Time for good people of humanity to pick a side

Article content

Somewhere along the way in our march toward enlightenment, we started to see the world in shades of grey instead of black and white.

Every conclusion had a caveat, an exception to every rule. We have become subjective, rather than objective. We don’t trust data, we don’t trust our own eyes and ears, we don’t trust experts and we have come to distrust the evidence of history.

Article content

Article content

Our earnest desire to be inclusive, to show empathy, has led many to have such a fluid view of right and wrong that nothing can be wholly either. The lyric drawn from the actual Alexander Hamilton and then set to verse in the musical rings true: “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”

I’m all for nuance and complexity. I get that not everything lends itself to a simple explanation. There is no doubt that there are spectra of light, but there aren’t spectra of right. There is right and there is wrong.

What Hamas did to my people, to the Jewish people, last Saturday morning was wrong.

Murdering families sleeping in their beds is wrong.

Raping girls and women, such that blood stains could be seen on their pants as they paraded them and other kidnapped civilians to cheers and jeers through the streets of Gaza is wrong.

It was a crime against humanity in its most extreme and abhorrent form. Nothing can justify such a violation, and yet many, far too many, are doing just that.

There are no shades of grey to barbarism — it’s black and white. There is right and wrong, good and evil, and if you can’t see that from where you stand, you’re closing your eyes to what is obvious and right in front of you.

Article content

Article content

The horrors perpetrated by Hamas on men, women, children, grandparents, families in their homes, people at a music festival, people waiting for a bus on a quiet city street are unjustifiable. Beyond black and white, Hamas has shown the world in living colour who they really are, and what they really want.

They don’t represent the Palestinian people. They don’t want liberation. They seek annihilation of Jews and all who want peace between our two peoples.

We must see them now as the enemy of peace that they have always been but that too many overlooked because their target were Jews, and as proved time and again through the eyes and evidence of history, Jews don’t matter.

Soldiers and commanders often talk about “the fog of war,” how mission and intelligence often get obscured in the midst of the battle. But we, the civilized people of this planet, must see clearly through the haze.

Defeating Hamas, eradicating a murderous ideology that doesn’t value any human life, is a fight worth fighting. This must not be a battle fought only by Israel or by Jews.

All who value human life, all who want to live in a world where barbarism such as we saw this past weekend is relegated back to the darkest times of human history, not the headlines of today, must join in this fight of good against evil. Right against wrong, light against darkness.

Article content

Hamas builds bomb shelters for their fighters in tunnels below ground while Palestinian civilians in Gaza are used as human shields on the streets above. It’s supposed to be the other way around: the civilians in shelters, the fighters outside defending the innocent.

There, too, there are no shades of grey. Good people and nations fight to protect human life not to take it.

In Nazi Germany, from which so many of the tactics and horrors of the Hamas’ attack were drawn, not all Germans were Nazis. Similarly, not all Palestinians are Hamas. In both instances what distinguishes one from the other is what you say and what you do. Silence is complicity.

When Israel elected its most extreme government in its history, two million Israelis took to the streets, demanding change, opposing their extreme policies and plans. One might casually wonder why Palestinians haven’t been in the streets for the past decade, opposing Hamas. The obvious fact that it’s too dangerous to oppose Hamas in Gaza is further evidence of their abject, brutality and disassociation from all forms of human decency.

Article content

Now is a time for moral clarity, to see what is right and what is wrong, black or white — there can be no grey area. I’m reminded of those courageous non-Jews, the righteous among the nations, who even at unimaginable risk to themselves and their families sheltered Jews in their homes, who fought back and resisted Nazism.

Good people of humanity must do the same now: Pick a side.

Do you stand with the terrorists of Hamas or do you stand against them? There is no middle ground, with rockets and bullets now flying in both directions. The middle, the grey area, is the most dangerous place to be and is to stand for nothing at all.

Stand for something, stand with Israel, stand for the people of Gaza terrorized by Hamas, stand with humanity. Stand for good against evil.

Rabbi Dan Moskovitz is the senior rabbi of Temple Sholom in Vancouver and past-president of the Reform Rabbis of Canada.

Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don’t miss the news you need to know — add VancouverSun.com and TheProvince.com to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.

You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber: For just $14 a month, you can get unlimited, ad-lite access to The Vancouver Sun, The Province, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Vancouver Sun | The Province.

Article content