Jews around the world have worked hard to give life to the slogan “never again,” but there are painfully abundant signs the world isn’t listening.
Worse, a number of our own organizations have been reluctant to speak on some of the moral rationalizations that contribute to the genocidal mindset.
An example: America’s bland refusal to bar torture in our treatment of foreign prisoners, while hardly a call for genocide, is a troubling endorsement of an anything-is-justified-at-a-time-of-war perspective that is the excuse used by every perpetrator of genocide. But few Jewish groups have spoken out as the torture controversy continues.
The message of the Holocaust — indeed, the barest facts about it — have gotten lost in the clamor of world events.
A recent BBC survey in Great Britain revealed that 45 percent of adults in that country had never heard of Auschwitz. The number went up to 60 percent among those younger than 35.
In a study by the International Society for Sephardic Progress, 63 percent of Americans questioned hadn’t a clue about that ultimate death factory. Again, ignorance was higher among younger respondents.
So should we be surprised that each new instance of genocide, from Cambodia to Rwanda to Darfur, is met with indifference, especially if the victims are non-Europeans?
In this country, some religious groups have demanded stronger action to end the current genocide in Darfur; but there’s been no hue and cry from the public for their government to do more, despite extensive newspaper coverage of the killings.
An outstanding new feature film, “Hotel Rwanda,” was produced with the hope of generating that kind of mass response, but only a miniscule proportion of the population will see it.
Matter of indifference
The idea that genocide is going on today is a matter of indifference to most Americans, or one more in a long series of lamentable disasters around the world.
This nation’s political leaders have failed to make preventing or stopping genocide a priority in U.S. foreign policy.
The United Nations, so quick to condemn even the inadvertent shooting of a Gaza child by an Israeli soldier, couldn’t care less about the thousands of Sudanese massacred under their noses.
The recent report of the U.N. special commission on Darfur, which under Arab pressure concluded there was no genocide, should be regarded as a war crime in itself.
The Jewish community has been more vocal about Darfur than most. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Conscience has used its enormous credibility to try to generate concern about Darfur, and some Jewish groups have spoken out forcefully.
The communal response has been much more tepid in response to Washington’s decision to carve out big exceptions in our national morality for reasons of “security” when it comes to the treatment of foreign prisoners.
During the recent hearings on the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general, the issue of torture in U.S. prisons in places like Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Abu Grahb prison in Iraq was front and center because of the nominee’s memo suggesting that the Geneva conventions are “quaint” and our own laws against torture do not apply offshore.
The torture-genocide connection should be obvious. Countries that justify torture are, at least indirectly and maybe directly, endorsing a world-view suggesting that threats to their nations, real or imagined, justify any act, as long as it can be classified a matter of national security.
In the case of America, the threat of terrorism is real — unlike the threat that German Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler claimed was posed by the Jews he tortured and murdered.
But tolerating torture undermines civilization and weakens the restraints that prevent genocide. It helps legitimize the ideas that genocidal leaders and tyrants always use to justify their actions.
“The torture of prisoners, or issues of what is the appropriate conduct of soldiers, are issues that should have special resonance for Jews, given our experience in the 20th Century,” said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of Reform Judaism. “We have a special obligation to speak out on these issues; if we don’t, shame on us.”
But few, aside from URJ, have.
Perhaps some Jewish leaders were concerned that any criticism might reflect badly on Israel, which has had its own controversies on torture. Ironically, that country — under a much more immediate terror threat — has acted responsibly, thanks to a ruling by its Supreme Court.
Again, make no mistake. America really is threatened and the need for a strong and effective response to the terrorists is undeniable.
But few experts believe torture is a useful interrogation technique, or effective enough to justify the heavy moral costs or the boost our actions will give to those who use the mantra of “security” as justification for murder on a mass scale.
Jewish leaders should look at the worldwide indifference to Darfur, at the appalling lack of Holocaust knowledge in the Western nations and at America’s own casual endorsement of torture when it suits our interest — and see a real connection.
Maybe then, their silence might be replaced by outrage and genuine leadership.
Former Madisonian James Besser has been Washington correspondent for the New York Jewish Week, the Baltimore Jewish Times and other leading Anglo-Jewish newspapers for 15 years.
As WCC attacks Israel,
Jews should reach out to Christians
By Dexter Van Zile
Boston (JTA) — Jews in the United States have every reason to express shock over the World Council of Churches’ decision to encourage members to follow the lead of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in divesting from Israel.
The dominoes are falling against Israel. First, U.S. colleges embraced the cause of divestment; then the Anglican Church announced that it was studying the issue; then the Presbyterian Church (USA) adopted the policy — and now the World Council of Churches on Feb. 21 encouraged denominations to do the same.
It looks bad. But Jews need to understand that lay members of Christian churches remain firm in their support for the Jewish state.
Jews need to reach out to Protestants in the pews of the churches that fund the WCC, telling them that the council isn’t worthy of their support and that it’s time to start a divestment campaign of their own — against the WCC.
Jews might be surprised at the response they get. Many U.S. Christians stopped listening to the WCC long ago.
Many still have not forgiven the WCC for giving $85,000 to the Patriotic Front of Zimbabwe in 1978, months after the group shot down an airliner, killing 38 of the 56 passengers on board. Terrorists killed 10 of the survivors.
American Christians know the WCC has a history of supporting violent “liberation” movements in Central America, Africa and East Asia.
They know the WCC ignored the plight of dissidents behind the Iron Curtain and “built bridges” with killers and tyrants, just as leaders from the Presbyterian Church (USA) recently extended offers of friendship to Hezbollah, a group that killed 241 U.S. Marines in 1983.
The reaction of Presbyterian lay members was so strong that two church employees were fired for meeting with Hezbollah, demonstrating where the denomination’s true power and conscience rest — in the pews, not in the minds of the movement’s theologians.
Blind eyes
American Protestants know the WCC turns a blind eye to the violence perpetrated by the Muslim regime in Sudan, instead focusing its criticism on Israel.
They know this without having to read the study by the Institute on Religion and Democracy that reports that between 2000 and 2003, the WCC issued 36 human-rights complaints against Israel and two about Sudan, where close to 2 million black Africans, many of them Christian, were killed and tens of thousands were enslaved in a self-declared jihad waged by the Islamist regime in Khartoum.
They know the WCC is foolish to praise the leaders of the Presbyterian Church (USA) for embracing divestment, even after the denomination released a survey showing that 42 percent of the church’s members oppose the decision and only 28 percent support it.
Knowing all this, lay Protestants in the United States long have regarded the WCC as irrelevant. But that is a mixed blessing.
Because they have grown used to ignoring WCC pronouncements, Protestants do not understand the lethality of the organization’s one-sided condemnations of Israel. They do not understand that the WCC’s soft-pedaling of terrorism against Israel only encourages more terrorism against Jews.
Because U.S. Christians spend more time listening to the pastors in their pulpits than to their denominational leaders, they don’t know that some of their theologians harbor ill-will toward Israel and an obsession with the Jewish state’s alleged misdeeds that borders on the pathological.
Because U.S. Christians always have enjoyed religious freedom in America, they do not understand the oppression suffered by Christians in the Middle East and the threat faced by Jews in Israel.
Once U.S. Christians understand these things — and groups like ours are making a full-court press to educate them — they will know which organizations are the true, legitimate targets of divestment.
They just have to be told. Their own leaders will not tell them, so their Jewish friends and neighbors — and their Christian allies — will have to step into the breach for the sake of Israel, the United States and all of our children.
Dexter Van Zile is a member of the Judeo-Christian Alliance, an initiative of the David Project that promotes a fair and honest discussion of the Middle East conflict in Protestant churches. He also is a member of the United Church of Christ, which will consider divestment at its General Synod in July.
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