Like many people, I have been battling with an onslaught of images, statements, news clips, twitter feeds and all sorts of other media - all fighting to tell/show/explain the horrors of what is happening around the world.It doesn't really matter where you look - Nigerian schoolgirls being abducted by the Boko Haram fighters (read 'lunatic/terrorists'), the absolute devastation that is currently taking place in Syria - really the stuff of nightmares, Iraq and Afghanistan, the ISIS atrocities, the murder of almost 300 innocent passengers in a plane over Ukraine - by the (so- called) pro-Russian Separatists - and the nightmare that is Palestine and Israel.
It is as if the Nostradamus predictions are being played-out in grisly, blood-spattered detail across our ravaged world.
I can remember being a young man at school, studying History and learning about the Anglo-Boer War, the two World Wars and any number of South African Battles between colonists, Boers and native Black South Africans (Blood River, etc). They never really made us understand the horror and awfulness of it. For most guys my age, the first time they really understood ... was when the Apartheid government packed them off to fight on 'the border' - against the 'terrorists'.
Suddenly they (on both sides) came face-to-face with death, blood, pain, fear and indescribable, injury-filled 'real' nightmares. In my own case, it was seeing a blood-soaked baby 'stroller' in the aftermath of the notorious Pretoria bomb (1983) and talking to an 18-year old army conscript who was collecting small body parts in a shoe box...!
And let's be clear - the main reason they all fought, feared, fell and died, was not, as we were all told, to defend the country, our families, our lives ..... it was to feed the voracious appetites of the political classes. One side wanted to rule, the other side didn't want to give it up.
I realise that there is much more to it than that, much more complex arguments, the excrement that was the Apartheid system, international finance, etc, but the thing is, when you leave people to themselves, they tend to rub along OK and essentially, all we want is to be able to live in peace, build a family, a life, a legacy.....
My career has brought me into contact with some of these political classes. I have never been particularly fond of them - I believe that, in order to be a successful politician (of any denomination), you have to give up your ideals as you walk in the front door, because a successful politician's life is all about compromise. You WILL have to, at various points in your career, made decisions and support actions that directly contradict what you say you believe in.
So why the rant ....?
What is making me so fed up is watching and listening as the "rabble" take to the airwaves, the TV and social media to pour their outrage into our lives. But isn't it slightly ironic that this outrage seems to be primarily aimed at Jews (I do not consider myself a Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, or Atheist by the way - I'd like to think they all have something to teach me..!).
To be clear, I am no friend of 'Bibi' Netanyahu and I do not believe the answer in Palestine is simply to continue the bombing. But let us take a moment to analyse the outrage. A friend complained yesterday that Sandton (Johannesburg, SA) was brought to gridlock by a 'pro-Palestine' march. In London on the weekend, the same sort of march trumpeted how many thousands of people had been marching.
But here's the thing I really have a problem with. People in the march holding posters saying "Hitler was right". A UK Member of Parliament saying "If I lived in Palestine, I would be sending rockets into Israel" .... ???
Apparently in Gaza right now, only 15% of the population support Hamas, an organisation that is led by portly men living in luxury in Qatar ... you don't have to look far to find the videos online showing them soaking up the sun alongside their swimming pools, eating and drinking and enjoying life while the real Gaza population are bombed out of existence.
And, for the record, FAR more Muslims are killed by other Muslims each year, than Israel or "the Jews" can be held responsible for.
Where is the outrage at the carnage that is being waged on innocent Muslims - by other Muslims - in Syria. Or Iraq.
Or the Russian FSB killers that have been 'blooded' in Chechnya and now control the fighting in Ukraine..?
Or the outrageous acts by ISIS...? Only today I saw a photograph of four young, pretty women whose throats were cut and they were left in a tangled, bloody mess in a shower cubicle - simply because THEY WERE CHRISTIAN...???
By all means fellow humans, let us roar with outrage and scream at the top of our lungs for the Political classes to listen and change things before they spiral so far out of control that no-one can control them (I believe this is already the case in the Ukraine) .... but let us be fair and even-handed with our outrage.
"The Jews" are not responsible for this carnage. Neither were the 'white South Africans', or 'black terrorists'. Nor are the Shia or Sunni Muslims, or Christians, simply because of their faith.
People are responsible. Greedy, murderous, self-righteous, fanatic, lunatic people.
For the rest of us, I suggest we follow my Mum's wise words ............ just LOVE each other.
Well said Michael!
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