Rache - In 1941 the ship "Struma" left Romania for Palestine carrying 769 Jews but was later denied permission by British authorities to allow the passengers to disembark. In Feb. 1942, it sailed back into the Black Sea where it was intercepted by a Soviet submarine and sunk as an "enemy target."

By then the War with the Nazis was 2 years old so maybe at that time the Allies didn't know about what was happening to the Jews - or maybe they did know but didn't care enough.

In 1938 Australia said they would not have anything to do with Jews fleeing Germany because we didn't have a racial problem.

We didn't accept any Jews until 1945=-46 but we had no problem accepting a good number of nazis.

Australia, America, Britain and others were not fighting the Nazis because they gave a stuff about the Jewish people being slaughtered, they didn't even believe it was happening for god's sake.

All those nice, christian countries denied it was happening, said there was no way it was true and left the people to die.

It is like with the Taliban during the 1990's - the Afghans begged and screamed for help and no-one believed them or cared about them at all.

The few Jews who survived the concentration camps, who suffered torture and deprivation such as I hope we never see again are heroes to every person on the planet that I have ever spoken to.

But they do not approve of the punishment of the Palestinians and Lebanese. They even wrote to Haaretz saying so.

The collective west did sit idly by while 6 million people were murdered. That is an historical fact no matter what you might think.

Inshallah 2bob

Your labour of love, hangs on hate.

Keith

I just don't understand why Marilyn Shepherd is so full of hate towards Western countries...Doesn't she have any idea that Saudi Arabia is probably the closest of any country on earth to be the embodiment of total evil. Its vicious treatment of women, of gays, of non-Muslims and of apostates is sickening. It is a country without press freedoms, without religious freedom, without political freedoms, without even cinemas. It is a country where roving religious bully-boys, the Mutawwa, swagger around punishing people on the spot without trial for infringement of Sharia, and where people are beheaded in public. Iran, the standard bearer for Shia Islam is little better. As I've said before, Shepherd should be sentenced to spend her days in Saudi Arabia as a faceless, shrouded "black moving object" if she thinks the West is so bad. Any true progressive would be campaigning against the unspeakable human rights evils perpetrated in Muslim countries

Keith,
You've got to be kidding. To prove your claim that the Israelis had "admitted they knew Hezbollah had moved out of Qana two days before their murderous attack" you show a comment from the Israeli spokesman that the last attack from Qana had occured in the last day or two. Surely you understand that these aren't even close to the same thing. Hezbullah had been firing from the village every day or so since the fighting started so a gap of 24-48 hrs between rocket launches was not unusal. They in no way support your assertion that this proves that Hezbullah had left the village. Why would they do so after hiding behind the local civilians for the previous two weeks?

As if to prove your bias you then rely on the assertion that the Israelis habitually lie and therefore you can put the worst possible connotation on their words.

The fact is Hezbullah was using the village and its inhabitants as a shield in the hope that this would allow them to attack Israeli civilian targets with impunity. Were the Israelis to allow this to continue, allow their own peoples to be killed from these protected positions without seeking to take out the launches simply because they were unable to prove that all civilians had left? Your assertion, for it is baseless in fact, that the attack was a war crime because the Israelis knew no forces remained fails.

Just on Qana in general, many questions remain unanswered..what happened in the seven hours between the Israeli attack and the fall of the building; why were there only women and children in the building; given the now proof that Hezbullah, using a gullible and willing press, used the event to stage photo opportunities, were they, as some bloggers have opined, in fact a lot more implicated in the deaths than the Israelis. These are questions that may never be answered and never answered to the satisfaction of those that think Israel is wrong no matter what happens. But they remain of interest notheless.

Mark

Whilst Jewish refugees were turned away by many Western nations during the Nazi occupation, this generally occurred prior to the outbreak of war 1939 and any such occurences would have been rare indeed by the time Germany began its extermination efforts (which only began from around late 1942 I believe).

Shameful as this failure of Western nations was, they didn't know they were sending Jews to certain death. You trivialise the crimes of the Nazis when you equate their malice with the mere neglect of the West