Hiroshima And Gaza

No, no one is suggesting dropping an atom bomb on Gaza. The comparison comes from a different direction, as we commemorate the 65th anniversary of dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima.

In Hiroshima, Obama, and Truman, Jonathan Tobin writes that there is nothing wrong with the fact that for the first time, an American representative has appeared in Japan to participate in the mourning of so many lives.

The problem lies in the short memories of the Japanese people:

the Japanese have never taken full responsibility for their own conduct during the war that the Hiroshima bombing helped end. Indeed, to listen to the Japanese, their involvement in the war sounds limited to the incineration of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the fire bombings of many other urban centers in the country, followed by a humiliating American occupation. The horror of the two nuclear bombs didn’t just wipe out two cities and force Japan’s government to finally bow to the inevitable and surrender. For 65 years it has served as a magic event that has erased from the collective memory of the Japanese people the vicious aggression and countless war crimes committed against not only the Allied powers but also the peoples of Asia who fell under their cruel rule in the 1930s and 1940s. The bombing of Hiroshima was horrible, but it ought not, as it has for all these years, to serve as an excuse for the Japanese people to forget the crimes their government and armed forces committed throughout their empire during the years that preceded the dropping of the first nuclear bomb.

While the tone of the Hiroshima ceremony has always been one that stressed the need to end all wars and to ensure that no more nuclear bombs should fall, it has always lacked any context for the events of August 6, 1945. The responsibility for the suffering of the Japanese people in 1945 (after spending more than a decade inflicting suffering on others with impunity and without a drop of remorse) is not an American legacy but a Japanese one. The Japanese may have suffered as their empire collapsed in defeat in 1945, but, like their Nazi allies, they have no right to collectively think of themselves as victims of that war.

The Japanese have continued to refuse to take responsibility for their actions which led to the retaliation of the allied forces--culminating in the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Similarly, Gazans--and their apologists--ignore the fact that the Arabs of Gaza knowingly elected a terrorist group to be in their government. This is a group of terrorists that everyone knows is dedicated to the destruction of the Jews of Israel.

When blogger Laila Al-Haddad writes:

Using the phrase "prison camp" to describe Gaza, as Britain's prime minister did, is not vile rhetoric. It is an understatement and even a misnomer. Prisoners are guilty of a crime, yet they are guaranteed access to certain things – electricity and water, even education – where Gazans are not. What crime did Gazans commit, except, to quote my late grandmother, "being born Palestinian"?

she is perpetuating a whitewash no different than what the Japanese people are attempting.

Both are an insult to the people who suffered--and in the case of Gaza, continue to suffer--from their cruelty.

Technorati Tag: Hiroshima and Gaza and Hamas and Japan.