More French civilians died on D-Day, mostly as a result of Allied bombardments, than American servicemen.
But in 1973 the producers of The World At War chose to commence their 26-episode documentary on the horrors of this globalised conflict with a smaller scale slaughter which took place four days after the invasion of Normandy on June 10, 1944, where 643 men, women and children were murdered in Oradour-sur-Glane.
The victims were mostly inhabitants of the village, but the Germans also pulled in people from the surrounding area with markedly little discrimination over whom they wished to enact their barbaric vengeance. 17 Spanish citizens, 8 Italians and 23 Poles were listed amongst the dead.
The settlement was never rebuilt as De Gaulle wished it to remain as a permanent memorial to a next level transgression.
Never forget...remember?
A line had been crossed that day by the Waffen SS. On one side the often callous and ruthless pursuit of military objectives in war, and on the other, no ifs or buts evil.
Anyone who claims that what Israel is doing in Gaza is ‘genocide’ are basically moral zombies beholden to a delusional cult of predetermined righteousness, deploying an (ironically) transparent smokescreen, because they cannot bring themselves to contemplate acknowledging that Hamas crossed that same line, legally as well as morally, on October 7, and they certainly don’t want our wider society to keep remembering this essential boundary, just as De Gaulle desired.
They will keep up the crooked, inverted logic until everyone is unsure which side of the line they are on, and even if there really is a line at all. For them context is not clarity, but an ideological fog bank.
And they seem to want us to think it is a simple numbers game. How many Palestinians vs how many Israelis. It isn’t and it never was.
Ethical ‘quants’ need to be told where to go. Ideally as far away from the mainstream discourse as possible, because they clearly lack the relevant line, and this makes them potentially toxic.
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