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During
my first spell in prison, I picked up a book by Sven
Hassel entitled Wheels of Terror. What attracted me
to it was that beneath the title ran words to the
effect, ‘the book no German publisher would print.’
Assuming that there must be merit in something that
someone does not want others to read I was instantly
determined to find out what it was. In the end not
very much. Then a friend went abroad to Guernsey to
pick tomatoes and from there posted a parcel of Sven
Hassel books to me. As I didn’t ask for them,
I wondered if all 17 year olds read Hassel; some right
of passage that saw us progress from skinhead novels
to books in which violence moved up a notch only now
to be inflicted and legitimised to the tune of martial
music. It certainly gave me an interest in delving
into the Second World War. One book in the batch was
SS General. I had forgotten all about it until this
month.
When
the Blanket protest drew to a close towards the end
of 1981, I began to devour books. For years we had
been without them. Now to have them in unlimited quantities
seemed a reward in itself for having sustained the
ennui of the protest years. To read was to scratch
the burrowing itch of intellectual deprivation occasioned
by the Northern Ireland Office deciding that books
were bad for those prisoners who did not share the
jailers’ view of their status. I often thought
that gave us one of the few things we had in common with
the screws – neither of us could read. We because
we had no books, and they because they just couldn’t.
Books
on Irish politics were then banned as the censors
laboured under the belief that we could be domiciled
into docility if we were fed a diet of Wilbur Smith,
Stephen King, Harold Robbins and James Herbert. For
some reason, tomes on Nazi Germany were plentiful.
They were the pick of the bunch and I ploughed through
a sizeable portion of them throughout 1982. It seemed
an ironically appropriate year to be reading about
massacres. While I lay on my bed, reading about exterminations
in Auschwitz, Ariel Sharon was taking lessons on how
to acquire expertise in genocide in the camps of Sabra
and Chatilla.
Being
exposed to so much literature on the Nazi extermination
of the Jews led to my developing a deep admiration
for those who took up arms against the exterminators,
whatever the circumstance. I was hardly a pacifist
and I am not one today. Gary McNally, easily the quickest
reader in the H-Blocks, handed me Mila 18 by Leon
Uris. It was a difficult one to put down. The author
had crafted a narrative of the SS operation to raze
the Warsaw Ghetto as a final phase in the evacuation
of Polish Jews to the death camps. When young Jewish
men and women, many in their teens, attacked and killed
the SS I identified with them. It was only a fictionalised
account but I hoped it conveyed something of what
had happened within the ghetto; that someone had stepped
out, dissented violently, and made it clear to the
occupying force that there was a price to pay. It
lessened the sense of impotence experienced on reading
about strutting, unbridled arrogant power. Something
had intervened to mitigate it. Similar feelings visited
me when I read of the 13 Israeli troops killed in
Gaza earlier this month. Why be a hypocrite about
it and engage in pious cant dismissing all the violence
in the occupied territories as being of an indivisible
sameness?
The
Israelis, with breathtaking double standards, have
referred to the deaths as a ‘terrorist attack.’
But what is terrorist about taking up arms against
overwhelming firepower which sees fit to prey on weak
and vulnerable civilian populations, inflict collective
punishment and demolish homes? Former Israeli government
minister Yossi Sarid contended that such activities
are illegal under international law and constitute
war crimes. And when General Dan Harel, responsible
for overseeing the destructive Operation Rainbow -
and who for some reason brought to mind Sven Hassel’s
book, SS General - claimed that Israel was confronting
an enemy that had ‘lost its humanity’ I
could think only of the Palestinian civilian Ashraf
Hana who rather than losing humanity, found his dignity:
‘I was very happy. Yes, we got damaged. Yes,
all these homes were damaged but we feel satisfaction.
We are suffering from the Israelis for years. They
invaded and there is no reason for this invasion so
they got hit and this is happiness for me.’
The
Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto arose in legitimate armed
revolt against General Jurgen Stroop and his SS thugs.
The Palestinians of Gaza did likewise against General
Dan Harel and his IDF brutes. After the Nazi defeat
Stroop had his neck stretched in Warsaw. The least
that can be hoped for of Harel is that he serve a
stretch somewhere in Gaza, the scene of his crimes.
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