For the past two months, horrendous stories of atrocities being systematically committed against the primarily Christian, African population of the Darfur region of Sudan have filled the airways and brought consternation around the world.

Evidence from a whole series of reliable sources indicate that these atrocities - officially declared by the UN Security Council to constitute “genocide” - are being carried out by the Janjaweed Arab Militias with encouragement and active support of the Sudanese government.

This only ten years after the genocide committed against the Tutsi and “moderate Hutu” populations of Rwanda.

The situation is absolutely deplorable. Strong direct action is clearly needed immediately and yet - virtually nothing is being done. In the meantime, tens of thousands of persons have been killed, 1.2 million have been displaced from their homes, (US State Department Statement, September 9 /04).

Despite the above-quoted statement, the US is doing little except for some minor aid initiatives to help those who have managed to survive the slaughter and find tenuous refuge in camps inside the Chadian border. Canada’s actions are along the same lines and more or less proportionate in size. Europe is no better. The UN - despite its own operating rules which call for immediate action whenever a situation is officially declared to constitute genocide - delays, talks, delays some more and, ultimately, does nothing.

Reviewing this situation it is virtually impossible to identify which of its attributes, aside from the killing itself, is the most horrorific. However, for me there is little trouble pointing to that which is most personally troubling - viz.: the lack of any serious, condemnation, call for action or meaningful statement of solidarity with those undergoing this unspeakable suffering from my own people, the nation of Israel.

Born in 1941, with the majority of my family murdered in Europe I grew up hearing: “Never Again” and avowals to never again “stand idly by”, or “to pretend we didn’t know” or to seek out excuses for inaction. And yet - faced with perhaps the best reported episode of genocide in history I find myself standing in the midst of the Jewish community and hearing ----- NOTHING!

Jews have a genius of organization. In Canada as around the world, in local communities as well as on the national and even international level, Jews are organized. Yet, who among you can quote even the simplest expression of revulsion, condemnation, call for action? Are there demonstrations, hunger strikes, anything?

In my own community I thought it might be worthwhile to get the Jewish organization most widely representative of all Jews - Ashkenazi and Sephardic, secular or religious, self-consciously within the Jewish community or unaffiliated - to take the most minuscule of steps by: condemning the situation in the Sudan, urging the UN to live up to its own obligations and take military action to end this murder and Canada to support such action and, in the meantime on the individual citizen level, to ask representative organizations from other nationalities who know the meaning of genocide - the Armenians, the Rwandans, etc. to actively join with our own organization in supporting these actions and bringing Canadians as a whole to the realization of what is happening and what cries out, so desperately, for action.

The reaction to my suggestion? - a convoluted series of rationalizations - “we are only a community organization”, “we don’t take political actions”, “we don’t advocate”, “we should wait to see what action the religious authorities take”, “the Canadian Jewish Congress is undoubtedly working behind the scenes to do something”, (although no one was quite sure what), etc., etc.

It soon became apparent to me that this reaction was by no means unique to particular individuals or to our particular community organization. It was, in fact, almost identical to that of all other Jewish organizations all over North America and, apparently, across the globe. So here I sit, sickened by what I see on television and read in the papers, ashamed at the myriad of Jewish organizations who claim to represent me and whose fall fund raising campaigns will soon start - as they always do - by reminding me that I am a Jew and what Jews are called upon by God and their own accumulation of thirty five hundred years of national history to do and, yet, are not willing to take a stand against genocide.

Oh yes, as I prepared to write this I received a schedule of Holocaust commemoration activities that will start this very week. I fully support those activities. Many feature Holocaust survivors who show great courage and enormous emotional fortitude in telling their stories, re-living their own horrible experiences so that: so that Jews will not forget what it has cost to be Jewish over the millennia and so that, as is invariably explained at the outset and conclusion of these activities, others will be spared the same. I look at that schedule and weep.

Personally, I am not religious but today I am driven to repeat the opening words of our most significant prayer: “Shema Yisroel!”