Following the release of US torture memos by President Obama, a reader writes to blogger Andrew Sullivan:
This is an eye opening event for me.… It’s easier for a liberal like me, who voted against Bush twice, to feel I’m off the hook.… But, clearly, I kept my eyes closed and my mouth shut.… When I let talk of torture filter in, early on, such as keeping people awake and some of the accounts of Abu Ghraib, I kept drawing lines to things I wanted to believe.… They’re keeping them awake?… Oh, that must be like playing loud music.… Like”¦ they used on Noriega.… Today, I have to ask myself why I didn’t take to the streets.
I guess I’m “lucky” again in that I have a President who believes in the rule of law.… But where was I, a Jew, taught to say Never Again when I was growing up? My guess is that somewhere this evil satisfied a dark place in me. A generalized anger or rage that we can all walk around with at times. Why else was I content not to stare this evil in the face?
It’s worth remembering this article from the Jewish Forward newspaper in late 2007:
The American Jewish Committee last week became the first, and to date only, mainstream Jewish group to give strong public backing to proposed legislation that would ban the use of torture by American military, intelligence and law-enforcement personnel.
Where is the rest of the mainstream Jewish community? Silent, and therefore complicit.
Just another example of the moral collapse of contemporary Jewry.