South Africa Jewish community is experiencing a “flurry of viciously anti-Semitic and threatening attacks”, and have vowed to fight back. Picture: Jeffrey Abrahams/African News Agency (ANA) Archives
Many Jews around the world have strangely and unexpectedly shown support for the Palestine cause by joining numerous public protests, openly condemning an evil mutation of their own species, loosely termed and defined by the “Z” word.
This ironic outcry begs a brief analysis as it also carries an important message for the rest of us “nobler-thanthou” members of other religions, and even institutions .
The Jewish community is a relatively tiny fraction among the other major religions of the world – Christianity, Islam, Hinduism – constituting less than 0.5%, and, arguably, must therefore be well interconnected. So any Jew anywhere, openly decrying the specific, or even, general behaviour of some of the members of his own community is openly leaving himself and his immediate family to immediate rebuke and even some serious, painful ostracism.
And that is my vital point! What about the rest of us who think that we belong to religions that cannot do any harm or do not also openly violate basic human rights of others?
And how many of us stop for a moment to raise our own head a little higher than the rest of our own community, look around and have the guts to scream: “Hey! Wait! This is not on! Hey! wait! This is not us!”
Boldness like this is possibly the only hope that mankind may be left with to save a world that is collectively plunging into an irreversible black hole.
This call for all of us to shout out loudly when we feel things are going against any grain of human fairness is not necessarily confined t religion.
It extends to every facet of our existence.
We don’t want “whistle-blowersafter-the-fact”, when the horse has already bolted, either. We need loud screaming immediately any infringement of basic decency is even being contemplated! Whether it’s being discussed in the mosque, church, temple or synagogue. In situ. In loco. Pronto! In Parliament, boardrooms, at school staff meetings, at political gatherings, at business corporates’ rendezvous!
Do we have the courage to speak out against our own kind, already? Some brave Jews have shown the way.
* Ebrahim Essa.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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