Jewish voices for peace

.... are many. Despite the actions of the Israeli Government and the unthinking support of the US and other western governments, they are a very sizeable minority - if not an actual majority - of Jewish people both inside and outside Israel. This is despite such obscene sentiments as are expressed in the pro-Israel New York rally shown in this video here.


Last Saturday there was a demonstration in Budapest to protest against the actions in Gaza. I was unable to attend, but would have left very quickly because, from all accounts, it was hi-jacked by the extreme right in order to express their racist hatred. This is deeply and tragically ironic. For had it not been for the ideological forebears of these people it is highly doubtful that the state of Israel would ever have been created. It was born of Nazism - and, I fear, has been infected by the same virus of hate, fear and scapegoat hunting that lay behind Nazism. Certainly some of the comments on the video could have come direct from Goebbels - such as the reference to "cutting out a cancer". It is terrifying that the Gaza action has served to further the legitimation of Neo-Nazism, at least here in Hungary but I am sure elsewhere.

There is never any justification for the wholesale slaughter of human beings in pursuance of ideology or religion, no matter who commits it.

In the article that accompanies the video linked to above, there is an extract from “The Holocaust Is Over, We Must Rise From Its Ashes,” which is described as a powerful new book by former Israeli Knesset speaker and Jewish National Fund chairman Avraham Burg:

“If you are a bad person, a whining enemy or a strong-arm occupier, you are not my brother, even if you are circumcised, observe the Sabbath, and do mitzvahs. If your scarf covers every hair on your head for modest, you give alms and do charity, but what is under your scarf is dedicated to the sanctity of Jewish land, taking precedence over the sanctity of human life, whosever life that is, then your are not my sister. You might be my enemy. A good Arab or a righteous gentile will be a brother or sister to me. A wicked man, even of Jewish descent, is my adversary, and I would stand on the other side of the barricade and fight him to the end.”

Just one of the voices we do not hear.