Image Source with thanks:   Ahmed Akacha

In a previous post, I mentioned reading “The Hunger War – Occupied Holland 1944-1945”* written by Henri van der Zee. I’m very interested because I was an infant spectator when the realities that van der Zee describes were actually taking place in my birth country – The Netherlands.

Fortunately for me and my family, we lived in Zeeland, one of the southern provinces, whose capital is my birthplace, Middelburg.

After fierce fighting by Canadian and British soldiers and the destruction of massive dikes allowing North Sea water to drown much of our island, the Nazi forces of occupation were compelled to capitulate in November of 1944. 

Imagine the relief and the joy when those occupation forces became prisoners of war and we Zeelanders were freed of our bondage and able to get on with doing, thinking, speaking, reading, listening, loving, and praying - life - without fear of imprisonment, torture, or execution. Being human agents was allowed again.

Our neighbours in the urban-centred provinces of North and South Holland and Utrecht were not as fortunate. Zeeland had been no picnic, but the 4.5 million people living in Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and other cities experienced a hideous reign of terror. 

Subjugated by the Nazi-imposed governor Arthur Seyss-Inquart and his various forces of occupation (Wehrmacht, Gestapo, SS, Dutch sympathizers), residents were subjected to all the terrors of war – bombardments, imprisonment and executions, reprisal murders, extermination of Jews and other minorities, mass deportations of men and boys, concentration camps for resisters, food rationing, and theft of property.   Annihilation was the lot of any caught resisting the Nazi occupation.

But in the final months of the war there was also total shortage of all that is needed to maintain life. No fuel, gas or coal, and dwindling food stocks. In April 1945, per person rations were reduced from 525 calories to 400 per day – or half a loaf of bread per week, one slice per day (p. 224). There was no end in sight and the misery of hunger climaxed for far too many in death. Nine months of hell resulted in 18,000 civilians starving to death, not to mention the disastrous physical and mental inflicted harm  shaping the remainder of countless lives. 

The Nazis broke the rules of war by not protecting the civilian residents of the occupied territories governed by the Nazi forces. These were crimes and were prosecuted.  At the post-war Nürnberg  Trials, Seyss-Inquart was convicted of crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity along with fellow conspirators.  He was executed.(+ see footnotes below for more data.)

Imagine the joy the May 5^th, 1945 – Liberation Day - awakened in the millions of Dutch people kept in this open air cage of Nazi occupation. When Canadian and British forces finally drove into the cities, hidden Orange and Red-White-Blue flags were brought out of hiding and into the public sphere. All who could came into the streets to surround their liberators, to share in the relief of occupation’s end, and celebrate the return of Queen Wilhelmina of the House of Orange to her wounded, liberated kingdom. 

Many thousands of weary and physically depleted people couldn’t join “the party” unable even to walk out of their homes. Their rehabilitation was a large mission that would occupy their liberators and able residents long past the celebrations. But the wheels were put in motion for resurrection and joy in living in the free Netherlands.

More War

It is disillusioning to know that the horrors of war are again happening at this stage in my life.  Russia’s attempt to re-colonize Ukraine by warfare is being courageously resisted at great cost.   Yemen and Ethiopia and Eritrea don't get much press, but blood still seeps into ground.

Right now, Gaza’s densely populated little sliver of land, home for 2 million or so Palestinian people,  is at war again.   Already more than 8,300 people have died, mostly children and women civilians succumbing to the terror of bombardment from sea, air, and ground forces of the Israeli armed forces. Supported by both encouragement and armaments of the United States and allies, Israel feels no constraints in its war - even though Hamas-held hostages are at great risk being hit by "friendly fire".  According to  Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, this is the beginning of a long war to annihilate Hamas (and many other Palestinians).

The rationale provided by Israeli authorities is that this is a war to defend Israel and as response to surprise violent and murderous attack by Palestinian Hamas party forces against Israeli citizens on October 8^th. About 1400 people were killed in this attack and as many as 200 hostages were taken. This assault was a War Crime and Crime against Humanity+ against non-combatant Israeli civilians and humans of other nationalities.

As part of its war, Israeli has hermetically sealed off Gaza – preventing the provision of adequate food and medical supplies, water, electricity, fuel, and other necessities of life.  Calls for humanitarian ceasefires or pauses have been rejected.  The population in northern Gaza were warned to leave their area for their own safety from bombardment and infantry assaults – a displacement of as many as a million with no real place to go. No place is safe from Israeli bombardment and many civilians are simply in no position to be displaced.  Hospitals have been bombed, schools, churches, and essential infrastructure destroyed.

The plight of 2-million-plus Palestinians is precarious and many more deaths can be expected before Israel finally decides to declare that its war aims have been achieved and its defense secured. The casualty count will be – as has previously also been the case - wildly disproportionate indicative of the disparity of power between the enemies.   As occupying power Israel is committing Crimes of War and against Humanity+.

When the inevitable victory is declared, it will be unclear just what was being defended.  Was it simply the peace and security of Israelis? Or was it the continuation of Israel’s subjugation of Palestinians?

In any case, unlike the liberated Dutch in 1945 celebrating the end of war and their liberation from Nazi subjugation, Palestinians will have little to celebrate. They may be relieved, but there can be no joy of “liberation” because the end simply allows the continuation of the subjugation Palestinians have experienced and resisted for 75 years.

Palestinian will have to deal with incalculable personal and collective losses, their harm and grief inconsolable, and their hope for the future bleak and grim.  There is nothing on which to base hope because their subjugation will continue and likely worsen.

The Israeli domination will resume in somewhat less violent but well-established de-humanizing ways.  Palestinians' entire lives will continue to be dependent on what the Netanyahu or his successor Israeli government decrees. The long- term blockade and controlled border will continue to imprison Palestinians, with rumours and omens of ethnic cleansing abounding.

Restoring the essential Gazan infrastructure and institutional fabric of life will take a generation. Memories of the violence experienced will harden and hate will perpetuate the multi-generational cycles of violence. 

In the illegally Occupied Territories the Settler land-theft, home-destruction, and displacement already involving 1000 Palestinians will continue and Palestinians will continue to be subjected to the threats  and violence of armed Settlers and Israel's army.   Since October 7th, 109 Palestinians (of which 33 are children) have been killed. The rule of Knesset law, likely with a weakened Supreme Court undermining the rule of law will pour fuel on Palestinian fears for their future.

No, the end of this brutal war will bring no joy with the end of hostilities. It will signal the resumption of the status quo of subjugation and worse for Palestinians.  Is this what Israel is defending? To maintain and enhance its domination over Palestinians in this bloodied portion of God’s earth?

Shamefully, Canada is currently contributing nothing to real peace in the Middle East.  It has given the green light – along with the USA and other western allies – to this Israeli War Crime and Crime against Humanity+ as response to the Palestinian Hamas  Crimes. This will bring peace to neither Israelis nor Palestinians.  And that makes Canada and Canadians complicit in crime.  Negotiated justice only will bring peace.

May God have mercy. May God’s yearning to end the one human family’s crimes and war be fulfilled and may just peace be the quest which motivates the entire human family.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Footnotes

*Van der Zee, Henri A:  Lincoln, U of Nebraska Press, 1982 (1998 reprint, Bison Press); ISBN 0-8032-9618-5

+https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/nuremberg-trial-judgements-arthur-seyss-inquart

+ https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/nuremberg-trial-proceedings-indictment-count-three  (War Crimes)

"All the defendants, acting in concert with others, formulated and executed a Common Plan or Conspiracy to commit War Crimes as defined in Article 6 (b) of the Charter. This plan involved, among other things, the practice of "total war" including methods of combat and of military occupation in direct conflict with the laws and customs of war, and the commission of crimes perpetrated on the field of battle during encounters with enemy armies, and against prisoners of war, and in occupied territories against the civilian population of such territories.

The said War Crimes were committed by the defendants and by other persons for whose acts the defendants are responsible (under Article 6 of the Charter) as such other persons when committing the said War Crimes performed their acts in execution of a common plan and conspiracy to commit the said War Crimes, in the formulation and execution of which plan and conspiracy all the defendants participated as leaders, organizers, instigators, and accomplices.

These methods and crimes constituted violations of international conventions, of internal penal laws and of the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal law of all civilized nations, and were involved in and part of a systematic course of conduct."

(A) MURDER AND ILL-TREATMENT OF CIVILIAN POPULATIONS OF OR IN OCCUPIED TERRITORY AND ON THE HIGH SEAS

"Throughout the period of their occupation of territories overrun by their armed forces the defendants, for the purpose of systematically terrorizing the inhabitants, murdered and tortured civilians, and ill-treated them, and imprisoned them without legal process.

The murders and ill-treatment were carried out by divers means, including shooting, hanging, gassing, starvation, gross overcrowding, systematic under-nutrition, systematic imposition of labor tasks beyond the strength of those ordered to carry them out, inadequate provision of surgical and medical services, kickings, beatings, brutality and torture of all kinds, including the use of hot irons and pulling out of fingernails and the performance of experiments by means of operations and otherwise on living human subjects. In some occupied territories the defendants interfered in religious matters, persecuted members of the clergy and monastic orders, and expropriated church property. They conducted deliberate and systematic genocide, viz., the extermination of racial and national groups, against the civilian populations of certain occupied territories in order to destroy particular races and classes of people and national, racial, or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles, and Gypsies and others.

Civilians were systematically subjected to tortures of all kinds, with the object of obtaining information.

Civilians of occupied countries were subjected systematically to "protective arrests" whereby they were arrested and imprisoned without any trial and any of the ordinary protections of the law, and they were imprisoned under the most unhealthy and inhumane conditions.

In the concentration camps were many prisoners who were classified "Nacht und Nebel". These were entirely cut off from the world and were allowed neither to receive nor to send letters. They disappeared without trace and no announcement of their fate was ever made by the German authorities.

Such murders and ill-treatment were contrary to international conventions, in particular to Article 46 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed, and to Article 6 (b) of the Charter."

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/nuremberg-trial-proceedings-indictment-count-four  (Crime against Humanity)

…. (A) MURDER, EXTERMINATION, ENSLAVEMENT, DEPORTATION, AND OTHER INHUMANE ACTS COMMITTED AGAINST CIVILIAN POPULATIONS BEFORE AND DURING THE WAR

"For the purposes set out above, the defendants adopted a policy of persecution, repression, and extermination of all civilians in Germany who were, or who were believed to be, or who were believed likely to become, hostile to the Nazi Government and the common plan or conspiracy described in Count One. They imprisoned such persons without judicial process, holding them in "protective custody" and concentration camps, and subjected them to persecution, degradation, despoilment, enslavement, torture, and murder. "…..