An Israeli woman speaks out

Albert Einstein once said that world won’t be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch and do nothing

There is so much pap and drivel and useless information on Facebook. Most of the time some female or other is changing her profile picture when she is not posing in a classy restaurant, buying a handbag which costs as much as twice my cook’s monthly salary, changing her hair dye or telling the world in which part of Italy she intends holding her daughter’s wedding reception. But at times an interesting video gets through which makes me wonder what criteria the Security Council of the United Nations employs in order to determine which troubled area of the world to tackle and which to give a wide berth. Some time ago there was a whole raft of videos by Americans of Anglo-Saxon and Semitic origin who were simply appalled at the war games that were being played at the expense of the refugees, and flayed into the duplicity of the West.

But occasionally, very occasionally, somebody sends me a video which I not only watch at least a dozen times but which I forward to people I think will watch and comment on. Such a video was forwarded to me by a genteel soul who is into nostalgia as deeply as I am. It features a very attractive young woman, a Muslim of Arab origin who is a citizen of the state of Israel. I couldn’t get her name because I think it was written in Hebrew. What came across was the most passionate and fierce indictment of the hypocrisy of the West that I have seen on Facebook. A number of sentences lodged themselves in my brain… ‘In Haleb, Syria eight hours drive from Tel Aviv a genocide is taking place… Let me be more accurate. It is a holocaust where children are being slaughtered every hour and nobody is doing anything about it, neither in France, the UK, Germany or the United States… The United Nations is holding a meeting of the Security Council where delegates may wipe away a tear when they see an image of a father holding his little daughter in his arms. And the world still does nothing… Nobody is marching in the streets for the men and women of Syria. There is only one word for this — Hypocrisy… Albert Einstein once said that the world won’t be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch and do nothing.’

In this connection I must reproduce what the UN web page has to say about one of its precepts headed Preventing Genocide: ‘The United Nations brought about the first-ever treaty to combat genocide — acts committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. The 1948 Genocide Convention has been ratified by 146 States, which commit to prevent and punish actions of genocide in war and in peacetime. The UN tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, as well as UN-supported courts in Cambodia, have put would-be genocide perpetrators on notice that such crimes would no longer be tolerated. The United Nations Outreach Programme seeks to remind the world of the lessons to be learnt from the Holocaust in order to help to prevent future acts of genocide. The Secretary General’s Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide monitors dangerous situations, brings them to the attention of the Secretary General and the Security Council, and recommends action.’

So, what does the special adviser on the prevention of genocide think is happening in parts of Syria these days when refugees have neither food or water and men, women and children are being killed? Parlor games? I fully endorse the revulsion of the young Israeli woman at what is happening in the Middle East and the inability of world leaders to be more articulate and to crush the terrorists and murderers who operate with impunity.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 25^th, 2016.

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