By Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal
SAN DIEGO — Is there a qualitative difference between the murder of over six million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Shoah and the beheading of twenty-one Egyptian Coptic Christians by ISIS in Libya? I don’t think so. Genocide is the intentional destruction of a national, cultural, or religious group. During the Shoah, Jews were murdered because they were Jews. In Libya, Christians were murdered because they were Christian.
Even the U.N. Security Council, which is usually loathe to condemn anyone except Israel, weighed in: “This crime once again demonstrates the brutality of ISIL, which is responsible for thousands of crimes and abuses against people from all faiths, ethnicities and nationalities, and without regard to any basic value of humanity.”
Amnesty International recently reported that ISIS has kidnapped numerous Yazidi women and girls, enslaved them, raped them, and gave them to Yazidi fighters as spoils of war. There are many more well-documented stories of the brutality and inhumanity of ISIS as it wages war against Western civilization and its fellow Muslims who do not toe its rigid and radical ideological line.
After the Shoah we Jews pledged “Never Again!” But does this apply to our commitment to oppose genocide only when it is directed at us, or when it directed at other ethnic, cultural, racial, and religious groups, as well?
I do not pretend to be an expert on foreign or military policy, yet it seems to me that not only Americans, but all nations of the world have a moral obligation to fight terrorism and mass murder, no matter where they are.
I recognize that any military action in the Middle East holds its own set of risks, but to stand by while innocents are raped and murdered seems to me to echo the “wait and see” stance of the nations of the world as the Nazis came to power.
Without a united front to stop it, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and other groups of their radical philosophical bent will continue to conquer and lay waste anyone in their path. ISIS is a threat not only to Middle Eastern nations, but to Europe and the Americas, as well.
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Rabbi Rosenthal is spiritual leader of Tifereth Israel Synagogue. Your signed comment may be posted in the space provided below or sent to leonard.rosenthal@sdjewishworld.com