It started with words

Editorial

In a typically thoughtful and deeply moving testament this week, marking the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, former Canadian justice minister Irwin Cotler wrote of the seeds of destruction.

"The first and foremost lesson of the Holocaust and the genocides that followed, from Srebrenica to Rwanda," Cotler wrote, "is that they occurred not only because of the machinery of death, but also because of the state-sanctioned incitement to hate. It is this teaching of contempt, this demonizing of the other – this is where it all begins. As the Canadian Supreme Court recognized, and as echoed by International Criminal Tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers – it began with words."

In Darfur, 400,000 people have died and three million are displaced from a Sudanese government-supported terror regime against the ethnically African Darfurians.

Last month, the International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, though it remains to be seen what impact this will have on the security of those he threatens.

In fact, the four million who are in serious need of humanitarian assistance were further imperiled when, in a petulant act of genocidal insouciance after the ICC's indictment, Bashir cast out of his country aid groups like Doctors Without Borders, who provided the only lifeline between Sudan's genocidal policies and the survival of the Darfurian people.

At this time of year, when the Jewish people recreate and celebrate our escape from bondage, there remain countless circumstances worldwide in which millions of people are imperiled and in bondage of various sorts.

We have a special role to warn the world, because of our ancient lessons of freedom and because of our modern experience, and so it has been appropriate that Jewish people, including survivors of the Shoah, have been at the forefront of educating about current genocides and potential genocides.

Yet for all of this vigilance, in some ways we have been less attentive to the threats that continue to menace our own people. When Miriam Ziv, Israel's ambassador to Canada, visited Vancouver several weeks ago, she observed that only in Israel is the threat of Iran's imminent nuclear capability a source of regular media and government attention.

The threat is both imminent – Iran could have a nuclear weapon within months – and real – Iran's president has stated as clearly as any genocidal lunatic could that his goal is to eradicate Israel from the planet.

The Jewish people have traditionally been among the world's most outward looking. We are involved in countless good causes in aid of other individuals and groups. While we shout to the world about the imminent threats to Darfurians and others, we need to turn more attention to the realities of the threats again facing our own.

In Europe and North America, incidents of anti-Semitic violence and threats are increasing. But it remains the Arab and Muslim world where anti-Jewish incitement is both most serious and most organized. The hatred we see in the West is incidental, random and certainly unofficial. The hatred that has been seen across the Muslim world is officially sanctioned and intended to incite. The zealots who blow themselves up amid crowds of Jews are venerated by officialdom in Palestine and elsewhere, their faces postered around villages, playgrounds immortalizing their names. Children's television programs seek to breed generations of genocidal martyrs the way Sesame Street inculcates literacy. Medieval blood libels and the revived protocols of Jew-hatred are the Egyptian equivalent of reality TV – and Egypt is one of Israel's two peaceable neighbors. And every time we raise these issues, we are dismissed as paranoid, as having a persecution complex. In a letter to the editor on these pages recently, we were accused of racism for even raising the reality of official panoramic Jew-hatred in the Muslim world. Apparently, we are forbidden from even acknowledging the presence of this genocidal stream in the Muslim world's body politic, despite its omnipresence. To do so, incredibly, paradoxically, makes us the racists.

Cotler is correct that genocide begins with words. But times have changed, even since the Rwandan genocide 15 years ago this week. Hitler may have been as clear as possible in his intent, publishing his plan years before it was implement. And he was, by the standards of his time, ruthlessly and efficiently implementing the assembly line method perfected by his hero Henry Ford to execute his Final Solution. But even those few short decades ago were prior to the nuclear age. For the past several decades, we have listened, and the world has turned away, as the Arab and Muslim leadership incited their people to ever more ecstatic levels of Jew-hatred. Within months, the Iranian Haman may have a nuclear weapon. The world has heard the words. Are we all listening?

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