M for Murder
I disagree with Gamblor on almost anything about the modern state of Israel and its politics -- but on this, Gamblor is absolutely correct. The deaths of the Jews caused by the Nazis in WWII are murder. Arguing against this is not even good shysterism.
Hypothetical scenario, even on the individual (as opposed to mass) level of murder:
- I shoot you with a gun.
- I force you to march across two countries. You die from exhaustion.
- I force you to march across two countries and place you in internment in a third, inside a decrepit "house" and have you work 12 hours a day (did I say 12 hours? make it 16 hours). You die as a result.
- I beat you to death.
- I conduct scientific experiments on your body, such as repeatedly choking you to near asphyxiation, plunging you in iced water for long periods of time, etc. (Note : I did not put the words "scientific experiments" in the previous phrase inside quotation marks because there have been, alas, scientific discoveries made out of those beastly affairs. But we are not supposed to get our scientific discoveries that way.) You die in the course of such an experiment, even though I considered you to be an interesting human specimen.
- You are forced by me to live in sub-zero degrees Celsius conditions for months. You are being fed and sheltered, albeit poorly. You die as a result.
- You are made by me to live in crowded, extremely unhealthy conditions, where you are continuously harassed physically and psychologically, so your health deteriorates to the point of dying. You do die eventually, either from an epidemic that breaks out in your quarters or from your own health failing.
...Each of the above is murder.
And when conducted in the course of a war, it is a war crime. In a mass scale, it is mass murders. In a huge scale, it is a crime against humanity.
The latter describes the holocaust of the Jews, and other unfortunates, at the hands of the Nazis in World War II.
--Cyrus
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