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Words are powerful - Thoughts shape - Ideas have consequences

Sharon Hughes

The Center for Changing Worldviews
Posted January 26, 2004

Bias Crimes
Hate Comes in Many Forms

Ethnic Cleansing is the systematic removal of an ethnic group from the population of a particular area. This may be done through genocide (mass killing) or forced migration, by opposing ethnic or religious groups. The term was 'popularized' in the mainstream as describing the activities of Serbs against Croatians and Muslims in Yugoslavia. Crimes rooted in ethnic hatred are bias crimes.

A hate crime is committed when someone vandalizes your property, uses or threatens to use violence against you because of who you are or what you believe in. Hate crimes can be described as aggressive acts directed against an individual, group of people or organization because of their race, religion, national origin, disabilitiy, gender or position on or activity related to an issue. An example of the latter would be the Animal Liberation Front which burns down facilities where testing on animals are performed.

History has too many examples of bias or hate crimes...the holocaust of the Jews and extermination of the mentally and phyically disabled in Hitler's Germany; the 20,000 Albanians that were used as human shields against NATO bombs, Kosovo, the Ukraine, the Kurds, Christians in Indonesia, the Sudan. The list goes on and on, to mankind's shame...both those who commit these crimes and those who do nothing about them.

Eugenics first came about in Germany as the brainchild of doctors to "purify" the German race of undesirables. The first gas chamber was the design of professors of psychiatry from major German universities. Patients of mental hospitals were the first victims, then pediatricians joined rank and handicapped children became the second. By 1945 they were euthanising "bed-wetters, children with misshapen ears, and those with learning disabilities," as reported in The German Euthanasia Program, Wertham, Hayes Publishing 1977, p. 47.

Mass deportation often leads to mass extermination. Hitler's death camps were really 'plan B' for the Jews. 'Plan A' was to deport them to re-settle somewhere else. But 'plan B' prevailed. The founder of Hamas, Ahmed Yassin, speaking in a German magazine told of his rejection of a "continued existence of Israel next to the independent Palestinian state." Sheikh Yassin is the spiritual leader of the largest and most militant of all the Palestinian groups fighting the Israeli occupation, and when the magazine reporter asked if there was no place at all for the Jewish state he said, "They could set up a state in Europe," and that the Hamas resistance would continue until the Israeli occupation was ended.

Yasser Arafat said, “The goal of our struggle is the end of Israel, and there can be no compromises or mediators…we don’t want peace – we want victory. Peace for us means Israel’s destruction and nothing else.”

Bias is the height of arrogance, which supposes oneself or one's race or ability or existence to be of greater value than another's.
No good has or ever will come of it...whether in attitude or action. What's really amazing is that the watchdog groups which claim to fight for human civil rights...don't fight on behalf of everyone, such as the ACLU in America. No, they are selective, biased, as to which groups or individuals they support. They are agenda run...and their agenda gets in the way of objectivity.

No one can control the attitude of another...and often another's hate-filled actions are beyond control. But which is the greater crime...the act itself or the failure to try stop it? This is the question that must be asked on several fronts today.

Sharon is the President of The Center for Changing Worldviews, and hosts Changing Worldviews TALK Radio which is heard on KDIA AM1640 San Francisco/Vallejo; KGDP AM660 Santa Maria, CA and WITA AM1490 Knoxville, TN, as well as online daily at Oneplace.com. Her column appears on several online news sites including CaliforniaRepublic.org, ChronWatch.com, MichNews.com, NewsBull, NewsWithViews.com, RenewAmerica.us and others. For further information go to www.changingworldviews.com or comment at http://changingworldviews.blogspot.com
Contact sharon@changingworldviews.com