תגית: Rakhine

Why Don't You Recognize October 7th – A letter to a Burmese friend (and a genocide researcher)

This is a tectonic and world-changing event, carried out by thousands of people supported by hundreds of thousands of people, as well as by movements, states and regimes. Not condemning it is supporting it. And the results are inevitable. Because of the horror that these people have inflicted on the world, an even darker night is to come before we will see the light. 

Published in "Davar": https://en.davar1.co.il/462536/

A is my friend. He is a Burmese expatriate from Myanmar living in Europe. He is an academic, an educated and friendly person, and a veteran human rights activist. As a journalist who writes, among other things, about countries where acts of genocide, ethnic cleansing and human rights violations take place, I consult with various experts. A is one of them. This is the letter I sent him last week.

Hello, A. I am writing in response to your letter regarding the “colonial character and genocidal policy of Israel.” As you can imagine, I am quite busy these days, and as someone who is far away from his family in Israel, I am distracted. I am responding to you despite all this, mainly because your words opened with a reference to Auschwitz, a place where many of my family members were murdered about 80 years ago.

According to you, Israel is using the Holocaust as a “blank check” to justify the imprisonment, bombing and starvation of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, almost half of whom are children. "In these circumstances, 'never again' is a hollow phrase," you write. “It becomes a call for uncontrolled violence, battle cries and a campaign of revenge and extermination." In the past and under different circumstances, I must admit that I might have agreed with you.

A, you must remember that we got to know each other after several occasions when you very generously shared with me your expertise, knowledge and experience regarding Myanmar. When I first contacted you, I wrote that as a journalist working in a free country, I felt obliged to tell the story of the victims of atrocities there – amongst others, the Rohingya people other minorities who have been suffering from genocidal policies for years since the military coup in 2021. 

Since I am not an expert myself, I reached out to you, just as I reached out to many other experts, witnesses and human rights activists who could shed light on other places I wrote about, such as China, Ethiopia, Syria, Iran, Mexico, Belarus and Iraq.

This is an important point. As you know, there are complicated conflicts in many of these places about which there are different opinions. Still, my feeling was that we shared a real commitment to expose and fight certain types of acts which cannot be excused under any circumstances, regardless of the different narratives that explain the conflict. I mean the kind of actions that cannot be permitted even if there is no agreement on the history of the conflict or even on the identity of those responsible for it.

These actions include those that took place in Rakhine province in Myanmar, which I wrote about with your kind help. The barbaric murder, torture and rape of innocents that happened in your country is inexcusable. Political, ethnic, religious or demographic claims simply cannot justify throwing babies into fire, torturing children to death in front of their parents, and the mass rape of women before their execution. I thought we agreed on that.

This week, I received a long email from you, Dr. A. Extremely long. Long enough to clarify your words or even to add something along the lines of: "despite all this, of course I condemn [Hamas’ actions],” or even "despite the absolute truth of the Palestinian claims and genocidal policy of Israel, I do not justify killing civilians."

But there was none of that. Somehow, your post references 100 years of conflict prior to October 7 (including explanations using maps, cartoons, pictures, and quotes). And there is a reference to the days after October 7.

But the day itself, when over a thousand people, most of them civilians, were brutally murdered and over 200 people, again most of them civilians, were kidnapped, was completely absent. And it's strange given the fact that, as I recall, we share an interest in cases of throwing babies into fire, torturing children to death in front of their parents, and the mass rape of women before their execution. Yes, to make the point clear to a person from your background, for one historical moment, Israel's Gaza envelope region became Myanmar's Rakhine. 

A, since I received your message, I have been trying to understand why you do not recognize October 7th. I understand your opinion about the essence of Zionism and the essence of Israel. I don't agree with it, but I understand your point. Still, there's that little matter of “under all circumstances.” Perhaps there is a certain type of fascist, fundamentalist, racist, and violent organization that, against your usual leftist positions, you actually do support.

But if so, what are the criteria? Is it because they are jihadists? Is it a matter of religion? Or that according to the accepted code of the post-colonialist discourse, the "natives" have certain Jew-killing privileges because of the many years of oppression they have endured? Oppression, which, as you know, I have never denied. 

And maybe you are one of those who do not believe the photos, the direct testimonies of survivors, the explicit confessions of the attackers and the unwatchable and undeniable videos. Do all these not meet your strict standards? Strange, because we never applied such strict standards when I wrote about Myanmar.

Do you think it's all a conspiracy of Western governments spreading fake news? Is it all the settlers’ lies, supported by American imperialists? Are you really not affected by the testimonies of Israeli women, children and elders, many of whom, by the way, are peace activists who built their homes in socialist communes that are not in any way located in the West Bank or in any way disputed. Unless the very existence of Israel is disputed, a position I assume you hold since you treat Israel as a settler and colonialist entity.

And maybe I didn't understand what you meant. In this case, perhaps in the future, we can discuss the true nature of Israel. As you know from our previous correspondence, I never supported Netanyahu, I have always believed in compromise with the Palestinians and I am absolutely against any kind of war crime, including against civilians in Gaza. You also know that I am a social democrat and a person who is aware of the climate crisis and the hardships of the "global south.”  But wait, here I am, once again falling into this trap. If I were not all of these things, if I were a Netanyahu supporter or a settler in the West Bank, would my massacre and that of my family members be justified?

Again, there's that "under all circumstances" nuisance. Even if the Jews were like the French in Algiers, and they are not, deliberate murder of innocents is always evil and mass murder is absolute evil. Among us Jews, even complete secularists like me sometimes recite from the ancient texts: “I have set before you today the heavens and the earth, life and death; I have set before you the blessing and the curse. Choose life, for your lives and for your descendants,” as it is written in the book that you call the Old Testament. Do you understand A? You chose life – without “buts” and without “maybes.” This is why I always opposed my own people murdering other innocent people. And you know what, I'm angry at myself for not resisting enough.

***

And so for the record, I want to mention that I believe that Jews, not just Palestinians, also have rights in the place where I was born. They have personal, social and national rights and they also have responsibilities that are well described in the Declaration of Independence of their country, our country, which was founded 75 years ago. You don't acknowledge that, which is probably the real reason you didn't mention October 7th in your message. If "Palestine will be free from the river to the sea," as they are now shouting in the streets near my house in Europe, the events of October 7th are probably not an accident in your eyes. They are the first step in the plan.

"Free from the river to the sea” means without the people who are living there now. This is not the two-state solution, nor a partition plan, nor a federation. I think with your education, you know exactly what it means. But in case it's not clear enough, I'll say it explicitly: Hamas is the genocidal wing of the Palestinian national movement, and it turns out that it has quite a few supporters. My friends say that such views stem from antisemitism, but I don't know what is hidden in a person's heart. How much darkness, how much hatred.

I also don't know what is hidden in your heart. But I know that October 7th was not another attack, another battle, another chapter in the bloody history of the Middle East. It cannot be solved with sentences like "I cannot be expected to condemn every action taken by the weak and oppressed.” This is a tectonic and world-changing event, carried out by thousands of people supported by hundreds of thousands of people, as well as by movements, states and regimes. Not condemning it is supporting it. And the results are inevitable. Because of the horror that these people have inflicted on the world, an even darker night is to come before we will see the light. 

***

And so, as a wise man wrote during the World War II, you and I now stand on two sides. "My opinion is clear about your motives,” he wrote, “and you would do well to speculate on my motives.” And he added: "I have one more thing left to say to you, and let it be the last. I want to tell you how in the past we were so similar and today we are enemies. How could I have stood by your side, and and why everything between us is over now.” 

And that's the thing. In Xinjiang and Syria, in Tigray and Iran, in Myanmar and Israel, acts like those committed by Hamas are not only the absolute lowest of what the human race is capable of. They also redefine the lines. If they do not fill a person's heart with unconditional anger and disgust, they place him outside the legitimate discussion of civilized people. If you can only find room in your heart for the pain of one side, that's your problem. But with your permission, I think I'll find myself a different expert on Myanmar.

Before I finish, I will ask just one last thing. Do me a favor – next time, please refrain from referring to Auschwitz. Not because I have a monopoly on the memory of the Holocaust or the memory of the victims. But because when it comes to the 1940s, those people on whose behalf you are currently campaigning, they tend to be something different than you imagine. When you remove the appearances of European leftist movements, those people tend to be supporters of the side that built Auschwitz, not of those led there to their deaths.

And if They Used Israeli Weapons

The public is not allowed to know which products can be marketed without a license and to whom, but they are also sold to countries that perpetrate horrific acts with them

Published in "Haaretz": https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2022-10-06/ty-article-opinion/.premium/and-if-they-used-israeli-weapons/00000183-aa22-d5eb-a3af-fab6ca870000

The raid on MonTaing Pin began at 6 A.M. About 150 soldiers entered the village from the west, firing in all directions. Many of the residents fled, others found shelter in the local monastery. What happened afterwards was described by witnesses who told their story to Radio Free Asia (RFA). The soldiers arrived at the monastery, found the villagers who had hidden there and sat them in rows, men and women separately. The women were taken to one of the rooms and locked inside. The men were tied up and their valuables taken. Later they were stripped, interrogated and tortured by knife stabbings and beatings.

In the evening they were locked into one of the rooms without food, water or access to a toilet. The next morning 10 of them were forced to carry looted property to the riverbank. When they finished the work, they were executed with machetes. Their bodies were burned. In the afternoon most of the remaining men were taken to the village, with their hands bound and their faces covered. They were executed with guns and machetes, and their bodies were dragged into the houses.

Some were cut into three or four parts before the houses were torched. Afterwards the soldiers left. A few hours later, the few captives who had remained in the monastery and survived returned to the village and found puddles of blood outside the ruins of the houses, and body parts, some of which were eaten by feral dogs.

The village where the massacre was perpetrated in May is located in the Sagaing district of northern Myanmar – a region identified with opponents of the junta that ousted the semi-civilian government of Aung San Su Chi in February 2021 and took over the country. There is evidence that recently in this region there were acts of slaughter and torching of additional villages.

This is a tumultuous period in Myanmar because many forces are fighting one another, while harming the civilian population. The conflict in the state of Rakhine in the west of the country continues even after it had already turned into genocide against the members of the Rohingya minority. Protesters against the regime are killed in demonstrations in the major cities, and at the same time there are clashes with organizations of ethnic minorities. We know nothing about many of the incidents due to restrictions on freedom of the press.

The reason why the massacre in Mon Taing Pin reached the media is interesting and unusual: One of the soldiers involved in it forgot or lost his cell phone. The phone was found, and its contents sent to RFA, a Washington based American funded media organization.

The photos and film clips discovered on the phone are a smoking gun. There is a picture of men who are seated, tied up, in a row outside the monastery. Another picture, dated a day later, shows the bodies of five of those men, with three soldiers standing over them: One is smoking a cigarette, a second is staring at the bodies and holding a gun, the third is photographing the bodies with his cell phone. Other pictures show a young man, on his knees, his hands bound, being tortured by knife stabbings. And there is also a film clip of the owner of the phone and two of his friends boasting about the executions they carried out. Their faces and the symbols and numbers of the army units are exposed.

This is horrifying evidence for anyone to absorb, but there is an aspect that is likely to be of particular concern to Israeli readers. It is known that in the past, Israel had extensive ties with the regime in Myanmar, and weapons, cyber systems, vehicles and drones of Israeli manufacture were and are used by the army. These are not only historical connections, but also business deals dating from the middle of the previous decade, when the hands of the Myanmar army were deeply mired in the blood of the genocide of the Rohingya.

As far as is known, Israeli defense exports to Myanmar ended about five years ago, but is it possible that Israeli weapons are still being used by the Myanmar army? Is it possible that the horrors in the village of Mon Taing Pin also have an Israeli connection? As a journalist who writes about genocide, ethnic cleansing and human rights violations, I asked the RFA for the original photos and film clips, and when I received them I was pleased to discover than they contain no evidence of weapons and equipment originating in Israel. Presumably, this is reason for a sigh of relief.

But only presumably. Israel is one of the world’s largest arms exporters. In spite of that, it did not ratify the Arms Trade Treaty – a multilateral pact that regulates the international trade in conventional arms – as did most Western democracies. Israel is also refraining from setting regulations to monitor the activity of intermediaries, especially former senior defense establishment officials, in military transactions and arms sales.

In addition, a few weeks ago the Defense Ministry’s Defense Export Control Agency published a proposal for new regulations that ease the sale of unclassified products. The list of unclassified products that can be sold without a license was expanded, as was the list of countries to which they can be sold. At the same time, the public is not permitted to know precisely which products can be sold, or to which countries. Yet it is known that crimes and horrific acts that are likely to be committed are not a consideration in determining the list of countries, and the government can in any case bypass the list by means of secret diplomatic agreements.

It is true that no evidence of Israeli weapons was found in Mon Taing Pin, but in the broader picture Israeli citizens have no way of knowing that their country, or companies operating in their country, are not involved in the marketing, sale or mediation in transactions with countries that massacre civilians, like Myanmar; countries where there is ethnic cleansing, like Ethiopia or South Sudan; or dictatorships that keep ethnic minorities in concentration camps and attack their neighbors, like Russia and China.

Transparency and adding an ethical dimension to considerations in this field would not harm Israeli security and are unrelated to political parties. Yanshuf, an NGO that does important work in this area, recently turned to all the parties to get their official position on the issue. Only one of them, Meretz, bothered to reply. And even if someone lost money from tougher regulation, all of Israeli society would benefit from the removal of its contribution to the major atrocities of our time, and enjoy an international reputation as the nation of startups, drip agriculture and Copaxone, rather that as a nation of “masters of war.”