Israel Matzav

The wake up call is ringing loudly once again

I thought this piece from the director of Bnai Brith Canada was excellent, and since it can be embedded and I still have work to do before the Sabbath, I thought I would just embed it and share it with you. I'm sorry if it Rogers the page (goes over the border into the side part of the template).

Last Sunday's Star opinion page layout was indeed brilliant. Reading the Edward Greenspon piece clearly demonstrates the need for intervention and action when radical elements take any form of power and threaten human rights. His closing remarks indicating that totalitarianism rarely starts total and that it must be confronted before it can become whole is a message to our generation.

In order to fully comprehend the enemy, it is important to understand the pronouncements and motivation of those who are seeking to establish totalitarianism in today's world. Islamism clearly articulates the political intent to eradicate Israel off the face of the earth and ensure that Christianity is fully relegated to second class status. Witness the status of Baha’i in Iran and Christians in Egypt, especially under the Moslem Brotherhood. 

The effectiveness of the Islamist propaganda machine is best witnessed when one analyses pronouncements from the White House indicating that the most critical issue confronting the Middle East is the Palestinian Israeli situation. The 93,000 dead in Syria, the majority of whom were civilians, appears to be less important, the development of nuclear arms in Iran is less problematic. Even the rule of the Islamic radical Hamas in Gaza has been overwritten as a concern. Human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia are ignored and the upheaval in Egypt is secondary to the Palestinian-Israeli problem. We can also apparently disregard the turmoil in Iraq, the presence of Al Qaeda in Yemen and Egypt and the success of the Hezbollah and Al Qaeda terrorists in Syria which will once again be poised for an attack on Israel from the north.

The "good news" is that Haroon Siddiqui (August 1 comment Canadian Jews wade in on Arab-Israeli conflict) is pleased to find a Jew of means who takes issue with the positions, pronouncements and activities of the majority of the organized Jewish community in this country. He delights in having a Jew saying “I won't buy into their agenda of paranoia and imminent destruction".

However, we in the Jewish community have a choice. We can take to heart the warnings of Edward Greenspon and learn from our recent history or ignore the warnings at our peril. When the great Zionist leader Zev Jabotinsky, trudged from city to city in Eastern Europe in the 1930's, he pleaded with the Jews to abandon and liquidate the diaspora before it liquidated them. Of course, he was accused of being paranoid and engaging in fear mongering. Today, we too can choose to ignore the daily pronouncements emanating from the Islamist world regarding the destruction of Israel, the threat of Hamas in the Gaza and the very real Hezbollah threats coming from Lebanon as Siddiqui and those he cites might have us do. We could choose to believe that concessions by Israel, that could very well jeopardize its security as the landmass in question is minuscule, would be the panacea for the world and we can then copy the proclaim "peace in our time".

We could follow the examples of others and close our eyes and pretend that every anti-Semitic incident happening on a daily basis in Europe is a figment of the Jewish paranoia. We could ignore the attacks on Jewish institutions and individuals and we could buy into the theory that the Jewish organizations exaggerate and overestimate the horrific growth of new age anti-Semitism.

However, to do so would be at our peril. As Mr. Greenspon's insight suggests, if we are to combat the new totalitarianism that confronts us we must learn from the history of only 70 years ago as well as the history of the forced Jewish abandonment of the Gaza strip to advance peace.

To prepare for our future, let us now realize once and for all that the threats of our enemy are real. Let us partner with human rights activists and parliamentarians who understand the threat of anti-Semitism and terrorism and let us not shy away from confronting radical Islamism and the threats that that ideology poses to Christians, Jews, the gay and lesbian communities, women's rights and the multitude of freedoms we now enjoy.

We didn't listen in the 1930’s. The wake-up call is ringing loudly once again.

Frank Dimant

CEO B'nai Brith Canada

Labels: Holocaust, Jewish history

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:58 PM