Grave concerns

On Sunday the BBC News web site reported the racist vandalizing of 148 Muslim WWI war graves in France.

I'm glad the BBC has done this, because, apart from anything else, it highlights the reality of Islamophobia.

These graves were attacked, for no reason other than their occupants were Muslims, by people who no doubt regard themselves as super-patriots of France, and despite the irony of their dead victims having died to secure the desecrators' national independence. Just in case anyone was in any possible doubt about Islam per se being the butt of their hatred, the vandals also hung a pig's head over some of the vandalized graves and wrote slogans insulting the French Minister of Justice, who is a Muslim. The graves were sprayed with swastikas and SS flashes; another layer of irony there, in the light of the history of the Muslim divisions of volunteers who fought for the Nazis.

It's impressive that President Sarkozy promptly spoke out about the attack as "a hateful attack" and "the most inadmissible type of racism".

I first came across a French war cemetery near Royan, in the Charente region, about fifteen years ago. I was intrigued by a roadside sign reading "Cimitiere Nationale" and stopped to visit it, thinking it might be a resting place for people of national stature, rather like the role Westminster Abbey plays in England's national memorialization.

It turned out to be a cemetery for the hundreds of Free French who died fighting their way through south-west France, where the German SS occupying troops fought to the last ditch as late as April 1945. And there I saw the rows and rows of Free French Muslim graves, almost all of them of young men in their early twenties, and tried to imagine the tragedies that spread through the North African villages most of them must have come from.

In the centre of the cemetery, there was a small glass pane let into the ground. It was filled with ashes brought from one of the concentration camps, in memory of the deported, most of whom were Jews. I was stunned by the sight of this painful little memorial; I couldn't imagine the Commonwealth War Graves Commission so eloquently demonstrating the indivisibility of all those who died at the hands of the Nazis. I doubt if there are any official British war memorials in Jersey to the British and refugee Jews who were deported from that bit of British soil to the death camps, with the assistance of the British police on occupied Jersey, or the slave labourers worked to death by the Nazis there.

Not that I really want to criticize the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Partly because I'm the daughter of refugees who reached England only a few months (or in the case of my father, just two weeks) before the start of WWII, and partly because I'm old enough to have grown up in the bomb-rubble strewn streets of post war Stepney, I am powerfully moved by the war cemeteries of WWI and WWII. It is a humbling experience to drive from Calais or Boulogne towards Paris past the miles of cemeteries of the British and American war dead. It's something that seems to have acted on me as a permanent inoculation against fashionable anti-Americanism.

To walk round a Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery is to have one of the most powerful -- albeit low key--demonstrations of the ideals of British-style democracy. After the unprecedented carnage of WWI, the authorities made the decision that -- in a still deeply class-divided society-- the war dead were indivisible. Indeed, this was the very first war in which the fallen of all ranks were given the dignity of an individual named grave. All the dead, whatever their rank or religion, were given the same style memorial; the families of Jews, Muslims and Christians could ask for a Star of David, an Islamic Crescent or a Christian cross on their loved ones' memorials, and all the families were allowed to have engraved the same number of words of their own choosing. The cemeteries are all planted and superbly maintained, with beautiful, low-growing shrubs and flowers, making them pleasant and peaceful in a way that other cemeteries, particularly war cemeteries are not.

So it's doubly and trebly sad that neither the BBC nor, as far as I can see, any other British news outlet, has chosen to report the recent destruction by Palestinian gunmen of a British war memorial. It's the WWI British War Memorial in Gaza, which was blown up last week, and reported in the Israeli press, but not in the British media. You can see the photograph of the memorial as it was before it was destroyed in the background of the photo of the cemetery to which I've linked. No doubt it commemorated the names of over 700 soldiers who died in the battles to take Gaza without their bodies being found. There are around 4,000 war dead buried there, mainly from WWI but also from WWII.

And, far from a ringing condemnation by Britain's Prime Minister comparable with that of Sarkozy, there's just a somewhat plaintive statement by the British Consulate-General in Jerusalem, intended for the Hamas regime in Gaza:

"The history of this region is complex. But the right of the dead to lie in peace and dignity is simple and should be respected by all. We hope that the authorities in Gaza will make every effort to apprehend those responsible."

So I'm depressed but not at all surprised by the silence beyond the Jewish press and anti-racist organizations about the desecration a week ago of over thirty Jewish graves in East London's Plashet Cemetery. That's got a particularly strong resonance with me; the hatred of Jews so intense that they feel the need to attack the dead. My mother's parents are buried at a cemetery just half a mile from Plashet, and my father is buried at a cemetery a few miles beyond that, which I'm aware is in prime BNP territory.

From Gordon Brown? Silence. From the Home Secretary? Silence. From the Minister for Community Cohesion? Silence. Business as usual.

Comments

[Homphobic Horse]

"the hatred of Jews so intense that they feel the need to attack the dead."

lol.

[CyberDoc]

The culprits should get a beating. That would put many off following their example.

Homophobic Horse: if there were any graves of gay people desecrated, would you be less bothered?

When are people like you going to understand that you cannot eliminate prejudice, until you have eliminated prejudice?

[AgainsTTheWall]

Its surprising that the British war memorial has lasted so long really given that the men lying there are directly responsible for the misery inflicted on the Palestinians these last 90 years.

The restraint of the locals is rather admirable.

[michael]

againstthewall - thanks for reminding us again that Palestinian Arabs can/must never bear moral responsibility for their actions, but are always mere puppets on the strings of history, jerked this way and that by the rest of the world. You're so right: every time a Palestinian Arab straps on explosives to kill mothers in a restaurant or aims a rocket towards a civilian Israeli town, he is morally innocent, and a British soldier dead for over a century bears "direct responsibility" for the bloodshed. I feel sorry for you - living in a world where foreigners who don't impinge on your life ("the locals" as you revealingly call them) can be stripped of their human and moral faculties in order that they fit more neatly the simplistic ideological templates that furnish your mind. I am a Northern Irish catholic, but if during the troubles I had decided to blow apart human beings in a shopping centre in Manchester, history would be no excuse for my actions. You are exhibiting ignorant racism: Palestinian Arabs here and now are as fully human as you are, and when they choose to kill non-combatant civilians they alone bear complete moral responsibility for their action, just as I would, just as you would.

And if you really are determined to see the Palestinian Arabs as so mentally and morally retarded that they cannot assume any responsibility for their actions, to blame fallen soldiers rather than political leaders for the course of history is spectacularly stupid, and reveals you to be more of a fool than I should even be responding to.

[jeff]

againstthewall:

are you having a fucking laugh? the british did everything they could post 1930 to STOP a jewish state in Palestine!

[Cyberdoc]

AgainstTheWall

The pro-Palestinian terrorists would not spare you or your loved ones, as Westerners, as they regard you as being of the same corrupt, inferior body as anyone outside of their creed. At best you would be one of their leaders' useful idiots.

Do you think that all will be peace and tranquility after they have destroyed Israel? They call Israel the "Little Satan". You are part of the "Great Satan". They are sentient, and driven, and have an entirely different world view to you, and you are also their enemy, whether there is an Israel or not, and whether you support them or not. Rather than quoting Koran, Sunnah, Hadith and history to you, you would do yourself favours if you educate yourself.

Or you can continue to be an arrogant turkey that votes for Christmas.

[Spiros]

It's been a difficult few days. In avcnade of Dec. 20th I dread remembering the morning I found him. The day of I feel sad for all the things we didn't get to together, especially Christmas. Afterwards, I'm inspired by the love people have shown us and him. Two years after his passing, the Alexander Michael Dodson Memorial Scholarship Fund has $53,646 in it and is funding 10 Trenton kids to go to an educational summer camp. Every day, kids play in the Alexander Michael Dodson Tot Lot Playground in our neighborhood. I know that every day our friends think about him and that every hour we do. I know that every other tragedy in life is small in comparison. Best of all I have great memories of Upside Down Alexander, of reading Where The Wild Things ARe and Cat in the Hat. I remember how beautiful a child he was. I remember changing him and bathing him. Most of all I remember how he would race towards the door when I came home from work. I'll never forget how much I looked forward to him tearing around the corner to see me.

[Tika]

This breaks my heart, I'm so very sorry for your loss.You'll be able to find dtrcoaeions like you mentioned at any novelty shop/toy store/florist and even $2 shops. I hope you have someone you can grieve with and talk to. My thoughts will be with you for days after reading yourquestion.