We Need To Talk About Humanity

I have always advocated the importance of history books. The chronicles of history are a roadmap not only for where we're going but, indeed, how we're going to get there. Students of the past know that our lives are all footnotes in history, small and large, but what the small print says about us isn't very hopeful. On the surface we have an oceanic capacity for great things. But when you really get down to it, the writing has always been on the wall about us.

And we need to talk about it.

We need to talk about how people will always misdirect or hijack issues to confirm their own biases. And we need to talk about how our common humanity talks the good talk, but does nothing to back it up: Well intentioned words die where they stand with no requisite action to breathe life into them.

We need to talk about how politicians of democratic countries feel comfortable enough to use Islamophobic tactics to embolden the extreme far-right. They used similar anti-Semitic tactics decades ago, until it gave rise to the Holocaust during the Second World War, and then they censured themselves so that history would never be repeated. Until of course, it was repeated.

We also need to talk about the major difference between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Hatred against the Jewish people has always been based on religious slander and falsehood. As a race they have been persecuted for centuries on baseless Biblical prophesy and for being hardworking immigrants. We need to talk about it so we don't forget it.

We need to talk about how Islamophobia, on the other hand, is the distorted fear that stems from some genuine concerns over the religion itself, similar to the fears over the rise of the Christian far-right in America and Zionism replacing Judaism as the basis of Jewish identity. We need to talk about their religious hypocrisy versus the religious freedom secularism affords, so that all ideologies can be scrutinised and criticised in equal measure.

We need to talk about how an insidious terrorist organisation like Hamas has murdered innocent civilians on a mass scale that is unbelievably traumatising for Jewish people. In the same breath, we also need to talk about the Zionist occupation that has existed for the entire life of most Palestinians. We need to talk about it so we can avoid getting lost in their vicious cycles.

We need to talk about how those same Palestinians voted Hamas in to power. We also need to talk about how the Israeli military is currently killing unarmed Palestinians, wiping out complete families in some instances, who had no connection to Hamas' attacks aside from proximity. We need to talk about it so we can stop feeding our hatred on the bones of their children.

We need to talk about the socialist and orthodox Jewish groups who have come out in support of pro-Palestinian protests and the Arab Muslims fighting for Israel in its army. We need to talk about such things to be reminded there is no single side to an issue.

We need to talk about the dangers of war and revenge as a strategy and solution to terrorism, fascism, nationalism and racism, to stop us from becoming the very monsters we have sworn to slay. We need to talk about our past mistakes in this regard (I'm looking at you Mr Bush in Iraq) to not repeat them.

We need to allow people to talk about past wrongs and to apologise for our past wrongs, to foster future understanding, which one hopes will generate the empathy necessary to embrace each other's view; for the only way to truly defeat your enemy - as the famous adage goes - is to make them your friend.

And last, but not least, we ALL need to talk, because only open dialogue brings closure to bloody war. And we need the breathing space only peace can afford to focus on the future of humanity.

The subject of which we need to do more than just talk about!

But talking is a start. It is the first, best step we can take for the sake of our common humanity.

For the life of me, I cannot see one more lifeless body of a child in the news. If their deaths do not become the turning point to something better, then we should no longer talk about our "humanity". It doesn't exist.

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