The Peace Peopleby Mairead Corrigan Maguire, January 2006
January is a time when Jewish communities, and their many friends, around the world remember the Holocaust. In Northern Ireland, on January 22nd, the Jewish Community and friends will hold their annual Holocaust Remembrance Day.
It is right to remember the Holocaust. One of the most horrific events in our World history when over 6 million people (mostly Jews, and including homosexuals, gypsies, Germans, Jehovah Witnesses, and many who had the courage to oppose the German Nazi regime) were murdered. I visited the Auschwitz concentration camp some years ago and stood in the gas chambers. My questions were and remain to this day, 'how could human beings do this to other human beings, and why did people not do something about it?' No outcry, just SILENCE.
Jewish people very rightly treat the memory of the holocaust and those who died in this, as sacred. They believe in the sacredness and sanctity of human life, and they believe also in justice. Even though the Holocaust happened over 60 years ago, the memory is kept so much alive, particularly in Israel, that for many Jewish people, it seems like yesterday. There still remains amongst some Jewish people a fear that it might happen again and hence the need to protect themselves within the state of Israel against 'the enemy'. This fear, whilst understandable, is a block to building trust and a peace process, and to facing the reality in the world no matter where we live, i.e. we are all vulnerable, we all die; we cannot be protected with walls, nuclear weapons and armies. We need to make friends with our immediate neighbours and the best protection for the Israeli/Jews will be making friends with their Arab/Muslim neighbours, and begin together, with us all, the process of nuclear disarmament and nonviolent conflict resolution wherever we live.
This is a message which is not popular to all the Israeli people. However, a growing number, particularly Israeli youth, as are young people all the world, open to new ideas, new ways of thinking, and the desire in their hearts to be loved, treated with respect, and play their part in an exciting, and yes, also dangerous, world. Life is suffering, life is dangerous, it always has been, but we cannot cocoon ourselves and our children up believing that nuclear weapons, walls, and arms, are our protection. The Arab/Muslim world is not the enemy of the Israeli/Jewish people, their friendship and trust can be won, when their dignity, human rights, and justice is upheld and safeguarded. The real enemy is fear and injustice, which can lead to hatred and violence. We can feed our fear, and stay paralyzed and stuck in past memories, or we can feed justice, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, and move forward to a new beginning, the choice is ours.
Twenty years ago a young man named Mordechai Vanunu made his choice. He worked in the Dimona Nuclear Plant, in Israel. He thought about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and he decided he loved Israel enough not to want to see another holocaust - a nuclear one. He decided not to be silent, he could not ignore his own conscience, so he told the world that Israel had a nuclear weapons programme. Today he is admired by many people around the world, because he tried to warn us all against nuclear weapons. Had more people been like Mordechai Vanunu, during Nazi Germany, many more Jews could have been saved. Vanunu should be a hero to the Israeli people for trying to warn us against another form of Genocide, another Holocaust of humanity.
Today he remains a lonely prisoner in Jerusalem, forbidden to leave Israel, forbidden to speak to foreigners, foreign press. He is no threat to Israeli national security, having been a technician 20 years ago. His life is sacred and he has a right to justice (after 18 years in prison - 12 in solitary confinement, simply because he told the truth about Israeli nuclear weapons). He has a right to freedom of religious choice, freedom of speech, freedom of movement. As we, with sorrow and sadness, remember the Holocaust Victims, we remember too those individuals of conscience who refused to be silenced in the face of danger and paid with their freedom and lives in defending their Jewish brothers and sisters, and we remember our brother Mordechai Vanunu - the lonely Israeli prisoner in his own country, who refused to be silent. Today I ask myself, where are all the Jewish/Israeli voices, and the International Community, demanding Mordechai Vanunu be allowed to leave Israel? No outcry, just SILENCE.
Mairead Corrigan Maguire, a member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation's Advisory Council, is a Nobel Peace Laureate from Northern Ireland and a founder of Peace People. Mairead Corrigan Maguire will present the Foundation's 2006 Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity's Future on February 21st, 2006 at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Peace People, 224 Lisburn Road, Belfast. BT9, N. Ireland. www.peacepeople.com
Mrs. Maguire has again Nominated Mordechai Vanunu for the Nobel Peace Prize 2006, for his work against Israeli and World Nuclear weapons.