.

Throughout the years, the common wisdom is that, for a pro-Palestine voice to be published in mainstream US-western newspapers, he or she would have to adhere to a certain set of rules and avoid certain adjectives to describe Israel – even if such vocabulary is consistent with good sense, international law or the judgment of leading human rights organisations.

By “watering down the language”, one supposedly gains greater credibility, thus space to be heard or published.

Equally true, it is also practically forbidden to defend the Palestinian people’s internationally recognised rights to use all forms of resistance, or to support their democratic choices, because the outcomes of which are, maybe, not consistent with mainstream western thinking.

Some are even afraid to use the term “resistance” altogether. But if Palestinians are denied their most basic right to resist, they become deprived of any human agency, let alone relevance as political actors. The notion would then suggest that Palestinians can only serve the role of victims, and nothing else. Not only is this untrue, and condescending, it is outright bigoted, as well.

All this tiptoeing around what should have been a clear language on Palestine, comes at a price. When the truth is masked or hidden, the space becomes open for lies, deceptions and quasi-truths.

In this alternative space, Israel is, at best, equally culpable for the ‘war’ in Palestine as the Palestinians themselves; and, at worst, the Israeli army is merely engaging in a state of self-defense.

Additionally, by tightly controlling the discourse on Palestine, the West has harmed its own interests. Indeed, by marginalising authentic Palestinian voices, the West has lost its ability to understand the context behind the current Israeli war on Gaza, to accept or navigate its share of responsibility in the genocide and to play any meaningful role in bringing the atrocities to an end.

The outcome is an unavoidable cognitive dissonance – where western governments are violating the very rules they had created, opposing the laws they enshrined and investing in an Israeli genocide in Gaza, while criticising war elsewhere.

76 years on, Palestinians are still living the Nakba – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

I doubt that the West will ever succeed in claiming any moral authority, retrieve its lost credibility or build lasting trust with Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims or the Global South. The extermination of one’s people entitles a person to some degree of cynicism.

To further expose western duplicity in Gaza, however, we must learn to speak with no reservations, no matter the restrictions on the pro-Palestine voice or the censorship on social media.

Naturally, not all Palestinians and pro-Palestinian voices agree on everything. There are those willing to risk everything, and those who want to tell some kind of truth without risking the loss of their privileges, careers or standing in society.

It is those in the former group who deserve platforms and must be celebrated for their courage.

One of the most inspiring examples are young students in US and western universities who have risked their own futures – as in being expelled from universities or denied their degrees – for raising awareness about the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Those students are the true leaders of justice-based solidarity movements, now and in the future.

They have understood that, due to the unprecedented censorship of authentic Palestinian voices in all media platforms, their actions on campuses, in the streets and every available venue are critical.

The risks they have taken by speaking out for Gaza’s genocide victims will serve as a new threshold of courage that will inspire the youth of this and future generations.

Equally important is that these students have refused to compromise on their language, their demands and their priorities to simply fit in, to get published or use a genocide as an opportunity to build careers.

As for those who exploited the Palestinian suffering for their own benefit, neither history nor the rest of us will forgive their opportunism and intellectual timidity.

Those who are well-intentioned, but “water down” their language to circumvent censorship, ultimately make little difference, because there are certain truths that cannot be softened or diluted.

Indeed, there is no other honest way of phrasing what is taking place in Gaza but as a genocide, one for which only Israel – a military occupier and apartheid state – can be blamed.

The only Palestinians who deserve blame or condemnation are those who are collaborating with Israel to ensure the outcome of the war remains consistent with their interests, financial status and false titles. No amount of money or prestige will ever redeem the credibility or honour of such people.

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act,” said George Orwell. Sadly, we live in these times. It is equally true that, in a time of genocide, not telling the truth is the most contemptible of all acts.

Please continue to speak out; be radical; be revolutionary and never equate between those carrying out the genocide and those resisting it – even if at the risk of not fitting in.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Via Middle East Monitor

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

(The Conversation) – As war continues to devastate Gaza and its people, we learnt last week that a variant of poliovirus has been detected in the region. The virus was isolated in six sewage samples collected in late June from Khan Younis and Deir al Balah.

Most infections with poliovirus don’t cause symptoms, but a minority of those who contract the virus develop paralysis (paralytic polio).

No cases of paralytic polio have been reported in Gaza. But detecting the virus in wastewater is concerning nonetheless.

There are different types of polio

The cases of polio we’ve seen historically have generally been caused by “wild poliovirus”. For centuries, wild poliovirus affected both poor and wealthy countries, including Australia. The deployment of effective vaccines in the 1960s led to a dramatic decrease in cases in the following decades among those countries that could afford the vaccines.

The introduction of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988 enabled more equitable vaccination. There were only 12 cases of paralysis caused by wild poliovirus in 2023, in just two countries: Pakistan and Afghanistan.

However, as the number of wild poliovirus cases decreased there was an increase in cases of vaccine-derived poliovirus causing paralysis.

There are two types of polio vaccines: one is given orally, and the other by injection (the type used in Australia). The oral polio vaccine is based on a weakened virus – so it doesn’t cause disease, but can still reproduce. Vaccine-derived poliovirus emerges when people vaccinated with the oral polio vaccine excrete the vaccine virus in their stool and it spreads to other people.

Over time, it may mutate to become a virus that circulates and causes paralysis in populations with low levels of immunity. In 2023, there were 524 polio cases in 32 countries caused by vaccine-derived poliovirus.

It’s a strain of vaccine-derived poliovirus that has been detected in the wastewater in Gaza – type 2.

High vaccination coverage is key, but not always enough

The most important indicator of eradicating polio, both wild and vaccine-derived, is vaccine coverage. This is usually measured as the percentage of children under five who have received at least four vaccine doses, ideally 95%.

High vaccination coverage has been achieved by a combination of routine immunisation in early childhood plus national or local catch-up vaccination campaigns, particularly in areas where the virus pops up.

However, high vaccination coverage is not always enough to eliminate the virus.

Early in the 21st century, India and Nigeria were reporting the highest number of polio cases in the world. After an accelerated immunisation campaign in India, vaccine coverage rates were high by 2007 and cases were decreasing. But many cases continued to be reported in impoverished districts of western Uttar Pradesh (a state in northern India), where access to clean water and sanitation was poor.

Research shows a high level of pathogens in children’s intestines can make the absorption of the oral vaccine less effective, while unsanitary conditions make it easier for the virus to spread. After a sanitation and hygiene project began in 2007, the last case of polio in Uttar Pradesh occurred in 2010, and the entire country eradicated polio in 2014.

Wild polio was eradicated from Gaza more than 25 years ago. But it’s possible the re-emergence of vaccine-derived poliovirus is due to a combination of poor hygiene and sanitation, as we saw in Uttar Pradesh, and reduced vaccine coverage.

Polio vaccination coverage in the Palestinian territories was 99% in 2022. By the end of 2023, coverage had dropped to 89%. However, the data were not separated by each of the territories (the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza), so coverage may be lower in Gaza.

Recent outbreaks

We saw the detection of a similar strain of poliovirus in wastewater in Jerusalem, London and New York in early 2022.

Parts of these cities have high concentrations of ultra-Orthodox Jews, which may have lower rates of vaccination than the overall population. In Rockland County, 65 kilometres north of New York City, a young, unimmunised Orthodox Jewish man became the first case of polio transmitted locally in the United States in 30 years.

There’s no evidence of vaccination hesitancy among Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Australia. However, there are other communities where vaccination rates are low, including some shires in the Northern Rivers district of New South Wales.

Communities with low vaccination rates, whatever the reason, are vulnerable to infectious diseases such as polio.

So where did this virus come from?

The oral vaccine used in Gaza has not contained type 2 since 2016, so it must have come from elsewhere.

In 2023, most outbreaks of type 2 vaccine-derived poliovirus were in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen, Nigeria, Sudan and Somalia. There was also one case in Egypt, which borders on Gaza. Egypt could be the source of this virus, but we’ll need further investigation.

It’s unlikely to have come from Israel as there have been no detections of poliovirus in wastewater there since 2022.

What can the world learn?

First, we must not forget that poliovirus can cross borders and maintaining high vaccination rates in Australia and elsewhere is the most effective protective strategy. It’s also crucial to contain the virus inside Gaza. UNICEF and partners are preparing for a vaccination campaign focusing on young children.

Second, it’s important to maintain wastewater surveillance for polio, which is an early warning mechanism that can initiate public health action before symptomatic cases occur.

In 2022, Victoria was the only Australian state conducting routine polio wastewater surveillance until NSW adopted the practice when the outbreaks in Jerusalem, New York and London occurred. Wastewater surveillance is worthwhile in all states and territories.

Third, but not least, this should be a wake-up call highlighting the need to cease hostilities and provide unrestricted access by aid agencies to improve the provision of clean water, sanitation and effective health services throughout Gaza. This is an urgent global health priority.

Michael Toole, Associate Principal Research Fellow, Burnet Institute

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Gaza: WHO warns of potential polio outbreak | DW News Video

The UN High Commissioner’s office gave several examples of these massive bombs being dropped when there was no sign of an obvious military target. It wasn’t that, as some Israel apologists suggest, “people get killed in war,” or that you can’t kill off Hamas without breaking a few eggs. The pilots weren’t always aiming for Hamas operatives. They were trying to destroy Palestinian society.

17,000 lost children. Jesus of Nazareth told a parable (Luke 15:3-7) to explain to the “Pharisees and tax collectors” why he hung out with sinners and the disreputable. It goes, “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”

Likewise, which parent with several kids who lost one would not drop everything, give the care of its siblings to a relative, and go frantically looking for the lost child?

In 2000, the US House of Representatives even encouraged communities to join the Amber Alert program for abducted children, so that alerts are sent out by the Emergency Alert System, Google, Facebook and other means. We do this as communities for a single child.

How frantic would we be at the news of 17,000 lost little children?

The 17,000 separated from their families are scavenging for food and forced to drink dirty water. Many of them have chronic diarrhea and are developing diseases like hepatitis. They are frightened and grieving, and deeply traumatized. Some are suffering from malnutrition and will suffer permanent cognitive and affective damage from which they will never recover. Some are wounded or amputees.

This little girl describes her life:

Middle East Eye Video: “Gaza Child Separated from Family”

“All the people died. Everyone. Two homes were levelled on our street. We got scared, and stopped going home. We want to go back to our homes. They struck our houses and we had to flee, uncle. We were scared. We want to go home. We want a ceasefire. We are tired of sheltering in these schools while the bombing is ongoing. We get scared.”

Play it with the sound turned up so you can hear it in her voice.

Then there are the children who have lost the adults in their family, and have formed tiny bands to fend for themselves, the tweens taking care of the infants and toddlers.

NBC News: “A story of survival: 13-year-old takes care of seven siblings amid the war in Gaza “

Here is the YouTube transcript of this tale of children in Rafah, translated from Arabic:

The little boy, Mohammad Ali Yazji says, “This is Mayar, and this is Tulin, and this is Youssef, and this is Zaher, and this is Suwar. And this is Ward, and this is Fatima, and this is Mays.”

The little girl says. “I’m with my little sister, who keeps crying while I wash her clothes. Her clothes are dirty and my mother has been martyred, and my father is in Gaza [City], not able to get the message to us. We don’t know what to do.

Mohammad Ali says, “I’m sitting here, making milk for my little sister. trying to feed her since I haven’t fed her milk since the morning. She’s crying because she’s hungry and there’s no one to nurse her.

“I mean, I feel it. I mean, no one understands her. My mother used to, you know, when she got hungry she would feed her. She knew how to quieten her when she cried.

“I don’t know how to do any of this. I mean, this is my little sister, and when I see her, I feel so sorry for her. I don’t know what to do for her. At least bring us milk and Pampers. Where should I get this stuff.

“Ah, from this hunger… she cries out of hunger.

“Go pigeon, don’t take too long, go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep.

“To sleep.

“I’m not sure if there’s anyone left in our family alive except for my uncle. When I saw the international aid, I mean, people know that our father is missing and our mother has been martyred, but they bring us little help or not at all. At most, we get light aid locally.

“Every day we get a can of beans or a can of chickpeas, maybe, or we get a few vegetables, a little financial aid

“I go to bring them something so they forget the war and do not get bored — a toy to play with, and, I mean, to bring them something to forget the hurt.

“We are supposed to have a father and a mother, but now there’s nobody, and when we sleep, all my siblings, they sit there, and every time there’s a noise, they start crying and screaming. There’s nobody to make them feel safe.”

Six month old Tulin, whose name means “moonbeam,” fell ill with gastroenteritis.

This video report was from NBC News Digital. It was produced by Ala’a Ibrahim, edited by Jacob Condon, with Jonathan Rinkerman the production manager, Marshall Crook the senior producer, and Rachel Morehouse the executive producer. God bless their souls. I’m not sure it was ever aired. The major networks haven’t covered the Palestinian side of the Gaza War for the most part.

As for the children dead under rubble, it should be remembered that the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights has found instances where the Israeli Air Force (IAF) dropped 2,000-pound bombs on residential apartment buildings, flattening them and spreading destruction all along their quarter mile blast radius. It takes most adults about 5 minutes to walk a quarter of a mile. Imagine your neighborhood. If you walked for five minutes, how many houses or apartment buildings would you pass? Imagine them all blown to smithereens.

Children and others trapped under the rubble of destroyed buildings could not be rescued in Gaza, as they might be in most cities in the United States. The Israelis have limited the import of earth moving equipment since they slapped an extensive economic siege on Gaza in 2007. And the IAF has targeted such equipment in its air raids over the past eight months.

Children who were alive under the rubble couldn’t be gotten out, no matter how frantic their parents or relatives or neighbor were. They died slowly of lack of water. After about three days of not drinking anything, most people die of renal failure. They would have been parched, whimpering, head hammering, in the dark, alone. Some of the 4,000 who were not immediately turned into red mist by the Israeli bombs died like that.