Darfur: silence is consent

Darfur: silence is consent By Gil Troy
Canadian Jewish News, April 26, 2007

Darfur haunts me. In July 2004, I wrote an article protesting the Arab Janjaweed militias’ brutality against farmers in the Sudan’s northwestern region. The Janjaweed had murdered 30,000 people and displaced 1.2 million more. “How dare we sit, drinking our morning coffee,” I wrote, “tut-tutting over evil without trying to fight it?”

Nearly three years later, more than 300,000 have been murdered, and we are still tut-tutting. True, there is enough Darfur awareness that people who want to telegraph their humanitarian bona fides invoke Darfur to position themselves as successors to Mother Teresa. And the Jewish community has responded far more effectively than most. But I remain haunted by Darfur, embarrassed by our silence, humiliated by our impotence, humbled by my own failure to help.

I used to criticize America and Canada for not doing enough during the Holocaust to save European Jewry. While both countries should have welcomed more refugees, I am more cautious in my condemnation. I watched the Rwanda genocide unfold. Former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan and former U.S. president Bill Clinton, the dithering duo, did nothing. My friends and I did nothing that inconvenienced us. Now, we are equally numb regarding Darfur.

Fortunately, some of my students still believe they can change the world, or at least stop the slaughter. One, Evan Malach, organized “The Amazing Benefit Concert for Darfur” on the McGill campus, last November. A former student, Josh Scheinert, now studying at Osgoode Hall Law School, succeeded in getting the National Post to publish a series of articles by politicians and community activists this spring.

These initiatives are lovely, creative, inspiring, but will they help? Three years from now, will Evan, Josh and their allies look back as I do on my essay, with an overwhelming sense of failure drowning out what little pride they can muster because they, at least, tried? The answer lies not with them but with the rest of us.

We are overdue for a massive mobilization. We should write letters, make phone calls, contributing our time, efforts, creativity however we can. We should pressure western governments to sanction the Sudanese dictatorship, which facilitates the Darfur slaughter. We should donate money generously but vigilantly, making sure our charity goes to the needy, not the jackals who exploit western guilt and African misery. We need to learn other pressure points, such as boycotting the 2008 Beijing Olympics unless the Chinese stop supporting Sudan. We must demand that the United Nations prove it can stop Third World abuses not just nitpick at Israel.

We also should help single-issue advocacy organizations connect the dots between their concerns and Darfur. Feminists should mobilize because women and girls are frequently raped, then branded, making the emotional trauma permanent. Environmentalists should galvanize because the murderers sometimes throw corpses into local waters to poison the water supply. Islamic leaders should respond because most of the criminals in this conflict – and the victims – are Muslim. African-Americans should react to the conflict’s racist dimension, with the Arab Janjaweed militias targeting black tribal farmers in a push for Arab supremacy. And human rights groups should rally more vociferously, because this conflict’s brutality demeans us all as fellow human beings.

The ’60s cliché applies: silence is consent. True, Darfur is thousands of miles away. True, most of us have no real stake in the outcome. True, most of us are lucky enough to lead such comfortable lives we cannot imagine this catastrophe’s dimensions. And true, we crowd our schedules with so many work, relationship and leisure time commitments we cannot carve out time for serious activism. That is why we must as a society stand up for Darfur. We need to act heroically, not only for the hundreds of thousands of good people in anguish, but for our own souls. Who are we as individuals, who are we as a people, if we stand idly by? And imagine what we can become as individuals, and as a nation, if we start learning how to be a strike force for justice. We must understand that even when we do not seem to have a stake in the battle for good – we do, and that when we try to save strangers, we are also saving our own souls.

Yom Hazikaron & Yom Ha'atzmaut 2007

Memorial Day in Israel

Israeli soldiers salute after placing flags on graves at the military cemetery on the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem, April 22, in a ceremony before Memorial Day, which commemorates Israeli soldiers killed in war.

Israel Celebrates

Israelis wave flags as they celebrate the country's 59th Independence Day, in Jerusalem on April 23.

Casualties from recent Lebanon war remembered on Israel's Memorial Day
JTA, 4-23-07

JERUSALEM (JTA) – The young men from reserve battalion 9211 greeted each other with quiet handshakes and embraces on Israel's Memorial Day by the rose and flag-covered grave of their friend David Smidov.

"It's a difficult day," Ori Bushari, 26, said on Monday.

Bushari had been friends with Smidov since the day they were drafted together nearly eight years ago and was just a few feet away from him when a Hezbollah mortar shell ended his life on Aug. 9.

On this Memorial Day, known in Israel as Yom Hazikaron, there was an especially bitter pain mourning those killed in Israel's most recent war as the country asks openly if its leaders bungled how the war was fought and if it was even necessary.

Smidov, 25 when he was killed, was one of the 119 Israeli soldiers killed in a war that only recently was given a name: the Second Lebanon War.

His battalion comrades know that the shell that exploded near their friend could easily have hit them.

Bushari quickly sketches out the formation the battalion walked as its members climbed a path north into Lebanon toward their destination: the village of Marjayoun.

The X he marks at the front of the marching line represents the company commander. He was just one behind, to the right of the commander. Smidov was three men behind Bushari.

"We heard the mortar falling, hit the ground and then heard the cries of someone shouting for the medic," Bushari said.

Smidov was badly injured and died almost immediately.

"It's just a matter of luck, it's not something you have control over," Amir Binyamin, 29, said of the mortar fire.

In past years Binyamin said he had attended Memorial Day ceremonies for a former commander, but this year he was compelled to be here, next to Smidov's grave.

"This time I was there when it happened," he said. "I was only a few feet away."

Smidov's grave and the those of other soldiers killed in Lebanon were scattered through bloc 7 of Mount Herzl, the national cemetery. Next to them were parents, siblings, fiancees and friends huddled protectively around the headstones as the country engaged in a national day of mourning.

There was no room to move Monday at Mount Herzl. People stood packed together between the narrow rows of graves and under the shade of pine trees as a two-minute siren went off in memory of the dead.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke at the ceremony.

"On this special day we are all one bereaved family," he said.

But as members of the reserve unit noted, few people seemed to be listening closely to the prime minister.

Olmert is hugely unpopular and will soon face the findings of the Winograd Commission, which has investigated the way the government and army handled the war.

"It's part of the aftermath of this war and the leadership," Bushari said. "As people say, they hate the state, but they love their friends. That's why they go to reserve duty."

The battalion will meet again next week in the Negev Desert when they gather for a week of training exercises.

Professor Yaakov Bar-Siman-Tov, an international relations expert at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the pain this year is different from the past. While it is always excruciating to lose soldiers in battle, most Israeli wars have been fought with the belief that the state had no other choice.

Israelis had the sense that if enemy nations were about to destroy you, "you had to defend yourself, otherwise the country could face total destruction," Bar-Simon-Tov said. "There is nothing harder than burying one's children, but at least there was a feeling that the sacrifice stood for something."

In the case of the war in Lebanon, "there were so many miscalculations in decision-making and it was not clear of the need to go to war," Bar-Siman-Tov said. "Today with all the pain we feel over the kidnapped soldiers, there is the question of whether or not we could have come to a different scenario."

Smidov, who was to have started studying architecture last fall, was called up for reserve duty just after returning from a holiday in Prague with his girlfriend. In Prague, friend say, he had asked her to marry him. On Monday she stood by his grave.

The Great Diaspora Dilemma: To Criticize or Not to Criticize

By Gil Troy
THE JEWISH TRIBUNE, April 19, 2007, p.5

To criticize or not to criticize, that is the great Diaspora dilemma. Those of us deeply engaged in Israel , viewing Zionism as the Jewish national liberation movement, seek ever more involvement in Israeli life. We recognize that the state of our homeland will determine our Jewish future. We know that true love, for countries and individuals, involves seeing the warts as well as the wonders, so we can demand better. Why should we silence ourselves, refraining from criticizing the Jewish state?
At the same time, we Diaspora Jews vote with our feet, choosing not to participate fully in our great national Jewish adventure by living elsewhere. We give what we choose not what we must. We do not pay taxes to the third Jewish Commonwealth. We do not vote in the first Jewish democracy. We and our children do not serve in the modern Jewish army. Given our limited, voluntary investment in blood, sweat, and tears, how dare we dictate decisions about Israel ’s borders, about life and death questions plaguing Israel ’s citizens?
Extremes on the left and the right have been myopic, inconsistent. Traditionally, right-wingers supported Israel “right or wrong,” demonizing dissenters. Starting with the Oslo years, and peaking with the Gaza Disengagement, many Diaspora rightists denounced Israel and the Israeli Army. Meanwhile, too many leftist Jews are what others have called “proud to be ashamed to be Jewish.” These people only identify publicly as Jews to criticize Israel – often viciously.
We could all use some Vitamin “H” – humility. Like all armchair statesman and laptop warriors, I have strong opinions about Israel ’s borders, Israel ’s relations with the Palestinians, Israel ’s strengths and flaws. I happily share them at my dinner table. But even there – and certainly in public – I am humbled by my choice not to put my life, or my kids’ lives, on the line. I do not think it is proper for me to preach to our Israeli brothers and sisters where to draw the line between themselves and their enemies. Under Israel ’s Law of Return I can acquire citizenship instantly and plunge into the debate wholeheartedly. Until that day comes, I choose to stay humble, to keep my opinions on this complicated, existential issue private.
My instincts to be humble are reinforced by the fact that we are not operating in an honest environment. Israel has been subjected to a vicious, disproportionate ideological assault. I am loathe to join the pile-on, and I loathe those who do pile on, attacking Israel without acknowledging Israel’s search for peace, Israel’s willingness to compromise, Israel’s right to self-defense. So I defend Israel ardently, without an asterisk, without feeling constrained by my decision to sit out the border debate, for now. There are so many bigger issues concerning the Palestinians’ immoral decision to turn from negotiations to terror, the world’s amoral acquiescence, the toxicity of Palestinian political culture, the one-sided application of human rights law, the travesty the United Nations has become, the tragedy of Arab autocracy and rejectionism. All these make whatever mistakes Israel has made pale in comparison.
Still, as someone passionately committed to Israel ’s future, for my sake, for my kids’ sake, for my people’s sake, I have no problem criticizing Israel constructively, appropriately, empathetically. I mourn the growing gap between rich and poor, the weakening education system, the epidemic political corruption, Israeli intellectuals’ self-loathing and hypercritical behavior, the Rabbinate’s ham-handed policies which have alienated generations of Israelis, Israeli secular culture’s materialistic paganism, the social, economic, and educational inequities afflicting Israeli Arabs, the harshness of Israeli political culture and street life. All those problems keep my critical faculties more than engaged. Of course, they are balanced out by my wonder at Israelis’ personal generosity, warmth in hospitality, cultural creativity, improvisational entrepreneurship; my appreciation for the remarkable attempts to plant liberal ideas of democracy, liberty, equality in the Middle East’s rocky soil, for the richness of Jewish life throughout the country, and for the idealism, altruism, courage, and humanity I witnessed last summer during the war against Hezbollah..
Thus, just as I avoid opining publicly on military matters, given my fortunate ignorance and insulation from such concerns, I feel particularly emboldened to ply my expertise as both critic and cheerleader when it comes to fostering a vibrant modern Jewish identity, building an effective and humane democracy, nurturing a muscular but moderate middle path. Just as we all could spend more time emphasizing Israel ’s accomplishments not Israel ’s mistakes, we all should spend more time focusing on those areas where our standing is clear, our input constructive, our expertise helpful. North American Jews justifiably bristle when some Israelis cross the Atlantic to lecture us that our communities are dying or that we are not fully realized Jews in the Diaspora. We should extend to Israelis the same courtesy we demand from them.

Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University and the author of Why I Am A Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity, and the Challenges of Today.

Olmert: Limit prisoner swap

JTA, 4-18-07

http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/101247.html

Ehud Olmert said there are limits to what Israel will give in exchange for a soldier held hostage in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli prime minister said Wednesday that Israel had rejected a list of 1,400 Palestinian prisoners whom Sgt. Gilad Shalit's captors want freed as ransom.

"The list is disappointing and creates expectations that are impossible to live up to," Olmert told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, according to an official briefing. "It has to be within proper proportions."

Olmert did not say how many prisoners he would be willing to free to recover Shalit, who was abducted to Gaza by Palestinian gunmen last June.

Hezbollah: Captives treated humanely

JTA, 4-6-07

A Hezbollah leader said two kidnapped Israeli soldiers were being treated humanely.

Israel Defense Force reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, whose capture in a crossborder raid last July sparked a monthlong war between Israel and Hezbollah, are receiving the same treatment as that given Elhanan Tannenbaum, Muhammad Kamati told the Nazareth-based newspaper A-Sinara in an interview to be published Friday, the Jerusalem Post reported. Tannenbaum was an Israeli businessman kidnapped in Europe and held captive in Lebanon for several years until he was released in exchange for hundreds of Arab prisoners.

"We are treating the prisoners as the prisoners whom we released in the past have described, and as our religion directs us to treat prisoners of war," Kamati said.

Goldwasser's wife, Karnit, said the statements constituted neither a sign of life nor a "turning point" in efforts to win their release. "We want to see them alive," she told Channel 2 television. "A sign of life is if someone sees them, and a Red Cross representative needs to see them. Until now, no one has seen them, including the Red Cross."

Goldwasser's father, Shlomo, said Israel must talk directly to Hezbollah, just as Britain negotiated with Iran to win the release of captured British sailors this week. He spoke to reporters in Tel Aviv, where he was joined by 150 participants in a cross-country solidarity march for Goldwasser, Regev and Gilad Shalit, who was kidnapped by Palestinians near the Gaza Strip last June.

POW families welcome Iran releases

JTA, 4-5-07

The families of three captive Israeli soldiers welcomed Iran's release of a group of British sailors.

Relatives of Ehud Goldwasser, Eldad Regev and Gilad Shalit sent letters of solidarity to the families of the 15 sailors, who were freed Thursday after almost two weeks in Iranian captivity. The sailors were captured in the Persian Gulf after Iran accused them of crossing into Iranian waters, though Britain insists the group was in Iraqi waters.

The letters, copies of which were provided to Israeli media, congratulated the Britons' on the return of their loved ones and urged them to help in efforts to recover Goldwasser and Regev from Hezbollah and Shalit from his Palestinian captors in Gaza.

"We are certain that, when you finish celebrating the release of your children, you will serve as an advocate for us in Britain through your government and the international community,” read the letters, which were transferred by the British Embassy in Tel Aviv.

REMEMBER THE VICTIMS OF TERROR AT THE SEDER:

Note: Unfortunately, this is the seventh year in a row that I feel compelled to circulate this call (the text is updated.....) best wishes for a happy and peaceful pesach, Gil Troy



Once again, during this year's seders, we will celebrate our joyous holiday of liberation with heavy hearts. Even as we revel in our freedom as Jews in the modern world, even as we marvel at Israel 's strength and tenacity in the wake of a terrorist onslaught, too many of our brothers and sisters in Israel are in pain. This year, in particular, as we think of three Israeli hostages and their families, truly in a Mitzraim, in dire straits, and as we think of more than one hundred civilians and soldiers murdered this summer, we must rise to the challenge to reclaim our symbols, to remember our losses, to reaffirm our commitment to Israel, to the Jewish people, and to a true peace.


In the bloody, unnecessary war begun when the Palestinians turned away from negotiations toward violence, too many died, too many have been injured, on both sides. And too many seders now have empty chairs - missing husbands, fathers, brothers, sons; missing wives, mothers, sisters, daughters.


The power of the seder - which remains one of the most popular of Jewish ceremonies - comes from its ritualization of memory. It is a most primal, most sensual, most literal, of services. The seder plate - with its representations of the mortar used in building, the charoset, and of the tears shed by the slaves, the salt water - helps us visualize the trauma of slavery.


The physical acts of reclining, of eating special foods, of standing to greet Elijah the prophet, help us feel the joy of Yetziat Mitzrayim, of leaving Egypt . And, in an affirmation of the importance of peoplehood, we mark this special moment not as individuals but as a community.



In that spirit, we cannot proceed with business as usual during these difficult times. We must improvise a new ritual that marks our present pain, that illustrates our vital connection with Israel and with Israelis today. Let each of us, as we gather at our seders, intrude on our own celebrations by leaving one setting untouched, by having one empty chair at our table.



Let us take a moment to reflect on our losses from these terrible six-and-a-half years, for even as stability has returned, terror attempts continue, freshly dug graves pockmark the Holy Land , and the mourning for those lost persists. And as we reflect, let us not just remember the dead as hundreds of nameless and faceless people, but let us personalize them. Let us take the time to find out the name of one victim of the current conflict, one Jew who cannot celebrate this year's holiday, one family in mourning.



Let us call out the names of Gilad Shalit, a 19-year-old with a shy smile, kidnapped by Hamas on the Gaza border in July; and that of Ehud Goldwasser, a 31-year-old engineer, and Eldad Regev, a 26-year-old pre-law student, kidnapped by Hezbollah just south of Lebanon. "This year we won't celebrate Pesach," Gilad's father Noam has said. "Pesach is about freedom, and we don't have that in our hearts. We want Gilad to return from imprisonment to freedom. It's been nine months, and we're not giving up."



Let us call out the name of Yaniv Bar-On, the 20-year-old son of a South African father and a Canadian mother, ambushed while trying to save Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev from Hezbollah's clutches, of Roi Klein, 31, a father of two, who jumped on a grenade crying "Shma Yisrael," Hear O' Israel, sacrificing his life to save his troops from certain death, and of Omer Pesachov, 7, and his grandmother, Yehudit Itzkovich, 58, who fled Nahariya one morning at the start of this summer's war, only to be bombed in Moshav Miron later that evening as the family prepared to welcome the Shabbat, the Sabbath.



Remembering earlier victims, let us call out the name of Benny Avraham, age 20, one of three young Israelis murdered by Hezbollah in a failed kidnapping in October 2000, whose body was kept frozen as the sadistic terrorists toyed with the emotions of the three grieving families - and people of conscience throughout the world.



Let us call out the name of Koby Mandell, age 13, a young American immigrant brutally killed in May, 2001, whose father, Rabbi Seth Mandell, talks about the empty seat at his Shabbat table and shares the pain of watching other boys grow up, watching their voices deepen, their shoulders broaden, their gaits quicken, even as his son lies dead.



Let us call out the names of Ernest and Eva Weiss, aged 80 and 75, residents of Petach Tikvah who survived Nazi concentration camps only to be slaughtered while sitting down for the Pesach Seder at the Park Hotel exactly five years ago, Pesach, 2002.



Let us call out the names of Maryam Attar, 27, Kamar Abu Hamed, 12, Abigail Leitel, 14, Mordechai Hersko, 41, and his son Tom Hershko, 15, a Muslim, a Druze, a Baptist, and two Jews, among the 17 murdered in Haifa just over four years ago on March 5, 2003.



And as we condemn modern-day Pharoahs in Iran and elsewhere, as we recoil from the worldwide scourge of anti-Semitism this terrorism also unleashed, let us call out the names of Ilan Halimi, the 23-year-old French Jew cellphone salesman kidnapped, tortured and murdered in a Parisian suburb by anti-Semitic thugs last year, and of Daniel Pearl, the 38-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter kidnapped, then murdered, in Pakistan almost exactly four years earlier.



As we call out these names, let us vow to do what we can to bring the three hostages home. As we call out these names, let us commit to some action, to embrace the families of the victims - the thousand who died and the nearly ten thousand who were injured. As we call out these names, let us commit to building a friendship with Israel and Israelis which is not just about politics, and not solely about mourning and memory.



And as we call out these names, unlike too many of our enemies, let us not call for vengeance, let us not call for more bloodshed. Instead, as we mourn, let us hope; as we remember the many lives lost during this crazy and pointless war, let us pray ever more intensely for a just and lasting peace.



For more Infomation visit:
http://togetherwithisrael.org


Information about many of the Israelis killed in the current violence can be found at
the Israeli Foreign Ministry's Web site:



http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/home.asp Click on
Terrorism -- Terror since 2000 - In Memory of the Victims of Palestinian Violence
and Terrorismn.



Ideas about how to help families of victims can be found at
http://www.onefamilyfund.org/index.asp



Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University and the author of
"Why I Am A Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today."