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Almighty God! Let the Ashes
of the Children incinerated in Auschwitz, rivers of blood spilled in Babbi
Yar or Majdanek, be a warning to mankind that violence is destructive,
hatred is contagious, while man has an unlimited capacity for cruelty.
FROM THE HOLOCAUST TO THE AL QAEDA
by Alexander Kimel
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I believe that there is a direct link between the resurgence of terrorism and the senseless contagious violence of the Holocaust. During the Holocaust the humiliation and dehumanization of the victims that occurred with the silent indifference of the Christian Churches caused widespread brutalization of the society that corroded our civilization, changed the relationship of man to man.
The question often asked "Where was God during the Holocaust? Where was God when a million of Jewish children were burned to death? Why were the established religious institutions silent in face of killing of Jews because of their religion? Through our silence we rejected the basic assumptions that we all serve one universal God; a God of Justice, Love and Compassion; a God who created man in his image, and who considers all men equal. The extreme development occurred in the recent radicalization of Islam that created the notion of a tribal God, a vengeful God that enjoys the killing of innocent people and rewards the murderers with life in paradise.
All those tragic developments could not have taken place without the corrosive influence of Antisemitism. The Western civilization rest on three pillars: quest for knowledge and beauty inherited from the Greeks, quest for law and order inherited from the Romans, and the quest for social justice contributed by Judaism. Two thousand years of Antisemitism corroded one pillar causing sagging of the whole structure.
REMEDIES
I believe that to fight the waves of insane terrorist violence the following steps should be taken:
1. Return to the notion of a Universal God, a God that loves all his children. We all serve one Creator although we call him by different names. We should recognize the importance of relations man to man. The relation of man to the Creator should be left to ones conscience.
2. Recognize the damages that Antisemitism has done to our civilization. Without Antisemitism Hitler could not gained power and start the destructive WWII.
Those are long term remedies, but the terrorist violence is a long term problem that requires long term solution.
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