CarolC,

"The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more, and tolerated by all." Tacitus, Roman historian.


The destruction of European Jewry was a gradual, well-organized legal process. The Nazi party and the Reichstag codified a racist legal system to exclude, disenfranchise and murder Jews. The system was upheld and enforced by the German judiciary. This pattern was followed to varying degrees in occupied territories and by sympathetic regimes in Italy, Bohemia-Moravia, Slovakia, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, Hungary, Rumania, Greece and Poland. This is, indeed, ironic since Western government rests on the precept that civil authority is necessary to protect us against evil.

The environment that made the Holocaust possible was aided by prewar European apathy as well as a concerted effort by the Allies to restrict Jewish immigration below legal quota limits. The ultimate Catch-22 for German Jews is that they were not considered German citizens by the Nazis (Nuremberg Laws, 1935), yet the Americans still classified them as citizens of the Reich and maintained their annual immigration quota at 25,000. "


"Of course Israel should negotiate with them. It has no other choice."


"Hamas Charter: Article Thirteen: Peaceful Solutions, [Peace] Initiatives and International Conferences
[Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement. For renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion; the nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its faith, the movement educates its members to adhere to its principles and to raise the banner of Allah over their homeland as they fight their Jihad: "Allah is the all-powerful, but most people are not aware." From time to time a clamoring is voiced, to hold an International Conference in search for a solution to the problem. Some accept the idea, others reject it, for one reason or another, demanding the implementation of this or that condition, as a prerequisite for agreeing to convene the Conference or for participating in it. But the Islamic Resistance Movement, which is aware of the [prospective] parties to this conference, and of their past and present positions towards the problems of the Muslims, does not believe that those conferences are capable of responding to demands, or of restoring rights or doing justice to the oppressed.