A couple years ago, I was fortunate enough to briefly meet Archbishop Desmond Tutu. We were aboard a rocking ship headed to Capetown and I ran into him in the hallway. He was looking for the bathroom and I was looking for the answers to heal the world. I asked him how one man could motivate change in humanity. "Passion, dedication, faith," he answered.This past spring, Archbishop Tutu traveled to the Gaza strip and found the humanitarian situation was completely unjustified. He also called-out the international community for their complicity and silence, and even related the human rights violation to the situation in Myanmar. During his visit, Archbishop Tutu met with Prime Minister Ismail Haniya and told him the firing of rockets into Israel was also a violation of human rights. BBC Article
It may seem like a worthless effort to have a Nobel Peace Prize winner walk in and politely ask for the genocide to cease. But there are others who have also taken a stand to end the massacre. Saad Eddin Ibrahim is a sociologist from the American University in Cairo. He is lobbying members of congress to attach conditions to America's $1.5 billion annual aid to Egypt. He has been criticized as an idealist, and even sentenced to two years in jail with labor when an Egyptian court ruled his writings had ruined and tarnished Egypt's reputation. Washington Post Article
We are all guilty of being silent and complicit. How is one man supposed to really make a difference? I would answer that with knowledge. We all can't put ourselves on the Gaza strip and really understand what people are experiencing. But we can make ourselves aware that the problem exists and in some way, large or small, we may be able to play a part.
No comments:
Post a Comment