David Craig, on February 1st, 2015As the sad news spreads of the second Japanese hostage held by *sl*mic State (ISIS) being beheaded, we have the usual expressions of outrage from world leaders at ISIS’s ‘brutality’ and ‘savagery’ and ‘barbarism’.
David Cameron said last night that the murder �is a further reminder that [Isis] is the embodiment of evil with no regard for human life� (Though, of course, as any fule no *sl*mic State ‘has nothing to do with *sl*m” and “*sl*m’s values are British values”)
And the Japanese PM announced: �I feel strong indignation at this inhumane and contemptible act of terrorism, I will never forgive these terrorists”.
Well, the Japanese PM should know a bit about terrorism and crimes against humanity as ISIS’s spree of rape and murder is mere child’s play – a bagatelle – compared to what our Japanese and German friends were up to just over 70 years ago.
Japanese:�From the invasion of China in 1937 to the end of World War II, the Japanese military regime murdered almost 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including thousands of Western prisoners of war. These included about 300,000 Chinese civilians slaughtered in Nanking and perhaps 400,000 Chinese who died from experiments testing cholera, anthrax and the plague. About a third of all allied prisoners held by the Japanese died, many from disease, but also from beatings and beheadings. Japanese officers used to have competitions for fun to see who could behead the most allied prisoners with just one sword swipe:
In order to save bullets, the Japanese would kill their millions by bayoneting their victims or beating them to death with spades. The women would be slit open after being raped. Or sometimes the Japanese took a short-cut and just buried their victims alive.
Germans: Around 12 million people (including 6 million Jews) were murdered in German concentration camps:
Using poison gas was a useful way of saving bullets which could then be used to kill British and American troops.
In addition about 20 million Russians were murdered including�around 17 million Russian civilians who were deliberately slaughtered, often after being herded into churches and then burnt alive. More bullets saved. A further 3 million Russian prisoners of war were starved and beaten to death.
Compared to these massive, industrialised murders of tens of millions by the Japanese and Germans, ISIS’s activities could seem almost amateurish and restrained.
Of course, ISIS haven’t really got into the swing of things yet and no doubt have great plans for all of our futures. But amidst all the real and manufactured outrage against ISIS’s latest killing, there seems to be a certain forgetfulness over what supposedly ‘civilised countries’ were gleefully doing to their fellow human beings not that long ago.
There’s a cheerful thought for Sunday.
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Having been born just before the last War, the attitudes of my entire childhood and some years thereafter were coloured by personal memories of hatred of the Germans and all they stood for, including the absence of my father and nights spent in air-raid shelters, and later by equal hatred for the “Japs” once I came fully to understand what they had done to their prisoners.
However, difficult as it remains for many of my generation, with the question “what did your father do in the War” still in our minds when meet Germans, the fact is that as a nation they have confronted their past and are dealing with it as best they can. Holocaust denial is a crime and they take their schoolchildren to visit the death camps, fully informing them of the slaughter for which their forebears were responsible. The Japanese too have moved on and, it has to be said, behaved impeccably towards one another when the tsunami hit them a couple of years ago. While we should not forget the suffering imposed by all sides, since those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it, neither should we harbour bitterness when relations have evidently moved closer towards mutual understanding and forgiveness.
The same cannot and I do not believe ever will be said, of Islamic excesses. The RoP represents a backward ideology, looking ever further backwards – as several of your recent blogs have implied or overtly stated. Spend time in Australia, Sydney in particular, and you will see thousands of hard-working Japanese immigrants, fully integrated into Australian life and working to contribute towards the Australian economy. What their religion is or whom they worship I don’t know but whatever it is they don’t seek to impose it upon the country whose hospitality they enjoy. The same cannot be said of Islamic immigrants who seem, wherever they go, to wish to impose their retrogressive ideologies on their host countries and who ultimately seek to see an entire world dominated by their beliefs.