The weekly blog  

Genocide

Genocide.  The systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.  Was the holocaust the only one?

In school we heard of the Dutch East India Company.  The 1600’s.  The Netherlands.  A peaceful, benign country.  They traded in spices.  Nutmeg.  

And they committed genocide.  Because they wanted a monopoly.  

The people of the Banda Islands knew how to harvest nutmeg from the Myrista fragrans tree.  The Banda Islands were the only source of nutmeg.  The natives could have taken this knowledge to other islands.  Created competition.  So they were eliminated.  Killed.  All of them.  And replaced with slave labor.  It was the first known case of corporate genocide.  

The purveyors of this genocide were Christians.

Despite the smattering of deniers, the holocaust of Jews really happened.  By Germany.  But it was not their first rodeo in the genocide department.

Between 1906 and 1908 German commander Luther von Trotha ordered the extermination of all indigenous Herero and Narna people of Southwest Africa (today Namibia) for resisting colonial rule.

They were exiled to the desert to starve.  If they did not leave they were executed.  Skulls and body parts were shipped to Germany to be studied to determine why blacks were “inferior.”  

The Lutheran chuch had missionaries dispersed in the area.  They felt the genocide was justified.  

The Old Testament of the Bible and the Torah have several examples of genocide.  Ordered by God.  Joshua 6 - the total destruction of Jericho.  Numbers 21 and Deuteronomy 20 - the Israelites were commanded to destroy the Canaanites completely, man, woman, and child.  Eliminate the bloodline.  1 Samuel 15 - destroy the Amalekites completely.  Eliminate the bloodline.  And Numbers 31 - kill all male and non-virgin Midianites.  

Now we have Israel.  Zionism.  Greater Israel.  Destroying Gaza.

Do not equate all Jewish people as Zionists.  Most Zionists are Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews and Christian Zionists.  

Ashkenazi Jews suffered the Holocaust.  They know genocide.

Are they committing genocide in Gaza?  Are they justifying genocide with words of the Torah?  

Shouldn’t we take another look at these holy books and put them in context of the thousands of years that have passed since they were written?  

Shouldn’t religion be a means of creating peace, not war?  

Wouldn’t it help if we all respected each other, quit trying to force our respective religions down each other's throats, and learned to get along?