Where Was Is
Man?
Elie Wiesel died Saturday, July 2, 2016, leaving a space in
both the American consciousness but also in the American conscience. Having
made himself into a voice for Holocaust victims, both those who were lost and
those who survived, Wiesel continued to speak out against genocide and to speak
for Israel. Night, his most
well-known work, is an account of living in the camps and watching the horrors
which unfolded before him, and finally making it out alive.
In 2016, we watch and read about and tweet and share information
from around the world—including terrorist events. During the week that Elie
Wiesel died, Hallel Ariel, a thirteen-year-old girl in Israel, was stabbed to
death as she slept; Rabbi Michael Mark, also in Israel, was shot and killed as
he drove in a car with his children; 42 people died as a result of a terrorist
attack in the Istanbul airport; twenty people were held hostage then hacked or
stabbed to death in a café in Bangladesh; and 250 people murdered by a car bomb
in Baghdad. In a single week, we lost
314 people to horrific acts committed by terrorists, the majority of which were
not directly instructed by ISIS, but have been claimed by
ISIS.
When we think about those lives lost, as the numbers climb,
the dead began to lose their identities and their individuality. The
terrorists, representatives of hatred on earth, begin to rise to foreground. We
hear about their social media accounts, what their family has to say about
them, their religious and political beliefs, and we see their selfies on TV, in
articles, and again on social media. Their names are repeated and reiterated as
we wait to find out why they did it, what motives they had behind committing
terrible atrocities and robbing the world of people going about their lives, as
innocent as you or me. We post and repost their pictures, as the terrorist
groups do to honor their martyrs. We give them lasting life on earth while the
undeserving dead become statistics, their faces and names recounted only by
those who still love and adore them.
The fact that Elie Wiesel died during one of the most
violent weeks in the world since World War II should not pass by without note.
Wiesel was one of the greatest witnesses of all time, speaking out for those
who either no longer had a voice or who were never heard. Who will speak out
for the families who have lost their loved ones to such horror? Who will
protest on behalf of the innocent Syrian refugees fleeing for their lives who
become equated with the terrorists who have no respect for human life? The same
terrorist who celebrate a death of one of their own at the same time that they
celebrate the death of the ones they call enemies? Who believe that they will
only live once they have died? For whom death is not a problem but a solution?
This is how the terrorist really win: they make us so afraid of the
consequences of helping refugees that we allow them to continue to murder the
innocent, sending those who have managed to escape to their deaths. How can we
not be reminded of the boats of Jews who fled Europe and we turned away at dock
after dock? At the Jews who survived the Holocaust only to return to their
homes and be murdered by the new occupants?
We cannot allow our ability to speak and to witness and to
have a world conscience to die with Wiesel. We cannot. But it is not easy to
allow the atrocities to be real and to touch our lives. We have our own
problems, valid problems, and jobs and beliefs and families for whom we care.
Sometimes our hearts just don’t seem big enough to encompass people we never
had the opportunity to meet in life, who seem to have so little to do with us,
and to have such little effect on us. They are simply not part of our everyday
lives, and therefore not quite real to us. They are not as sensational as the
terrorists, who emote repulsion but also fascination from the depths of our
souls.
Most of us are not going to join the army, and even those
that do are not going to ask to be sent to fight in or above Syria. What can we
do, then, to bear witness? How can we learn from Wiesel? Some simple changes of
habit can make a difference, and it begins with each of us.
1. Do not follow information about individual
terrorists. Do not read articles or watch news spots which focus on them. Quit
reading, close your browser, change the channel, when the story focuses on the
life and motives of killers.
2. Repeat the names of the victims. Post their
pictures, look for their stories, seek out the remembrances of those who bury
them. Pray for them, discuss them, tell tales of their heroism, sacrifice, and
kindness. Keep them alive as long as you can. Do not allow them to melt into
the past so quickly.
Wiesel once confronted President Reagan, asking him not to
visit a German cemetery which held the bodies of known Nazis. “That place, Mr.
President, is not your place. Your place is with the victims,” he said. So it
goes for us. Our place is not with the terrorists, giving them notoriety and
gratifying them on Facebook and twitter. Our place is with the victims,
remembering them, consoling the families, and preparing the world for a more peaceful
existence.
I ask of you, at the very least, please read allowed the
names of the people we have lost from the various attacks, if just to keep them
along one moment longer.
In Istanbul:
Ferhat Akkaya,
42
Hüda Amiri, 8
Kerime Amiri, 24
Meryem Amiri, 14
Zehra Amiri, 16
Ertan An, 39
Gülşen Bahadır
Fathi Bayoudh,
58
Mustafa Bıyıklı,
51
Abdülhekim Bugda, 24
Zeynep Çizmecioğlu,
Mahmut Çizmecioğlu
Çağlayan Çöl, 27
Muhammed Eymen
Demirci, 25
Erol Eskisoy, 44
Murat Güllüce
Nısreen Hashem
Hammad, 28
Yusuf
Haznedaroğlu, 32
Özgül Ide, 21
Göksel Kurnaz,
38
Adem Kurt, 32
Nisreen Melhim,
28
Mahmut Mert
Yasin Ocal, 25
Sadık Petek, 47
Umut Sakaroğlu, 31
Ercan Sebat, 41
Habibullah Sefer, 24
Rayan Shraim, 3
Sondos Shraim,
25
Larisa Tsybakova, 46
Hüseyin Tunç, 28
Siddik Turgan,
67
Serkan Türk, 24
Abrorjon Ustabayev, 22
Ethem Uzunsoy,
53
Merve Yigit, 22
Ali Zülfikar
Yorulmaz, 48
Separate
attacks in Israel:
Hallel Yaffa
Ariel, 13
Rabbi
Michael Mark, 48
Bangladesh
attack in café:
Ishrat Akhond
Baghdad (a few of the
250)
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