Voicing your disgust at Israel and planning to protest this weekend? Horrified, as you should be, by over 200 people killed? The Central African Republic is locked in a brutal civil war, with children forced to be soldiers. Rape and torture everywhere, mass disappearances and killings. Over 1000 people killed this year alone. Are you sitting by and ignoring it? Have you contacted your MP? Not quite sure where the Central African Republic is? Two days ago, a Taliban car bomb killed 89 people in Afghanistan. Did you express outrage, horror, fury and demand immediate action be taken? Any posts on your FB page? The Syrian government is currently in a war with its own population. Whole cities have been destroyed from cannon fire and rocket attacks. 30,000 killed already in 2014, following on from over 70,000 last year. 100,000 people killed. Silence? Too complicated to get involved in or to really know what’s happening - who the good guys are and who the bad guys are? Boko Haram, the militant islamist group in Nigeria, killed over a 1000 people in 2013 and have just kidnapped over 200 schoolgirls. Youve surely read about it but have you launched your campaign yet to free them or made a protest banner? Are you lobbying your MP to take more vigorous action? 200 kidknapped schoolgirls. Over 2000 people - militants, tribespeople and soldiers - have been killed in Pakistan this year as the government fights terrorists. Or are they freedom fighters? (delete as appropriate). Are these lives, villages and communities important to you? As important? Too far away / unknown / complicated? The Mexican drug cartels brutally murder 10,000 people a year as they fight for the right to supply. Too many people to take in or comprehend? To personalise it, think back for a moment to the horrific murder of Dr Maria Santos Gorrostieta, Mayor of Tiquicheo. Not your business? Nothing you can do? Not quite the point? Egypt has just imprisoned some 20,000 anti government protesters and ordered nearly 600 members of the Muslim Brotherhood to be put to death. Not outside the Egyptian embassy protesting? Why? Why does that not enrage you or horrify you? Wrong religion? 600 people remember. 26 South Street. London W1Y 6DD. The address of the Egyptian embassy in London if you want to protest and save their lives.... Iraqi Sunnis are right now attacking the towns and villages inhabited by Shias and committing mass murder based purely on ethnicity (7,000 people killed in that country in the first half of this year alone). Its happening right now. Bored of Iraq? Last year’s (decade) protest? Just Iraqis? The Dinkas are massacring the Nuers. Over 10,000 (think about the enormity of that number) deaths in the last 18 months. Do you even know what country that’s happening in? Be honest, do you massively care? Not more than Israel - Palestine, obviously. But why not? Even now, will you go and look it up and research it and get involved? I truly have no idea on the real rights or wrongs of what is happening in the middle east. The complexity is mind boggling but whether you have studied it for years and have a considered, educated view or have just watched the occasional news report and know almost nothing about it, you have chosen to condemn one side or the other. But as you make your next banner against Israel, head off to protest outside the Israeli embassy or write your next message of moral outrage on social media like FB, just think for a moment - and this is explicitly not about the rights or wrongs of this or any situation. Why are you protesting so loudly on this situation, but silent on all or most of the others? Other regions are seeing far more people dying - in far more brutal ways - right now. Why arent you getting involved in those ones? What does it say that you protest so loudly about Israel but are silent on almost everywhere else? Why? It is absolutely not to suggest anti-semitism. Just as it is not to suggest that far away deaths of Africans dont matter to you, or that you dont care as much because theyre Muslims or non-Muslims, or that so many people die in Afghanistan every day, so whats another one? Many more deaths, in far greater brutality, happening today - right now. All Im asking is that you just think for a moment before you write your next protest about Israel, or head off to demonstrate at the Embassy or demonise them at the dinner table tonight. Why have you picked Israel - and why are you ignoring the others? Happy weekend.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 16:37:17 +0000