Shoah/Darfur

Yesterday our church was rembering the Shoah -- that's the Jewish word for the Holocaust. Needless to say, not a comforting or uplifting sermon. One of the points made was that there is currently a genocide occuring in Darfur, Sudan. Women and children are being raped, brutalized, killed...men are not faring much better.

We claim to be a "Christian nation". We claim to have Judeo-Christian roots. If that's so, then why are we not stepping in to this particular horror to stop it? We KNOW that the Holocaust happened, much as, in its very grand scope, we don't want to comprehend it. How can we stand idly by while 400,000 innocent people have been killed?

I for one will not stand by silently. I went to http://savedarfur.org/ and filled out the "postcard" to President Bush, asking him to support the liberation of the people of Sudan. This genocide is very similar to what has been going on in Rwanda, where we also stood by without doing much to help.

If you read my blog, I ask you, as sincerely and passionately as I know how, to support the savedarfur.org website. It will only take a minute or less to fill out the form. You will be asked to spread the word -- I did, and I hope you will.

I'm not much for "causes", but this is the destruction of a people, an ethnic cleansing. On my personal email signature, I have the following quote:

*First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.

by Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945

Please take this to heart, and do what you can for the people who so desperately need our support.

Thank you, and peace to you,
WIP