You don’t have to be Jewish to be a target of radical Islamic hatred.
You don’t have to live in a Western country.
You don’t have to be white.
You don’t have to be an adult.
You do not need to be armed, do not need to pose a threat.
You do not need to bad-mouth Islam, do not need to say a word.
You do not need to do anything but mind your own business as you celebrate your own religion — in the current case, Christianity, in Pakistan last Sunday.
When non-Jewish, non-European, non-American, non-white, non-adult, non-threatening, non-offensive people were cut down.
Murdered.
On Easter.
In a park.
By people so perverted, so dehumanized, so distorted in their view of G-d that they “took credit” for the atrocity.
We mourn this mass murder.
We mourn the children.
We mourn the wounded.
We mourn the searing pain of the surviving families.
We mourn the prospect that people around the world will become inured to this type of atrocity, thus facilitating more of them.
We mourn the breakdown in intelligence that makes this type of atrocity possible.
We mourn the breakdown in the sense of safety and civil society that result from this type of atrocity.
We mourn the idea that this type of atrocity is “somebody else’s problem,” as if John Donne’s words “do not ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee” were untrue, as if the Hebrew Bible’s designation of each person as created in the image of G-d were dulled by geographical distance.
We cannot let this latest defeat for humanity and for holiness go unmentioned, as if it should not eviscerate us all.
Copyright © 2016 by the Intermountain Jewish News
