Dr. Khalid Al-Shafi
Everyone must have experienced varying degrees of oppression, torture and isolation, but what is worse is a situation where some people are sent to die, be burnt alive or slaughtered while others watch idly. This is one of the failings of mankind that has recently repeated itself in Syria, in what will surely not be its last manifestation, as killings, destruction, massacres and shelling are being denied.
People try to give political, geographical and religious justifications, and sometimes cite the fear of religious conflict between Muslims and Christians, or sectarian Sunni-Shia or Kurdish-Arab strife, and of the spread of the conflict over the entire region.
Although justice always prevails in the end, the conflict may take a long time to end and claim many innocent lives.
The Nazis created the largest concentration camps at Oswiecim near the Polish city of Krakow between 1940 and 1945. At the Auschwitz camp, more than a million people were killed, the majority of them Jews, besides Polish gypsies, Russian prisoners of war and others.
Trains used to carry the victims to the camp on a daily basis from different European countries under Nazi occupation during the Second World War.
Countries, both in the east and the west, watched this as if this matter was of no concern to them. All the teachings of the Age of Enlightenment and the French Revolution had gone in vain. Some people even denied the existence of the gas chambers. Not only that, some even defended Adolf Hilter, like some people are doing now with Bashar Al Assad and his Baathist regime.
A few days ago, some Islamic figures of various nationalities visited the Nazi Holocaust camp of Auschwitz to show their solidarity against attempts by former Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad to deny the Holocaust. Their programme included prayers in Arabic, English, French and other languages.
The late Palestinian thinker Edward Said used to say that the relationship between the Holocaust and the Palestinian crisis could not be denied, as the Holocaust led to the Palestinian crisis and this requires recognition of both of them.
Holocausts keep happening in the Arab world these days. The fear is that these Holocausts will spread from the Gulf to the ocean like wildfire, burning everything in their way, including all seekers of freedom, justice and human dignity, while the whole world stands idly by, denying the Holocaust like in the case of Syria.
Everyone must have experienced varying degrees of oppression, torture and isolation, but what is worse is a situation where some people are sent to die, be burnt alive or slaughtered while others watch idly. This is one of the failings of mankind that has recently repeated itself in Syria, in what will surely not be its last manifestation, as killings, destruction, massacres and shelling are being denied.
People try to give political, geographical and religious justifications, and sometimes cite the fear of religious conflict between Muslims and Christians, or sectarian Sunni-Shia or Kurdish-Arab strife, and of the spread of the conflict over the entire region.
Although justice always prevails in the end, the conflict may take a long time to end and claim many innocent lives.
The Nazis created the largest concentration camps at Oswiecim near the Polish city of Krakow between 1940 and 1945. At the Auschwitz camp, more than a million people were killed, the majority of them Jews, besides Polish gypsies, Russian prisoners of war and others.
Trains used to carry the victims to the camp on a daily basis from different European countries under Nazi occupation during the Second World War.
Countries, both in the east and the west, watched this as if this matter was of no concern to them. All the teachings of the Age of Enlightenment and the French Revolution had gone in vain. Some people even denied the existence of the gas chambers. Not only that, some even defended Adolf Hilter, like some people are doing now with Bashar Al Assad and his Baathist regime.
A few days ago, some Islamic figures of various nationalities visited the Nazi Holocaust camp of Auschwitz to show their solidarity against attempts by former Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad to deny the Holocaust. Their programme included prayers in Arabic, English, French and other languages.
The late Palestinian thinker Edward Said used to say that the relationship between the Holocaust and the Palestinian crisis could not be denied, as the Holocaust led to the Palestinian crisis and this requires recognition of both of them.
Holocausts keep happening in the Arab world these days. The fear is that these Holocausts will spread from the Gulf to the ocean like wildfire, burning everything in their way, including all seekers of freedom, justice and human dignity, while the whole world stands idly by, denying the Holocaust like in the case of Syria.
