The mindset displayed by Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group, reflects that of the German Wehrmacht during the titanic battle of Stalingrad, which raged from August, 1942, to February, 1943.
This mindset was vividly captured in the diary of Wilhelm Hoffman, one of the 150,000 Germans who died in the battle.
The document reveals how a would-be conqueror can quickly turn from arrogant euphoria in triumph to self-righteous anger and self-pity when faced by unyielding opposition.
Hamas has reacted similarly. When its rockets blasted Israel, that was in accordance with the Will of Allah. But when the Israelis returned fire with planes and missiles, Hamas members rushed to TV cameras to shed copious tears and wail about the barbarity of their intended victims.
A Hamas funeral
Wilhelm Hoffman was a member of the elite Sixth Army, which had scored impressive victories over Poland in 1939 and France in 1940.
After Adolf Hitler launched the invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, it had destroyed one Soviet army after another. By August, 1942, it was poised to strike the city of Stalingrad and seize the Russian oil fields of the Caucuses.
Instead, it became bogged down in deadly inner-city fighting. Then a Russian counteroffensive trapped the Sixth army and, through attrition and starvation, forced it to surrender on February 2, 1943. It was a major turning point in World War 11.
German soldiers besieging Stalingrad
Hoffman’s diary reflects the euphoria of those early months, when yet another Nazi victory seemed in sight. But as his fellow Germans took increasingly heavy losses, Hoffman grew resentful at the Russians’ refusal to meekly surrender.
September 13: An unlucky number. This morning “katyushi” [multiple rocket launchers] attacks caused the company heavy losses: 27 dead and 50 wounded.
The Russians are fighting desperately like wild beasts, don’t give themselves up, but come up close and then throw grenades. Lieutenant Kraus was killed yesterday, and there is no company commander.
September 16: Our battalion, plus tanks, is attacking the [grain storage], from which smoke is pouring–the grain in it is burning, the Russians seem to have set light to it themselves. Barbarism. The battalion is suffering heavy losses.
There are not nore than 60 men left in each company. The elevator is occupied not by men but by devils that no flames or bullets can destroy.
September 18: Fighting is still going on inside the elevator….If all the buildings of Stalingrad are defended like this then none of our soldiers will get back to Germany.
September 26: Our regiment is involved in constant heavy fighting. After the elevator was taken the Russians continued to defend themselves just as stubbornly.
You don’t see them at all, they have established themselves in houses and cellars and are firing on all sides, including from our rear–barbarians, they use gangster methods.
The Russians have stopped surrendering at all. If we take any prisoners it’s because they are hopelessly wounded, and can’t move by themselves. Stalingrad is hell.
Those who are merely wounded are lucky; they will doubtless be at home and celebrate victory with their families.
October 3: We have entered a new area. It was night but we saw many crosses with our helmets on top. Have we really lost so many men? Damn this Stalingrad!
October 14: It has been fantastic since morning; our aeroplanes and artillery have been hammering the Russian positions for hours on end; everything in sight is being blotted from the face of the earth.
October 22: Our regiment has failed to break into the factory. We have lost many men; every time you move you have to jump over bodies. You can scarcely breathe in the daytime; there is nowhere and no one to remove the bodies, so they are left there to rot.
Who would have thought three months ago that instead of the joy of victory we would have to endure such sacrifice and torture, the end of which is nowhere in sight.
October 27: Our troops have captured the whole of the Barrikady factory, but we cannot break through to the Volga. The Russians are not men, but some kind of cast-iron creatures; they never get tired and are not afraid to die.
We are absolutely exhausted; our regiment now has barely the strength of a company. The Russian artillery on the other side of the Volga won’t let you lift your head.
German prisoners taken at Stalingrad
December 11: Three questions are obsessing every soldier and officer:
When will the Russians stop firing and let us sleep in peace, if only for one night? How and with what are we going to fill our empty stomachs, which, apart from the 3%-7 ozs of bread, receive virtually nothing at all? And when will Hitler take any decisive steps to free our armies from encirclement?
December 26: The horses have already been eaten. I would eat a cat; they say the meat is also tasty. The soldiers took like corpses or lunatics, looking for something to put in their mouths.
They no longer take cover from Russian shells; they haven’t the strength to walk, run away and hide. A curse on this war!
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SELF-DEFENSE FOR TEENS AND NATIONS
In History, Law, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 30, 2014 at 11:36 amThe dictionary defines “self-defense” as: “The act of defending one’s person when physically attacked, as by countering blows or overcoming an assailant.”
Apparently, some schools and nations have a very different idea of what constitutes self-defense.
In May, A 16-year-old girl at Santa Rosa High School was suspended for fighting on campus–after she was attacked by two other girls from another school.
The May 16 fight was recorded on cell phone video by a third student.
Mia Danley, the girl’s mother. claims her daughter was jumped by two girls who had been cyber-bullying her for months. The reason: she was dating one of their former boyfriends.
Reacting to the cellphone footage of her daughter being assaulted, she said: “I see my baby being attacked viciously and I see her defending herself like we taught her to.”
Allen Danley, the girl’s father, showed school officials the cellphone texts that one of his daughter’s assailants sent threatening a fight.
But this made no difference to school authorities.
Santa Rosa High School has a strict no-fighting policy. But Allan Danley pointed out to school officials that their own student handbook states that “a student cannot be arrested or suspenced for defending themselves.”
They, in turn, claimed that his daughter didn’t cry out for help during the fight. So she was considered a willing participant.
Click here: Parents of Santa Rosa High School Student Suspended for Fighting Say Daughter Was Defending Herself from Bullies
Now let’s turn to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by Israel, Canada, Japan, the European Union, Jordan, Egypt and the United States.
On July 8, it began launching hundreds of missiles at Israel.
Hamas rocket blasts toward Israel
And Israel, to stop the attacks, responded in kind.
As a result, Israel has come under repeated verbal attacks by Hamas-sympathetic nations.
The charge: Israel is being too effective at defending itself, killing more Palestinians than Hamas is able to kill Israelis.
Reuven Berko, a former soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) recently addressed this charge in a guest column in the online newsletter, the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT).
A major reason for so many civilian deaths among Palestinians, writes Berko, is that Hamas turns them into human shields by hiding its missiles in heavily-populated centers.
On July 17, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Far East (UNRWA) discovered approximately 20 rockets hidden in a vacant UN school in the Gaza Strip.
“UNRWA strongly condemns the group or groups responsible for placing the weapons in one of its installations,” said the agency in an announcement. “This is a flagrant violation of the inviolability of its premises under international law.”
UNRWA claimed that “this incident…is the first of its kind in Gaza.” But Israel counters that this is just one of many proven instances of Hamas hiding its fighters and munitions among a heavily civilian population.
Click here: UNRWA Strongly Condemns Placement of Rockets in School | UNRWA
At the heart of Berko’s editorial is the subject of “proportionality.”
Writes Berko: “Israel is held to an impossible moral double standard.
“Israelis, proportionality advocates seem to believe, should be killed by Hamas rockets instead of following Home Front Command instructions and running to shelters, to say nothing of Israel’s blatant unfairness in protecting its civilians with the Iron Dome aerial defense system….
“Anyone who demands that Israel agree to a life of terror governed by a continuous barrage of rockets and mortar shells on the heads of its women and children in the name of restraint and ‘proportionality’ would never agree to risk the safety of their own families in a similar situation.”
Berko points out that during World War 11, the Allies didn’t hesitate to retaliate for the Nazi blitz of London. In February, 1945, British and American planes firebombed Dresden, killing about 25,000 people.
Nor did America feel guilty about dropping two atomic bombs on Japan, killing about 250,000 civilians.
Summing up his argument, Berko writes: “The ridiculous demand for proportionality contradicts every basic principle of warfare.
“According to American strategist Thomas Schelling, you have to strike your enemy hard enough to make it not worthwhile for him to continue….
“In the Western world, killing someone in self-defense is considered justifiable homicide.”
Click here: Guest Column: The Double Standard of Proportionality :: The Investigative Project on Terrorism
Berko could just as easily have ended his column with the words of Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman, whose Union forces cut a swath of destruction across the South in his famous “March to the Sea.”
William Tecumseh Sherman
Wrote Sherman: “Those people made war on us, defied and dared us to come south to their country, where they boasted they would kill us and do all manner of horrible things.
“We accepted their challenge, and now for them to whine and complain of the natural and necessary results is beneath contempt.”
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