Sir, – Although I sometimes disagree with some of the activities and causes that Shmuley Boteach chooses to identify with, I believe that his article,
"Why I'm travelling to Rwanda" (Comment and Features, August 8) deserves the serious attention of all people of conscience.
Boteach does not only call on us to remember the horrible butchery that took place in Rwanda in 1994 when hundreds of thousands of the Tutsi tribe were literally machete hacked to death by the Hutus, he makes us aware that most nations of the world totally ignored the brutal massacres and did nothing at all to try to prevent their taking place. He specifically accuses the Clinton administration in the United States of perfidious behavior when it deliberately frustrated any attempts by the UN to interfere.
His attention to the genocide in Rwanda, however, is to alert us to the fact that there are similar atrocities taking place today, and once again the enlightened world permits itself to effectively do nothing. Boteach calls for real efforts on the political and military fronts to halt the daily slaughter by the well armed and trained Syrian army of hundreds of unarmed civilians.
We in Israel have the right to ask why the oft repeated call by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the annihilation of Israel is not in itself sufficient grounds for the expulsion of Iran from the community of nations.
Must we really wait for the bomb to drop?
ZEV CHAMUDOT
Petah Tikva
[Image credit: Neil Palmer]
