Letters / Deeply disturbing
I hope there is noone unmoved by the tragic, unfolding events in the Middle East and elsewhere, whether it’s the barbaric ISIS devastation of traditional communities in Iraq and Syria or Israel’s response to the Hamas-orchestrated terrorism from Gaza, the destruction of Christian and moderate Muslim villages and peoples in Nigeria or the murderous attacks of Al-Shabat in East Africa.
But I am also appalled by the lack of intelligent, critical analysis in the media, which is fuelling and driving emotional, irrational, knee-jerk responses in the cities of the so-called democratic and ‘civilised’ world.
It is deeply disturbing that in streets which once championed religious and ethnic freedom and tolerance, we see mass rallies whose participants don the garb and raise the banners of a terrorist organisation and, with impunity, hysterically call for the annihilation of a single people group.
To see Jewish people pilloried and attacked, even murdered, on these same streets and their shops, businesses and synagogues destroyed, invokes the terrifying imagery of Krystal Nacht in 1938 Nazi Germany. 100 years after the outbreak of WW1, where are we heading?
Those same protestors, who identify themselves with Hamas’ resolve to destroy every Jew, may not appreciate that their actions equally support and condone the evil, genocidal designs of ISIS to create their ‘pure’ Islamic Caliphate.
Israel is condemned by the world whatever action it takes to defend its right to exist. We must recognise that behind the venomous clamour to condemn all Israeli activity to protect its sovereignty is the ever-emerging stump of anti-Semitism.
Hamas and every other Islamist grouping have the total eradication of Israel and the Jews at the top of their agenda. The inept PC politics of energy-hungry Western governments and the naïve popular grasp of the evolving situation have tacitly supported the rise and rise of Islamism.
We are so fanatically and obsessively preoccupied with Israeli ‘abuses’, but we do not hold the Muslim world to account. Any serious, objective critique of Islam is ruthlessly supressed; it is easier to bash Israel.
Legitimate scrutiny of Israeli policy is vital, but do the protestors who shout their murderous chants suppose that when Israel is finally wiped off the map, that will be the end of the matter?
Wake up world!
Jeremy Sansom
Walls
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