Shalom My Gantseh Megillah Family and Friends,

President Bush often states that “Freedom is on the march,” but thousands of individuals are having their freedom abated. There is nothing inherently wrong with placing criminals in prison who have actually committed a crime and have been duly sentenced to serve time. Currently, men, women and children are being incarcerated who have not been charged with any crimes.

Our military prisons in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and Abu Grahib in Iraq are filled with these indefinite detainees. Other military prisons are involved as well, but these two institutions have amassed the greatest notoriety. Reckless incarcerations have caused a cry of outrage not only in the Arab world, but from countries and human rights groups around the globe.

How do we advance the cause of freedom by the wholesale imprisoning of people based on hunches and circumstance? Many of the prisoners have been picked up during raids and there is no evidence that they participated in any crime whatsoever. They are essentially being held because they look the part and were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Add to this the prisoner abuse and the president’s statement becomes a bitter laughing stock. There are documented instances of prisoners being sexually abused, physically tortured, and having their most sacred religious document, the Koran desecrated. First the U.S. government denied all of these allegations, and even went so far as to pressure Newsweek Magazine to retract a story of Koran abuse. On Friday, June 3, at 7:00 P.M. after the main news cycle had shut down for the weekend, the Pentagon admitted to certain instances of these charges.

Some people I have spoken to express the attitude that the Koran is just a book, and making a big deal out of marking it up is just a way of exploiting the situation for propaganda purposes. I asked them one simple question. “How would you as a Jew feel if you or someone you knew was in prison, and the guards urinated on the Torah?” The response invariably has been…”That would be a total disgrace!”

I concur; that would be a disgrace. People of the Muslim faith hold the Koran as sacred as we Jews hold our Torah. Its desecration is a horrible act of religious intolerance and spiritual torture. And yet, many of my fellow Jews tell me these “Arabs” are getting what they deserve.

I cannot for the life of me understand how we, as Jews, could ever express such a coldhearted sentiment. Sure, prisoners who are duly charged with crimes, or serving out a court ordered sentence after trial or confession, should be incarcerated. Nevertheless, humane treatment should be a given. Haven’t we as Jews who have suffered torture and abuse out of political expediency and religious intolerance over the centuries learned that this is unequivocally wrong?

At the very least, I would expect Jewish people to recoil in horror at the abuse of other human beings. We owe them the same treatment we would demand for ourselves in similar conditions. We should never take joy or satisfaction in seeing another person’s religious or human rights tampered with and abused. No matter how we feel about the crimes they are thought to be guilty of, basic rights still ensue. We owe it to our own Jewish history to make certain that political motivations do not infringe on the religious and personal freedoms of others.