RUTHFULLY YOURS

This year commemorates the 80th anniversary of the notorious Nuremberg Laws, the Nazi racist enactments that formed the legal basis for the Holocaust. Ironically, it also marks the 70th anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials, which provided the legal basis for prosecuting the Nazi war criminals who murdered millions of Jews and others following the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws.

There is little dispute about the evil of the Nuremberg Laws. As Justice Robert H. Jackson, who was America’s chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, put it: “The most odious of all oppressions are those which mask as justice.”

There is some dispute, however, about the Nuremberg trials themselves. Did they represent objective justice or, as Hermann Göring characterized it, merely “victor’s justice?” Were the rules under which the Nazi leaders were tried and convicted ex post facto laws, enacted after the crimes were committed in an effort to secure legal justice for the most immoral of crimes? Did the prosecution and conviction of a relatively small number of Nazi leaders exculpate too many hands-on perpetrators? Do the principles that emerged from the Nuremberg Trials have continued relevance in today’s world?

Following the Holocaust, the world took a collective oath encapsulated in the powerful phrase “never again”, but following the Nuremberg Trials, mass murders, war crimes and even genocides have been permitted to occur again and again and again and again. Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, the former Yugoslavia and now Syria. Why has the promise of “never again” been so frequently been broken? Why have the Nuremberg principles not been effectively applied to prevent and punish these unspeakable crimes? Will the International Criminal Court, established in 2002, be capable of enforcing the Nuremberg principles and deterring future genocides by punishing past ones?

Whether the captured Nazi leaders — those who did not commit suicide or escape — should have been placed on trial, rather than summarily shot, was the subject of much controversy. Even before the end of the war, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau had proposed that a list of major war criminals be drawn up, and as soon as they were captured and identified, they would be shot. President Roosevelt was initially sympathetic to such rough justice, but eventually both he and President Truman were persuaded by Secretary of War Henry Stimson that summary execution was inconsistent with the American commitment to due process and the rule of law.

It was decided, therefore, to convene an international tribunal to sit in judgment over the Nazi leaders. But this proposal was not without considerable difficulties. Justice must be seen to be done, but it must also be done in reality. A show trial, with predictable verdicts and sentences, would be little better than no trial at all. Indeed, Justice Jackson went so far as to suggest, early on, that it would be preferable to shoot Nazi criminals out of hand than to discredit our judicial process by conducting farcical trials.

The challenge of the Nuremberg tribunal, therefore, was to do real justice in the context of a trial by the victors against the vanquished — and specifically those leaders of the vanquished who had been instrumental in the most barbaric genocide and mass slaughter of civilians in history. Moreover, the blood of Hitler’s millions of victims was still fresh at the time of the trials. Indeed, the magnitude of Nazi crimes was being learned by many for the first time during the trial itself. Was a fair trial possible against this emotional backdrop?

Even putting aside the formidable jurisprudential hurdles — the retroactive nature of the newly announced laws and the jurisdictional problems posed by a multinational court — there was a fundamental question of justice posed. Contemporary commentators wondered whether judges appointed by the victorious governments — and politically accountable to those governments — could be expected to listen with an open mind to the prosecution evidence offered by the Allies and to the defense claims submitted on behalf of erstwhile enemies.

There was a time — a blessedly long one, stretching across the second half of the 20th century — when anti-Semitism was, as Norman Podhoretz put it, “the hate that dare not speak its name,” a rare, suppressed, sub-rosa sentiment unacceptable to serious people in the Western world.

Alarmingly, though, as the world marks Holocaust Remembrance Day this year, the hate has returned above ground with a vengeance. Anti-Semites are once again making themselves heard throughout the Western world — on college quads, in parliament halls, in presidential campaigns, online, and offline, from the usual corners of the Middle East to Continental Europe and the U.S.

Consider all that’s happened just in the last few months:

Up to 50 members of Britain’s Labour Party have been suspended for anti-Semitic comments in recent weeks. It’s not just notorious Jew-baiter Ken Livingstone, who claimed last week that Hitler “support[ed] Zionism,” but Member of Parliament Naz Shah, who called in 2014 for Israel to be relocated to the United States and has likened Zionists to al-Qaeda.

Anti-Semitism, of course, is nothing new for Labour. There was Shah Hussain, a councilor in a northern English town, who in 2014 accused an Israeli soccer player of “doing the same thing that hitler [sic] did to ur race in ww2.” There was Nottingham City Councilman Ilyas Aziz, who in 2014 called on Jews to “stop drinking Gaza blood.” And let’s not forget Salim Mulla, a councilor in Blackburn with Darwen, who in 2015 wrote that “Zionist Jews are a disgrace to humanity.”

The epidemic of racism on the British left has proven so virulent that Labour’s sister party in Israel is considering suspending ties. The best response Labour’s far-left leader Jeremy Corbyn has been able to muster is the dubious claim that only a “very small number of people . . . have said things that they should not have.” Corbyn, it bears noting, once called Hamas and Hezbollah his “friends,” and even today refuses to renounce that stance. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that anti-Semitic attacks in England spiked by 60 percent last year.

Of all French soldiers currently engaged in military operations, half of them are deployed inside France. And half of those are assigned to protect 717 Jewish schools.

This massive deployment of armed forces in our own cities is a departure from history. It is a moral disarmament, before a military one.

Why does anyone choose to fight in a war? Civilized nations go to war so that members of today’s generation may sacrifice themselves to protect future generations. But if there are no future generations, there is no reason whatever for today’s young men to die in war. It is “demography, stupid.”

On March 11, 2004, 192 people were killed and 1,400 wounded in a series of terrorist attacks in Madrid. Three days later, Spain’s Socialist leader, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, was elected prime minister. Just 24 hours after being sworn in, Zapatero ordered Spanish troops to leave Iraq “as soon as possible.”

The directive was a monumental political victory for extremist Islam. Since then, Europe’s boots on the ground have not been dispatched outside Europe to fight jihadism; instead, they have been deployed inside the European countries to protect monuments and civilians.

“Opération Sentinelle” is the first new large-scale military operation within France. The army is now protecting synagogues, art galleries, schools, newspapers, public offices and underground stations. Of all French soldiers currently engaged in military operations, half of them are deployed inside France. And half of those are assigned to protect 717 Jewish schools. Meanwhile, French paralysis before ISIS is immortalized by the image of police running away from the office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo during the massacre there.

At least this time, the Jews know the signs of danger and have somewhere to run to, somewhere they are welcome. But many members of the Labour Party, including Labour Members of Parliament, would prefer them not to have such a haven, wishing instead for the land to be “returned” in virtually its entirety to the Palestinians.

The “Left” repeatedly calls for boycotts of Israel because it is, they claim, “an apartheid state.” Israel is so totally free of apartheid that anyone who has spent ten minutes there knows the accusation to be an outright lie. So why keep on saying something untrue? That is anti-Semitism.

Two of the Labour Party’s senior members were suspended as a result of their anti-Semitic remarks, and there is talk that 50 secret suspensions have been made.

It is worth adding that existing anti-Semitism within the British establishment, not least the pro-Arab Foreign Office, means that little is done even by conservatives to tackle this Jew hatred on the left.

After the truth about the Holocaust came out in the late 1940s and 50s, being an anti-Semite was the biggest dishonour of all. No mainstream politician, whatever his or her personal views about Jews, would ever declare anything that hinted at anti-Semitism. The “far right” had gone (for a time) into oblivion. Israel was admired.

Germany paid reparations (wiedergutmachung, “making good again”) to Holocaust survivors, as did France, an equally anti-Semitic country[1] out of which came the first ideologue of a “master race,” Joseph Arthur, Comte de Gobineau (d.1882), whose books spread the message of Aryan supremacy. Oddly enough, Arthur was not anti-Semitic: Hitler and his acolytes embraced his Aryan supremacism and edited out Arthur’s philo-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism continued, of course, but most people kept it to themselves. The horror of what the Germans had done to the Jews was, for a majority of British people, a token of the rightness of our cause in fighting and defeating Germany. Jews had never been safer than they were then in the UK. That anti-Semitism might return — and viciously — reincarnated inside a mainstream, anti-fascist and supposedly anti-racist political party, was simply inconceivable.

‘The Washington Examiner on April 24th, in its article, “Obama: Germany’s Merkel is right on refugee welcome,” reported President Barack Obama’s European musings on immigration:

President Obama says German Chancellor Angela Merkel is “on the right side of history” in how she has responded to the influx of thousands of Syrian refugees surging into Europe.

At a press conference Sunday, the president said he is “proud” of Merkel and the German people for their open-door policy of migrants fleeing violence and uncertainty in their home country.

“She is on the right side of history on this,” Obama said as he stood next to Merkel in Hannover, Germany. “And for her to take on some very tough politics in order to express not just a humanitarian concern but also a practical concern, that in this globalized world, it is very difficult for us to simply build walls.”

And now many Europeans are fleeing their home countries for points that do not welcome hordes of destructive and hostile Muslim barbarians who have boasted that Germany and other Western countries are “dead meat.” Doors are opening all over the Continent. However, they are swinging doors that can snap back to strike Merkel harshly on her electoral derriere.

Obama again:

Obama’s praise comes after Merkel faced fallout in a referendum of sorts on her immigration policy. In last month’s state elections, Merkel’s party, the Christian Democrats, took a beating. An anti-immigration party made significant gains.

Obama has promised to admit 100,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees into the U.S. this year. He faces pushback from Republicans who fear a possible security threat. GOP presidential candidates, like front-runner Donald Trump, have attacked Obama’s pledge to allow refugees into this country.

But it is not just a security threat in back of those concerns. The literal invasion of the U.S. by hordes of Muslims – especially Syrian, Iraqi, and Somalian Muslims – poses a cultural and political threat, as well. The introduction of so many hostile and assimilation-resistant Muslims is part and parcel of the Muslim Brotherhood’s overall plan to subvert the country from within, per the General Memorandum of 1991.

In January, North Korea carried out its fourth illicit nuclear test. On March 2, after weeks of diplomatic haggling, the United Nations Security Council approved a new sanctions resolution on North Korea, which U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power described as “establishing the strongest sanctions the Security Council has imposed in more than two decades.”

So how’s that going?

In the big picture, not so well. North Korea has carried on with its forbidden missile tests, including a submarine launch, and has been visibly preparing for a fifth nuclear test.

Nor are things looking all that good if you home in on some of the details, such as merchant ships linked to North Korea. This latest UN sanctions resolution included a list of 31 ships linked to North Korea, targeted for an asset freeze. The Philippines moved swiftly to comply, impounding one of these ships, the Jin Teng, which was in its waters. Then China demanded that four of the designated ships, including the Jin Teng, should be removed from the sanctions list. It appears the U.S. rolled over and agreed. The Philippines had to let the Jin Teng go. As I note in an April 26th article for the Wall Street Journal on “The Failure of Sanctions Against North Korea,” this sent the message that no one need rush to enforce the new North Korea sanctions.

That’s not a huge surprise; as of last October, almost half the UN’s 193 member states had displayed no particular interest in enforcing the previous sanctions on North Korea — failing to file the implementation reports required by the UN. CONTINUE AT SITE

Intelligence officers are taught to avoid “mirror imaging.” That is, assuming your adversary shares your analytic reference points and thinks the way you do. Americans tend to ascribe to other countries the best of our own values: tolerance, equal opportunity, rule of law, freedoms of speech and religion, and separation of church and state. But many countries do not share these values. Two of them are among our most problematic foreign relationships: Saudi Arabia and Iran.

These states, one friend and the other foe, promote ideologies that compete with America’s vision of liberal institutions, secular democracy and world order. Yet instead of confronting their illiberal, repressive, and often reprehensible narratives, we attempt to reconcile their views with our own, giving them a free pass based on our own tolerance of religious differences. The problem is that in these states religion does not exist in a vacuum. On the contrary, their religion is their political ideology—and a critical element of their foreign policy.

Despite its status as an important ally, Saudi Arabia poses a major challenge to the U.S. The ruling Saudi royal family depends upon support from the Wahhabi clergy, who represent an ultraconservative doctrine that is the cornerstone of the country’s identity and the source of the monarchy’s legitimacy. The kingdom has long exported the Wahhabi ideology with billions in funding for religious schools, or madrassas, world-wide. While Saudi rulers proscribe religious leaders from actively supporting violent revolution, terrorist groups like al Qaeda and Islamic State frequently cite or distort Wahhabi principles to justify the repression of women, autocratic rule and violence against non-Muslims.

Moreover, as Princeton scholar Cole Bunzel recently detailed in a report published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Saudi religious establishment has been practically mute as ISIS has laid claim to Wahhabi principles. This irresponsible silence, a tacit endorsement of political violence, especially against Shia Muslims, allows terrorist groups such as al Qaeda and ISIS to use the Wahhabi faith as a steppingstone to their violent, apocalyptic political ideology.

Although Saudi Arabia, sometimes with U.S. support, has launched effective counterterrorism operations against al Qaeda and ISIS, these efforts are shortchanged if the Saudi kingdom does not also address the underlying ideology that inspires ISIS attacks around the globe. And Riyadh, as custodian of Islam’s holiest sites, is uniquely positioned to act. Americans’ natural aversion to government involvement in religious matters should not become an excuse for U.S. failure to tackle this ideological challenge. CONTINUE AT SITE

SHANGHAI— Henry Luce, the founder of Time magazine, was raised in China as the son of a Presbyterian missionary.

He and his family were among a population of foreigners that swelled to as many as half a million before 1949. Some were teachers, doctors and journalists. Others were merchants, engineers, architects and bankers. Within a few years of the Communist takeover almost all had fled or been kicked out. Mao harbored such loathing for Shanghai, China’s most cosmopolitan city, that he considered emptying it out completely after the revolution.

Deng Xiaoping’s “open door” economic reform policies in 1978 brought many of these groups flocking back. Many thought the openness would only grow.

It may be time to review that judgment: These days, foreigners are starting to feel less welcome. The Chinese legislature passed a law last week that puts all foreign NGOs under police administration with onerous registration and reporting requirements, essentially treating them as a security risk. Many will be forced to leave.

In line with this new mood of suspicion, a public poster campaign is warning young female government workers about “dangerous love” with foreign spies, a label frequently attached to the few foreigners who stayed on after 1949, particularly Americans.

State media regularly inveigh against “hostile foreign forces” trying to topple China’s socialist system.

Restrictions on foreign publications are tightening. Time, with a storied past in China, has joined a growing list of foreign news websites blocked by the Great Firewall. It includes the Economist, Bloomberg, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times —in addition to search engines and social-network sites like Google, Facebook and Twitter.

Christianity is in the firing line again: Authorities in eastern China, where missionaries labored before the revolution, are tearing down crosses atop churches. CONTINUE AT SITE

“There are today, we know, a hundred neighborhoods in France that present potential similarities with what’s happened in Molenbeek.” — Patrick Kanner, Minister for Urban Areas.

The Salafists, in fact, do not want to “take the power in these neighborhoods.” In many, they already have it.

“The farther I walked between the buildings, the more I was stunned. A courtyard of Islamist miracles; an enclave that wants to live like during the times of Muhammad. Bakery, hairdresser… It’s a mini Islamic Republic. During the sermons, they denounce, they criminalize. A woman who smokes? A degenerate. A woman who does not veil herself? A tease. A man that does not eat halal? He has an express ticket to hell.” — Paris Match.

Remadna received a death threat over the phone: “We know where your kids go to school,” and “your daughter is very pretty.” The next day, a delegation of completely veiled Salafist “true Muslim mothers” came and told her, “We want mosques, not schools.”

Patrick Kanner, France’s Minister for Urban Areas, was undoubtedly not planning to tell the truth on March 27.

He was on the set of Europe 1 TV to emphasize the left’s credo: Islamist terrorism is rooted in poverty and unemployment. But they asked one question again and again: “How many Molenbeeks are in France?” Finally, he said: “There are today, we know, a hundred neighborhoods in France that present potential similarities with what has happened in Molenbeek.”

Molenbeek, as the entire world knows today, is the neighborhood of Brussels that has become the epicenter of jihad in Europe. It is a neighborhood under Salafist control that sent three of its residents to assassinate hundreds of people in Paris on November 13, 2015. These are the residents of the same neighborhood that bombed the Brussels airport and the Maalbeek Metro station.

As someone whose autobiography was called I Knew I Was Right, I’ve never been backward in coming forward when it comes to world-class gloating.

But never on any subject have I wanted so much to be proved wrong as on the obscene level of anti-Semitism – or Jew-hatred, to give it an uglier, more accurate name – infecting the left-wing in this country.

A whopping 13 years ago, I wrote a farewell piece in the Guardian explaining that I was leaving my job on the newspaper – the established voice of the British Left – due to what I saw as its ugly, anti-Jew rhetoric and accompanying Islamophilia (the final straw was when they ran an opinion piece by Osama bin Laden).

In that year, 2003, attacks on Jews had risen by 75% and since 2000 there had been a 400% increase in attacks on synagogues.
And the EU’s racism watchdog had recently suppressed a report on the rise of anti-Semitism because it concluded that Muslims were behind many incidents.

“What sort of world do we live in, when racism is ‘allowed’ to be reported only if it comes from the white and the right?” I wondered at the time. And the statistics are far worse now.

The strange fruit which was allowed to blossom by a Labour Party, smug in its anti-racist credentials, has turned the party into a rotting edifice fatally riddled with the ancient disease of anti-Semitism.

The long, lonely road here started with the perfectly ­reasonable desire to be anti-racist and ended up poisoned by what I call Paint-Chart Politics.