"The whole world was silent" , declared Ariel Sharon at the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Too true. Was the silence from ignorance, fear, fear of speaking out against popular sentiment, or indifference...? That's the question. It's certainly true that many western officials and business leaders applauded the rise of the Nazi regime as a bulwark against Bolshevism. "Never again" has become a phrase associated with the Holocaust. Never again, meaning, I assume, never again be silent about crimes against humanity.
My mother-in-law's parents were prominent members of the Jewish community in Przemysl Poland in the early years of the last century. She went to France in the 1920s, where she met my Welsh father-in-law. They fell in love, married and settled in England. Irena is dead now but we have 2 elderly cousins from those days. One is now in Melbourne, the other in London. The story of the hell they went through would fill a book but it's a book that won't get written because they won't tell us everything. The younger was rounded up with his neighbours, by German troops, and marched off to the Jewish cemetery to be shot. His mother told him to run. Eventually he met up with his brother, in London, who had survived the war by joining the Russian army as an entertainer.
What those two brothers went through, in those awful years, had nothing to do with Palestinians, or other Arabs, or other Muslims.
We try to get to Melbourne at least once a year, to see our 2 sons there but also to see our cousin Guidek. The last time we were over there, cousin Norbert, from London, was over too. We had hardly exchanged greetings when Norbert said, "I am very upset about what is happening in Israel."
You see, the world is still silent about injustice. I've seen an email recently from a Canadian lawyer , saying that anyone who criticizes Israel, meaning the Israeli government and the Israeli military, is anti-semitic, What a cruel ugly remark to make! No State should be above scrutiny. No analyst or journalist should be afraid to examine and criticize a regime for fear of being labelled anti-semitic.... afraid to speak out about : the assassinations, the arrests, the house demolitions, the destruction of olive groves, the daily humiliations by teenaged soldiers, the enormous wall weaving in and out and round about, dividing the Palestinians into enclosed enclaves, the treatment meted out to Mordechai Vanunu for telling the world about Israel's nuclear weapons program, the immense imbalance of power, a state armed to the teeth at war with a stateless indigenous people.
Are critics of the Likudists closet anti-semites?
You wouldn't know it from our corporate media but there are Jewish peace groups both inside and outside Israel who are very outspoken. Some very brave people have visited New Zealand in recent times, pleading for international pressure on the the Israeli regime. Yet, as far as I know, these visitors have been ignored by our media. A young refusnik, an Israeli youth who refused to do his military service in the occupied territories, a New York woman from a group called Jews for Justice who has made a video about the current situation in the occupied territories, and just last year, Professor Jeff Halper of the University of Jerusalem who is a co-ordinator of a committee opposed to house demolitions.
The Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim holds camps for young Palestinian and Israeli musicians, where they practise together and then give performances in Europe. Mr Barenboim scoffs at those who say he is anti-Israeli, answering that Sharon is anti-Israeli. After all, there is a strong appeal for justice found in the book of Amos chapter 5 vs 23-24 Let justice roll down like a river and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
Socialist Léon Blum was Prime Minister of France in the 30s. The Jewish politician is warmly remembered for the reforms he introduced to the benefit of working Frenchmen: better pay and conditions, holidays for workers. better health and education services. But to make a long story short, the Germans invaded, the puppet Vichy regime was installed and Blum was arrested. He is said to have remarked something like, "I guess we can't be a happy France in an unhappy Europe."
And in today's world, so interconnected, no one, in any country no matter how powerful militarily can live in peace and security as long as there is injustice anywhere. Much of the distrust of the West stems from the silence, the indifference, the lack of interest by Western corporate media in the appalling realities of everyday life in occupied Palestine.
Silence is acquiescence.
Will there ever be a time when people will not be able to say, " The whole world was silent."
