Ethnic Conflict Quotes
He was the Secretary of State in the War Office at the time. The Royal Air Force had suggested an experiment---gassing “recalcitrant Arabs” from the air. This predated Sadaam Hussein's gassing of Hussein's gassing of his own people by over 70 years.
Churchill was reported to be so angry and exasperated that his face turned red and he was sputtering. During World War II, Gandhi, Nehru and other Indian Nationalists were leading protests against British control of India. This not only bogged down British soldiers surprising the nationalists rather than fighting in Burma or in other war theaters, but India supplied a huge number of battalions to the British Army the world over and if that manpower dried up, the allied war effort would suffer. The American State Department wanted Churchill to announce that after Japan was defeated, there would be a process toward self-government. This way, they thought, the Indians would redouble their effort to defeat the Japanese and stop the then current protests and strikes. Churchill was strongly opposed to any diminution of the British Empire, but beyond that, he knew India quite well and realized that at any hint of Independence the large Muslim minority in India would insist on autonomy or a partition of the country and use sectarian violence and terror to intimidate the Indian Congress party and the British, but the major victims of the terror—the Hindus and the Sikhs would not remain passive, but would retaliate in kind. President Roosevelt was in the midst of planning the Normandy Landings of the D-Day invasion and did not want to pressure Churchill and the British at this point in time, so the door to independence was not opened during the war and Britain had to deal with the protests throughout. However, when, after the war, the Labor Government, started a process toward Indian independence which resulted in exactly what Churchill predicted. At least 2 million Indians were slaughtered in the internecine terrorist cycles of fear and retaliation motivated terror attacks what were so extensive that the British military could not really control it.
Muslim extremist terrorism was rampant, even before Israel was established. A few of the early Zionists took the Biblical view and responded in kind using the same terrorist tactics of the Arabs. Ben Gurion argued against that. The debate has continued in Israel ever since. With relatively few exceptions the Israelis have not engaged in terrorism although the Arabs and their supporters have defined terrorism against them as Israel using modern weapons of war within the international rules of war. Also, the Arab terrorists argue that this is the only weapon that they have available that can equalize the conflict and further if it is in “defense of Islam” terrorism or any other act is allowed by the Koran. Ben Gurion also was prescient in that the assassins of some key Israelis leaders over the years were Jews who advocated terrorism against the Arabs just as most of the victims of Islamic Terrorists have been Muslims.
The "enemies" were many of the Muslim and Hindu Maharajas of the independent Indian states who were afraid of losing their kingly powers under an Indian democracy, some of the wealthy businessmen and large landowners, many of the Bureaucrats of the Indian Civil Service who feared politicization, and many leaders of the smaller religious minorities, Buddhists, Christians, Baha'is, Zoroastrians, and others. And most of all, there were English Conservative politicians including Winston Churchill who did not want to see the British Empire diminished. They often played on the religious fears of Indians—never far from the surface. Jinnah strongly opposed this until he wanted the Partition of independent India into 2 countries—Muslim and Hindu. Then he not only plaid to these religious fears, but stoked then to a feverish pitch and did nothing to stop Muslim religious violence and in some cases even supplied private Muslim groups with arms, ammunition, transport, and intelligence to put pressure on the Congress Party leadership and the British to get more land and other resources for Pakistan.
Dayan was a strong advocate for co-existence with the Arabs and an understanding of their frustrations and disappointments without bowing to the extremists who wanted to destroy Israel.
This quotation illustrates how extensive and virulent anti-Asian racism had become. Gompers was a left wing liberal, but also a labor leader, and the prospect of millions of oriental immigrants competing for the existing American jobs was frightening. The irony of this quotation was that most of the labor constituency that Gompers represented had been immigrants or were the children of immigrants who earlier had frightened American workers and whose ethnicity had been opposed—Irish, Italians, Jews.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the other Muslim League leaders wanted to stir up India's Muslims in order to prevent Indian Independence from Britain unless India were partitioned and the Muslims could have their own nation. At that point the British and the Congress Party of India—the majority political party were both starting to plan for independence. Jinnah and most of the Muslim nationalists did not want to have Muslims in a Majority Hindu nation. To stop it, they first used fear to try and separate the many Indian Muslims who were politically active from their roles in and loyalty to the Congress Party which although Hindu dominated had Muslim members and officials. All the Muslims who were literate were aware of the terrible revelations of the Nazi Concentration Camps and the attempted extermination of all the Jews of Europe. The "party line" of the Muslim League was that once the British turned the government of India over to the Congress Party, they would turn on the Muslims and exterminate them so that India would be all Hindu. There were no such plans or even suggestions be anyone in the Congress party, the paranoia and the conspiracy theory resonated with many Indian Muslims just as conspiracy theories are believed by some people in every society. In this case, the paranoia that was unleashed by the Muslim League would have tragic consequences as with Independence getting closer many Muslims struck out and preemptively attacked and butchered Hindus and Sikhs who retaliated in kind and the butchery went on all through the Independence process and the partition of India to create a Muslim state—Pakistan. Almost 2 million people would be murdered in the sectarian violence that was unleashed.
Turkey, even a century later, takes great offense at the terms “holocaust” or “genocide” to describe the death of so many Armenians. The censor newspapers and jail academics who even want to have conferences to study the question. This is in great contrast to Germany which faced its genocidal killings squarely and built a society and government structure to never forget it and always focus on preventing a reoccurrence,
There are two ethnic groups in Fiji. The indigenous Fijians and immigrants from India and their descendants. The Indians originally came to trade and represent a globalized, mercantile culture whereas the indigenous tribes did not have the tradition of business. Over time, the minority Indians were economically more successful than the majority, which tended to resent the Indians. As the Indians were the political minority with no strong tradition of protection of minority rights, they became victims of discriminatory behavior in a nation where the traditional political structure of tribal chiefs and tribes dominated politics. Religion also separated the Hindu Indians from the Christian tribals. In the early 21st century, an Indian was elected prime minister, but this led to a revolt and coup by some traditional tribals. Finally the coup was put down but the society had been split apart and there was continuous argument over rights and whether the coups plotters should be punished.
The German designs for Polish destruction began long before World War II. Poland, created by the Treaty of Versailles, was seen be fanatic Germans as an example of French Hegemony.
