I Will Not Sin...a letter to Elie Wiesel

Hello from China,

There was a movie that for a long time, I had avoided watching simply because it was THAT good.

It won Oscars. It won critical acclaim. It renewed and reviewed interest in its subject matter.

It was directed by one of my favorite directors, Steven Spielberg.

It was Schindler's List.

Yet I didn't go to watch it at the theater. Because it was THAT good.

I feared watching it. Because I was not unfamiliar with the subject. I remembered watching television mini-series when I was younger and even then I couldn't bear it. I remembered studying it and the images left in my head were frightening. I could not and cannot fathom the things people can do to one another.

How neighbors can betray people they have lived next to for years. How unspeakable cruelty could be meted out to human beings. How countless lives were snuffed out for reasons that could never be justified.

About a month ago, I watched famed Nobel Peace Prize Winner Elie Wiesel walk through the haunted paths of Auschwitz with Oprah Winfrey. Oprah had chosen his book, Night, to be a selection of her book club. That special episode was compelling, and for some parts allowed the stories of those who perished to carry on, to never be forgotten.

An excerpt from the book:

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never."

The story of the Holocaust cannot be just of the experience of one race of people. There is a bigger lesson to be learned, something Mr Wiesel himself has spoken about. Targeting atrocities around the world, he said a superpower like the United States cannot stand by and let them happen. Simple because he went through what could be the worst of human hatred, and he KNEW what cannot be repeated.

Racial Profiling. Ethnic Cleansing. Genocide.

In the past few weeks, I have managed to get a hold of a copy of Schindler's List. Commendable. Raw. But more importantly, it was THAT good. It gave moving images to remind people never to forget.

The power of popular media can help, as in the case of Spielberg's movie and Oprah's special in Poland by helping people not to forget. But used for other reasons, it can also blind people from the truth of human suffering, and who exactly is the victim or the aggressor. It can give justifications to actions where there should never have been any. It may be said that if Germany had a better media and PR network, and a stronger alliance with certain powers, that their acts of crimes against humanity would have gone on longer than it had been. And certainly, according to Mr Wiesel, the United States did nothing for about four years.

Today, reports are flooding in about civilian deaths in the Middle East. I am not in any position to say who is in the right or wrong. But all I see now are things to be feared than the images within Spielberg's masterpiece. Because everything that we should not forget, is happening again.

I am not anti-semitic. And most of you know that. But I cannot find answers to questions of appropriate response to what is happening today. And I cannot understand why, once again, the United States have chosen to drag their feet when they are the key proponents of democracy, equality, justice and liberty.

Thankfully there are still living survivors of the Holocaust, people who can pass their stories down to younger generations. And some of them were in the studio when Elie Wiesel was addressing the youth of American on Oprah's follow up show.

THEY would know I am sure, how it feels like to be profiled, to be stripped of necessities, to have your identity mocked and driven into the sand.

Elie Wiesel said,""...to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all...".

I will not sin.

What is happening right now is wrong. There can be no justification on either side. And playing the numbers game in how many more can be killed before one side bends to the power of another is playing God.

The following is an extract from an article about the situation in the Middle East. Some of you may be able to find facts to challenge the findings below. And I actually welcome that. I should also say that I know of many people who have traveled to Jerusalem. And have witnessed it all. Does anyone listen? Is popular media playing the role it needs to assume?

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-Did you know that non-Jewish Israelis cannot buy or lease land in Israel [the Zionist entity]?

-Did you know that cars owned by Palestinians are colour coded to distinguish Jews from non-Jews?

-Did you know Palestinians are not allowed to move from one city, say Gaza to Bethleham, to another without first getting a 'visa' from the Israelis?

-Did you know Palestinian youth, both Christians and Muslims are denied access to their Holy sites routinely?

-Did you know that Israel allots 85% of the water resources for Jews and the remaining 15% is divided among all Palestinians in the territories? For example in Hebron, 85% of the water is given to about 400 Jewish settlers, while 15% must be divided among Hebron's 120,000 Palestinians?

-Did you know the United States awards Israel $5 billion in aid each year? Let's not even get to the allocation of the US defence budget to Israel.

-Did you know last year the trade between the UK and Israel increased by 20 per cent? The BRITECH trade agreement means there is now a 15.5 million joint fund to encourage co-operation between British and Israeli Hi-tech companies.

-Did you know that yearly US aid to Israel exceeds the aid the US grants to the whole of the African continent?

-Did you know that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons?

-Did you know that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and bars international inspections from its sites?

-Did you know that Israel currently occupies territories of two sovereign nations (Lebanon and Syria) in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions?

-Did you know that Israel has for decades routinely sent assassins into other countries including Europe to kill its political enemies? Also made into another Spielberg movie, Munich.

-Did you know that high-ranking military officers in the Israeli Defence Forces [IDF] have admitted publicly that unarmed prisoners of war were executed by the IDF?

-Did you know that Israel refuses to prosecute its soldiers who have acknowledged executing Palestinian prisoners of war?

-Did you know that Israel routinely confiscates Palestinian bank accounts, businesses and land and refuses to pay compensation to those who suffer the confiscation?

-Did you know that Israel blew up an American diplomatic facility in Egypt and attacked a U.S. ship in international waters, killing 33 and wounding 177 American sailors?

-Did you know that the second most powerful lobby in the United States, according to a recent Fortune magazine survey of Washington insiders, is the Jewish AIPAC?

-Did you know that Israel stands in defiance of 69 United Nations Security Council Resolutions?

-Did you know that the land Jews call Israel today was the site of more than 400 [now-vanished] Palestinian villages, and that the Israeli's re- named almost every physical site in the country to cover up the traces?

-Did you know that it was not until 1988 that Israelis were barred from running "Jews Only" job ads?

-Did you know that four prime ministers of Israel, Begin, Shamir, Rabin, and Sharon have taken part in either bomb attacks on civilians, massacres of civilians, or forced expulsions of civilians from their villages?

-Did you know that the Israeli Foreign Ministry pays two American public relations firms to promote Israel to Americans?

-Did you know that Sharon's coalition government includes a party -- Molodet -- which advocates expelling all Palestinians from the occupied territories?

-Did you know Sharon was held responsible for the massacre of more than 2, 750 Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila. The UN qualified the massacre by Sharon as GENOCIDE.

-Did you know Sharon's commando unit in 1953 razed the Palestinian village of Qibya killing all its citizens and bombed all the houses, mosque and schools.

-Did you know that Israel's settlement-building on Palestinian Land increased in the eight years since Oslo?

-Did you know that settlement building of Jewish only homes under Barak doubled compared to settlement building under Netanyahu?

-Did you know that Israel once dedicated a postage stamp to a man who attacked a Palestinian civilian bus and killed several people?

-Did you know that recently-declassified documents indicate that David Ben-Gurion in at least some instances approved of the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948?

-Did you know that despite a ban on torture by Israel's High Court of Justice, torture has continued by Shin Bet interrogators on Palestinian prisoners?

-Did you know that Palestinian refugees make up the largest portion of the refugee population in the world?

-Did you know the population of Palestine in 1917, when the Palestine problem was created by Britain in 1917,was more than 90% Palestinian Arabs? There were at that time no more than 56,000 Jews in Palestine?

-Did you know the Palestinians rejected UN Partition Plan because, the General Assembly of the United Nations recommended that a "Jewish State" be established in Palestine. They proposed the Jews should have about 54% of the total area of the country while they only owned 6% of the land.