to be sick of people on FB comparing Syrian refugees to the Jewish refugees

[paintandbrush]

Please stop bandying about the terms 'Kindertransport', 'Operation Pied Piper' and so on because I've studied the Holocaust extensively, and it's not actually the same, ok?

This article says it all better than I can, please read: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/12130175/The-plight-of-Syrian-refugees-is-not-on-a-par-with-Jews-fleeing-the-Nazis.html

For the record, I really don't believe we should be bombing them to hell in the first place: in this day and age, wars are not won in the towns and fields of North Africa. Wars are won round a conference table somewhere in Switzerland.

The whole attitude of Cameron's government at the minute seems to be "Let's make their homeland hell on earth, then pat ourselves on the back for letting, say, 10% of them into the UK". What a bloody mess.

There is debate about whether it is only p arts of Syria which are unsafe. Some countries will require a refugee to be from Raqqa, Allepo etc.

As for people syaing Turkey is unsafe, it wants to join the EU. It is a relatively Westernised largely safe area. Yes it has kurds who are not happy with the regime just as we have some people in the UK not happy the British own Northern Irelant but It is not correct to say Turkey is not a safe haven. Turkey and I think Jordan too have both taken in huge numbers of people.

The British Government does more than any other country in the EU to help Syrian refugees by the way.

The plight of the Syrian refugees is not exactly the same as that of the Jewish refugees some 80 years earlier, but that doesn't mean that comparisons can't be drawn. People are now fleeing their home countries in desperate fear for their lives as they did pre-WW2 and many of those who came here as refugees, for example Lord Dubs, now want others to be able to do the same.

People are rightly pointing to the Kindertransport as an example of Britain doing the right thing. But there's less mention that Britain and other countries weren't exactly falling over themselves to rescue Jews beforehand, and not much mention of the fact that the parents of the Kindertransport children had to stay behind. Look at the Evian Conference for example.

What price humaity eh one wing.

Keep those 1930s Daily Mail arguments coming about costs and open doors. And remember , there but for the grace of god and stop congratulating yourself on the benefits conferred on you by accident of birth.

onewing, I'm perfectly happy to pay whatever is required through the normal taxation system for us to live in a fair society. I assume there may be particular requirements you have for the society you want to live in, e.g. universal education, proper health provision, a fair justice system. Do you feel you personally have to take children in to teach them, take ill people in to look after them, run trials in your home and build cells for prisoners? Or do you feel that that is what you expect your taxes and national insurance to be spent on?

Augusta and lurked, it's nice to see some decent human beings on one of these threads.

Someone said "If you give asylum to those who are doing the oppressing, and they continue with their oppressive behaviour in a new country, then you haven't actually given anyone asylum. You've just let the violence spread and put greater numbers of people at risk."

Exactly. Europe has made a grave error by transferring into itself groups with longheld animosities and violence. I read yesterday that Asian and Arab Christians are being threatened with having their throats cut.

Those doing the oppressing are not coming for asylum though are they?

The pressures built up between different factions once refugees are different to oppression. Asad and his forces are oppressing the Syrians, as are ISIS and many other factions, these groups are in Syria fighting, they aren't running away for safety.

Tensions built up between different religious groups in the camps are not the same, so its an erroneous point.

Lurked. It does not have to be the leader of a country that is the oppressor. Sunnis who came to Europe continue with their oppression against any Shia they come across. I am not talking about pressure in camps, this is on the streets of Europe.

But the sunnis are refugees too!

I have a grasp on all of that, a very firm one, and I agree with taking in refugees.

Do Assad's bombs discriminate on religious basis, whether you are Sunni, Shia, Christian? No. The war has gravely affected Sunni areas. Many Sunnis have been victims of Assad's bombs. In comparison to what insurgents have, Assad has siege tactics and starvation techniques, torture, artillery brigades, MIG jets, Hind helicopters, and Scud missiles—weapons that have killed tens of thousands and displaced millions. It sees the majority of Syrian refugees are actually Sunni.

Do Isis hate everyone that doesn't adhere to their ideology? Yes.

Institutionalizing religious discrimination as a refugee admission criterion isn't just a bad idea for moral or political reasons, but also one that is at odds with established UN practices and international norms.

Assad is Alawite, a minority sect of Shia. It is Syria's Sunnis who have joined forces with IS to take control of that country.

The West was ill-prepared for the repercussion of the Arab Spring and the vacuums left by regime removal in Iraq and Libya. Iraq was a country where religions rubbed along well enough; there was no discrimination because Hussein kept a tight lid on faction troublemakers. Syria was another beacon of co-existence despite what you may think of Assad, and in Syria women held nearly 50 percent of the professional jobs.

Assad is not ISIS, he is their enemy. ISIS is Sunni - of course they are going to get hammered.

Regardless of what UN may say, no sensible country should be importing opposing players in a very bloody ongoing war unless they have a death wish themselves. By all means build infrastructure to provide healthcare-food-shelter-schools-place of prayer for refugees, but this should be temporary sanctuary.

'Syria was another beacon of co-existence despite what you may think of Assad'

I think the important word here is WAS, shake.

The vast majority of Muslims condemn Isis.

Isis does not automatically equate to Sunni Muslim. Isis behead Sunni Muslims for not pledging loyalty to them and execute Sunnis in cold blood.

Sunni rebels are not Isis. Rather, it is the Muslim Sunni Tribes who are placing their lives at risk to protect themselves and the religious minorities being persecuted by IS. Therefore, it should not be said that Muslims are the cause of IS or that Islam is to blame. We should not condemn Muslim Sunnis as terrorists or violent and dangerous because Sunni Muslims are not complicit in IS treachery but are fighting them.

The babies, children and innocents being bombed and starved and tortured by the regime, whatever their religion, Sunni Muslim or not, are not Isis.

Assad has killed far more people in Syria than Isis.

Shakeeba Assad is not the enemy of ISIS, he has actively facilitated their growth to solidfy his own grip on power:

www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/07/assad-and-the-art-of-the-devils-gambit/374501/

The majority of Syrian Sunnis have not joined forces with IS either, most of IS is made up of foreigners from elsewhere.

How you can talk about Iraq being a beacon of anything when Saddam happily gassed entire villages of Kurds is bizarre.

Likewise, to praise Assad's record on women, when women have been raped and slaughtered by the Assad regime throughout this war is sickening. Even pre-war, women were subject to detention without trial by the secret police.

In fact the Assad regime hold the dubious record of having the world's youngest prisoner of conscience, Tal Al Mallouhi, who was imprisoned back in 2009, at 17 years old for the heinous crime of writing poetry on a blog.

Just to be clear Syrian prisons are hideous places, before anyone claims that arbitrary detention is some kind of holiday camp. You can even google Tadmor Prison Massacre to learn about the Assad regime's method of reducing their prison population.

But hey, Mussolini made the trains run on time, didn't he? Those 1930's parallels just keep coming.

I saw a clip of the scars and lacerations on the body of a young man hiding in a disused building in Greece. Those prisons certainly are hideous. His body was covered in massive scars, all over his back.

Trying again: how many victims of global conflicts should we take Emily?

"how many victims of global conflicts should we take Emily?"

Certainly more than we have said we would so far.

When Jewish children were being accepted into Britain before the war, the Holocaust (as in the 'Final Solution') had not started. Yes, Jews were being persecuted very badly, and deserved our support as Syrian refugees do today, but we wouldn't have known in 1938 that we would have had anything so incomparably bad as the Auchwitz gas chambers a few years later.

"Certainly more than we have said we would so far."

Care to have the courage of your convictions? Do you mean 50,000, 100,000, 1,000,000, more? Which is it? The open borders fans never give a precise answer both because they don't believe in any limits at all and because they know that everyone else would laugh at them if they admitted it.

'they know that everyone else would laugh at them if they admitted it'

You want posters to give a figure so that you can mock them? What's the point of that, onewing?

I don't know an exact figure, who does? Who knows how many people need help?

I'd imagine that more than the 25,000 we took in all refugees last year would be a good start.

What's the point of that, onewing?

To illustrate just how far up your ivory towers in cloud cuckoo land all you NB crew are living.

So you have no idea then? How do you expect anyone to engage with the concept of "more" when there is a potentially limitless number of people who would like to move to Europe? What about the impact on Europeans?

I didn't say limitless did I ? Ok lets say we at least match the EU average per head of the population, which we are far under at the minute.

I don't live in any ivory tower, love that particluar ad hom.