Our Pain, Anger, and Frustration.

Searching for the truth. Searching for answers.

Opinion. An impassionate plea.

Anyone who has lost a loved one knows that you don’t recover. Instead, you learn to incorporate their absence and memories into your life and channel your emotional energy towards others, and eventually, your grief will walk beside you instead of consuming you.

Sixty-six years ago, in 1959, Bertrand Russell (1872 to 1970), the Welsh-born Nobel Prize-winning British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, social critic, and peace activist, was just short of his 87th birthday, when he gave an all-embracing interview to the BBC and the CBC.

At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these in any profound sense.

Russell was interviewed by John Freeman, the British politician, diplomat, and broadcaster, who asked him: “Suppose Lord Russell this film was to be looked at by our descendants like a Dead Sea scroll in a thousand years, what would you think it’s worth telling that generation about the life you’ve lived and the lessons you’ve learned from it?”

Russell responded by saying:

“I should like to say two things, one intellectual and one moral: The intellectual thing, I should want to say to them, is this: When you are studying any matter or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only ‘What are the facts, and what is the truth that the facts bear out?” Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe or by what you think could have beneficial social effects, if it were believed. But look only and solely at: “What are the facts?” That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say.

“The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple. I should say: Love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other. We have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way. And if we are to live together and not to die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.”

Bertrand Russell – Message to Future Generations (1959)

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Are we Jews self-centred and self-righteous?

To our non-Jewish friends, as I’ve remarked before now, we Jews collectively observe you in a manner that you might call us self-centred and self-righteous. We, though, might call it self-preservation, a defence mechanism. Remember, we Jews have a DNA instinct regarding hate and intolerance going back thousands of years.

Irrespective of where you live, post-COVID-19, it would seem, has generated rudeness and detachment amongst many, young and old, where facts and tolerance mean little, as if it were caused by a cloud of angel dust or PCP, also known as phencyclidine, being sprinkled on society.

Dear reader, here in Canada, where I live, lord knows we have our issues as a society, and I doubt it certainly won’t get appreciably better, especially politically during the next few years. Yet, our young people, like yours, have a say in the outcome, not just a moral voice but a moral responsibility. If indifference rules us, we won’t come close to correcting the disorder.

Too many with intolerance and hate are nauseated by change. Too many are best described as being pathetic followers of antisemitism, Islamophobia, of being anti-Christian, on all sides of the fence, with personalities right out of a Thomas Pynchon novel.

It’s a classic reversal procedure, overcoming the terror of being wrong and, as in some cultures living amongst us, losing face. Being provocative is also useful in helping the antisemite and in some cultures, the anti-Christian, from looking absurd within peer groups, such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Islamic Party of Liberation, one of the most perilous and fanatical antisemitic and anti-Christian radical organisations in the world.

“Destruction of Israel guaranteed, ayatollah says”

We must also continue to be on guard against the theocratic state of Iran. To quote in English a well-known Persian saying: “Failure is the stepping stone to success.”

Over ten years ago, I wrote about Iran. I said:

“On November 8, 2013, in an exclusive report published by WND, the Fars News Agency, an outlet run by the Revolutionary Guards, last week posted an audiotape of excerpts of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s speeches to Palestinian officials and others with the title Palestine will surely become free. In the audiotape, which is partly in Arabic, Khamenei gives blessings to those who fight against Israel and says:

Peace be upon the children of our nation, and peace be upon the brave jihadists in Palestinian and Lebanese resistance. Today, the Islamic world and the whole world are witnesses to great revelations that show a change in international affairs. The ayatollah promises a restructuring of the Middle East: “Palestine will be free, do not doubt this. … Palestinians will return there and there will be a Palestinian government … and that is based on the truth revealed by God. The new Middle East will be … an Islamic Middle East.”

For the majority of us, this may all seem terrifying and utterly sick. But it doesn’t matter to the provocateurs. And that’s where it becomes precarious, living today in such a society, neighbour pitted against neighbour goes against everything Bertrand Russell spoke of. As he said, “In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other.”

But how in anyone’s right mind can we seriously tolerate speeches initiated by those who seek to annihilate Jews?

How does one attempt or defend themselves against the sickness and hate that pervades in other cultures that, from a child’s birth, have been indoctrinated from generation to generation through their readings to accept as true it is their right to kill Jews?

And in Canada, where antisemitism continues to viciously rear its head, how does one counteract the hate and misinformation now permeating throughout our education system? Are there effective training programs by professionals established for schools, and by whom?

“Love is wise, hatred is foolish.”

Some years ago, I wrote about losing a loved one. I said:

“It’s been written that when a person dies, his or her spirit lives in those who remember. Our tradition is very specific in providing us with ways of remembering our loved ones. In addition, our tradition does not allow us to forget those who have died. Finding an appropriate way of honouring and remembering the dead is one of the goals of the mourning process.”

Later, I added the following quote from an unknown source:

“Anyone who has lost a loved one knows that you don’t recover. Instead, you learn to incorporate their absence and memories into your life and channel your emotional energy towards others, and eventually, your grief will walk beside you instead of consuming you.”

At the time, I asked my readers to comment on the two statements, and they did! The outpouring of remarks was extraordinary. The response crossed all lines and showed the empathy we have towards our loved ones who have died. Yet, to express our love to those close to us is one thing, especially when our children are killed. But today I ask you, should we show tolerance towards the splenetic terrorist psychopaths of the Gaza Strip?

The playground for the psychopathic bloodthirsty leaders of HAMAS

In too many parts of the world, we continue to experience hate and intolerance, resulting in the death of our brothers and sisters of all religious persuasions.

We have seen in past years of the mass shootings of young innocent school children in the USA, to the massacres and kidnapping of Christian farming communities in Nigeria, to over one million Tutsi being murdered in just 100 days in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, to the Bosnian genocide, to today’s Russia’s war against Ukraine, and to the evidence of genocide in Sudan.

We have witnessed the massacre of Jewish babies, children and adults and other non-Jewish individuals by the homicidal, barbarian and bloodthirsty Hamas terrorists, who have been supported openly by Iran, Hezbollah, Qatar, the Houthis of Yemen, and with adoration from a disproportionate number of ordinary individuals, young and old, living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Yet, as Jews, be it against the antisemite, Elie Wiesel said fittingly, “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

On reflection, perhaps that’s what I am attempting to do, right here, in the content of this opinion piece.

In closing, I will add one further comment that is particularly addressed to my fellow Jews.

I say open your mind to the fact that there are non-Jews, of numerous religions, cultures, and institutions, who at this time are willing to support the Jewish people. As individuals, do not close your door to their offer of friendship. For us, time is of the essence. For the sake of your children and the future of your children’s children, take advantage of it, even if you have never willingly done so before. After a thousand years of hate and intolerance against us, time is not on our side.

As it’s been said, our greatest weakness is giving up.

That’s how I see it! ●

Note: Partial sections of the above article, now updated, originally appeared in the Times of Israel on June 24, 2022, and as a podcast on the Community Jewish News Podcast service.