Recently read an article entitled "Freedom Under Attack" in the Op-Ed section of The Jewish Press. The writer, Ron Prosor, is Israel's ambassador to the United Nations. Read the article at:
http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/freedom-under-attack/2015/03/05/
A lot of what Ambassador Prosor says has me nodding, not just today but in the past as well and from what I read, I find that he makes a lot of sense to me. Which is why I'm sharing some quotes from the article. The quotes are in bold text, my own words are in plain text.
Ambassador Prosor starts by looking at 1945, the year World War Two ended in Europe. The year 2015 marks seventy years since the closing of Auschwitz - Birkenau and other Nazi camps, the death of Anne Frank, the liberation of Europe from the claws of Nazi Germany and the eventual end of World War Two.
My grandparents lived through that War and growing up, it was not uncommon that they and other grown-ups, those old enough to remember the War (which then meant everyone older than my own parents), taught us about the Holocaust and talked about the old days when things were different. We grew up learning about ration booklets, food stamps, curfews and black-outs. We grew up learning about strangers in the streets there to order you around, there to use and abuse you as they saw fit, there to take your friends and neighbours away - some to work in labour camps or factories and others to die horrible deaths.
I grew up learning about the War, not only through movies (films), television and history books but from people who remembered it, people who lived through it, people who lost friends, family members, neighbours and loved ones to the Nazis. I learnt from people who chose to share their pain, their misery, their horrible experiences and their tears with strangers. I learnt from people who knew that the children and youngsters they taught might not understand them or appreciate their sacrifice in being there but who spoke up nonetheless. The courageous men and women who spoke at family gatherings, schools and public events did so because they understood that the only way to ensure Never Again actually meant and continues to mean Never Ever Again is to educate the next generation about the true cost and the true horrors of war, hatred, prejudice, death and discrimination - about the true cost of the Holocaust. My words are nothing compared to their memories.
"More than 60 million people – three percent of the world’s population – were killed or murdered in the Second World War. Half of the victims were civilians. Countless young girls and boys were denied the most basic right – the right to grow up and grow old. The scope of the human tragedy is simply unfathomable.
The sacrifices were immense – Russia alone lost over 25 million people. The Russians pushed forward to conquer Berlin and halted the Nazi advancement. They fought so that peoples and nations could live in freedom."
How many in the world today realise that Russia lost that many people to the War? I knew they fought, I knew they suffered, I knew that, however twenty-five million dead - that I did not realise. Six million, that is a number I remember, a number that feels ridiculously huge already. Six million is roughly a third of the population of The Netherlands - probably more people than I will ever meet in my entire life. Numbers like twenty-five million and sixty million - they are so huge that they almost lose meaning because truly fathoming how many people that is... That simply feels impossible, quite honestly.
The Ambassador continues:
"Seventy years ago, with the ashes of World War II still smoldering, the victors of the war came together to establish the United Nations and ensure that “Never Again” would not be a hollow promise
Today the values at the very heart of the UN are being threatened by extremist ideologies that target our way of life. From West Africa to the Middle East, extremists group have unleashed a plague of persecution believing that by silencing individuals, they can silence civilization.
The terrorists who stormed the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris attacked liberty – the right of every person to express him or herself. The terrorist who targeted Jews in Paris and Copenhagen attacked equality – the idea that every person, no matter his faith, is equal. By aiming their attacks at innocent civilians, the terrorists also attacked brotherhood – the bonds of our shared humanity.
A war is being waged against human dignity and human rights, and we must fight back. Standing united with courage and conviction we can turn back the tide of violent extremism and safeguard the values that we cherish."
How very true. A war is indeed being waged against human dignity and against basic human rights. A war is being waged by those wanting to silence free speech, who want to stop people from thinking for themselves, deciding for themselves and choosing for themselves. It is up to us to stand up to those who wish to bully us into submission, who wish to silence us with their knives and their bombs and their guns and their horrible acts of violence. Because if we don't, who will?
It is the closing statements of Ambassador Prosor's Op-Ed that move me the most:
"We must overcome indifference. We must know what we stand for and then stand up for something we believe in – never indulge racism; never ignore incitement; never be silent when confronted with the warning signs or war.
I issue a warning to the world – do not close your eyes to the atrocities around you; do not turn away from the animosity that ensues. It is your responsibility to speak out against hatred clearly and unequivocally.
Equip the next generation with words and not weapons. Arm them with ideas and not radical ideologies. Teach them tolerance, not terrorism. War is not inevitable. It is not a force of nature nor is it part of human nature. It can be prevented. But only if we stand together to denounce indifference and defend peace.
The duty rests upon us. If we wish our children to live in a world built on freedom, tolerance, and justice, we must stand united to defend those values."
Looking at the world today as someone who's not a sociologist or an anthropologist or anything of the sort, I see a lot of different people, different countries, different religions, different cultures, different ideologies, different lifestyles and different truths. The world is divided by lots of things - natural borders, man-made borders, man-made laws and rules and regulations, linguistic, religious and cultural barriers, misunderstandings, prejudice, discrimination, racism...
Natural borders we can overcome - our knowledge of science, technology and engineering enables us to build aeroplanes and fly to our neighbours, to build roads and cars and drive to our neighbours, to build boats and use them to sail to our neighbours. We can use telephones or the internet to contact our neighbours, to get to know them, to learn from them and to understand them.
Man-made borders are much harder to overcome. When separate groups all believe that their truth is the only acceptable truth and others' truths are not true or valid, we get to the place we are at today - what the King of Jordan calls World War Three. He is not the only one.
Look at what happened when white Christian Europeans moved to other parts of the world - look at what happened in North America, South America, India, Indonesia, Africa, the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand... Apartheid is a word that comes from a Germanic language, not from an African language: It comes from Dutch. White people from Europe went to Africa where they forcibly removed people from their homes and their families, put them on boats and forced them to work, to be slaves, degraded them, whipped them, abused them, treated them as mere property. They took them to new countries where they forced them to live as slaves instead of as free people, as they had been. That is what European Christians did in centuries past and that is what fundamentalist Muslims are doing today.
How would you like it if someone came into your house right now, abducted you, took your spouse, your children and your neighbours away, perhaps shot a few people to ensure everyone understood that they were truly serious? What if strangers came to your house, took your possessions, enslaved you, treated you as less than human, as someone without rights? What if those strangers defended / explained their actions by stating that your values, beliefs and laws and the society that you hold dear were unimportant, worthless, barbaric even, perhaps? How would that make you feel?
http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/freedom-under-attack/2015/03/05/
A lot of what Ambassador Prosor says has me nodding, not just today but in the past as well and from what I read, I find that he makes a lot of sense to me. Which is why I'm sharing some quotes from the article. The quotes are in bold text, my own words are in plain text.
Ambassador Prosor starts by looking at 1945, the year World War Two ended in Europe. The year 2015 marks seventy years since the closing of Auschwitz - Birkenau and other Nazi camps, the death of Anne Frank, the liberation of Europe from the claws of Nazi Germany and the eventual end of World War Two.
My grandparents lived through that War and growing up, it was not uncommon that they and other grown-ups, those old enough to remember the War (which then meant everyone older than my own parents), taught us about the Holocaust and talked about the old days when things were different. We grew up learning about ration booklets, food stamps, curfews and black-outs. We grew up learning about strangers in the streets there to order you around, there to use and abuse you as they saw fit, there to take your friends and neighbours away - some to work in labour camps or factories and others to die horrible deaths.
I grew up learning about the War, not only through movies (films), television and history books but from people who remembered it, people who lived through it, people who lost friends, family members, neighbours and loved ones to the Nazis. I learnt from people who chose to share their pain, their misery, their horrible experiences and their tears with strangers. I learnt from people who knew that the children and youngsters they taught might not understand them or appreciate their sacrifice in being there but who spoke up nonetheless. The courageous men and women who spoke at family gatherings, schools and public events did so because they understood that the only way to ensure Never Again actually meant and continues to mean Never Ever Again is to educate the next generation about the true cost and the true horrors of war, hatred, prejudice, death and discrimination - about the true cost of the Holocaust. My words are nothing compared to their memories.
"More than 60 million people – three percent of the world’s population – were killed or murdered in the Second World War. Half of the victims were civilians. Countless young girls and boys were denied the most basic right – the right to grow up and grow old. The scope of the human tragedy is simply unfathomable.
The sacrifices were immense – Russia alone lost over 25 million people. The Russians pushed forward to conquer Berlin and halted the Nazi advancement. They fought so that peoples and nations could live in freedom."
How many in the world today realise that Russia lost that many people to the War? I knew they fought, I knew they suffered, I knew that, however twenty-five million dead - that I did not realise. Six million, that is a number I remember, a number that feels ridiculously huge already. Six million is roughly a third of the population of The Netherlands - probably more people than I will ever meet in my entire life. Numbers like twenty-five million and sixty million - they are so huge that they almost lose meaning because truly fathoming how many people that is... That simply feels impossible, quite honestly.
The Ambassador continues:
"Seventy years ago, with the ashes of World War II still smoldering, the victors of the war came together to establish the United Nations and ensure that “Never Again” would not be a hollow promise
Today the values at the very heart of the UN are being threatened by extremist ideologies that target our way of life. From West Africa to the Middle East, extremists group have unleashed a plague of persecution believing that by silencing individuals, they can silence civilization.
The terrorists who stormed the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris attacked liberty – the right of every person to express him or herself. The terrorist who targeted Jews in Paris and Copenhagen attacked equality – the idea that every person, no matter his faith, is equal. By aiming their attacks at innocent civilians, the terrorists also attacked brotherhood – the bonds of our shared humanity.
A war is being waged against human dignity and human rights, and we must fight back. Standing united with courage and conviction we can turn back the tide of violent extremism and safeguard the values that we cherish."
How very true. A war is indeed being waged against human dignity and against basic human rights. A war is being waged by those wanting to silence free speech, who want to stop people from thinking for themselves, deciding for themselves and choosing for themselves. It is up to us to stand up to those who wish to bully us into submission, who wish to silence us with their knives and their bombs and their guns and their horrible acts of violence. Because if we don't, who will?
It is the closing statements of Ambassador Prosor's Op-Ed that move me the most:
"We must overcome indifference. We must know what we stand for and then stand up for something we believe in – never indulge racism; never ignore incitement; never be silent when confronted with the warning signs or war.
I issue a warning to the world – do not close your eyes to the atrocities around you; do not turn away from the animosity that ensues. It is your responsibility to speak out against hatred clearly and unequivocally.
Equip the next generation with words and not weapons. Arm them with ideas and not radical ideologies. Teach them tolerance, not terrorism. War is not inevitable. It is not a force of nature nor is it part of human nature. It can be prevented. But only if we stand together to denounce indifference and defend peace.
The duty rests upon us. If we wish our children to live in a world built on freedom, tolerance, and justice, we must stand united to defend those values."
Looking at the world today as someone who's not a sociologist or an anthropologist or anything of the sort, I see a lot of different people, different countries, different religions, different cultures, different ideologies, different lifestyles and different truths. The world is divided by lots of things - natural borders, man-made borders, man-made laws and rules and regulations, linguistic, religious and cultural barriers, misunderstandings, prejudice, discrimination, racism...
Natural borders we can overcome - our knowledge of science, technology and engineering enables us to build aeroplanes and fly to our neighbours, to build roads and cars and drive to our neighbours, to build boats and use them to sail to our neighbours. We can use telephones or the internet to contact our neighbours, to get to know them, to learn from them and to understand them.
Man-made borders are much harder to overcome. When separate groups all believe that their truth is the only acceptable truth and others' truths are not true or valid, we get to the place we are at today - what the King of Jordan calls World War Three. He is not the only one.
Look at what happened when white Christian Europeans moved to other parts of the world - look at what happened in North America, South America, India, Indonesia, Africa, the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand... Apartheid is a word that comes from a Germanic language, not from an African language: It comes from Dutch. White people from Europe went to Africa where they forcibly removed people from their homes and their families, put them on boats and forced them to work, to be slaves, degraded them, whipped them, abused them, treated them as mere property. They took them to new countries where they forced them to live as slaves instead of as free people, as they had been. That is what European Christians did in centuries past and that is what fundamentalist Muslims are doing today.
How would you like it if someone came into your house right now, abducted you, took your spouse, your children and your neighbours away, perhaps shot a few people to ensure everyone understood that they were truly serious? What if strangers came to your house, took your possessions, enslaved you, treated you as less than human, as someone without rights? What if those strangers defended / explained their actions by stating that your values, beliefs and laws and the society that you hold dear were unimportant, worthless, barbaric even, perhaps? How would that make you feel?
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