OPINION: Warning – this column says the unsaid… from the start
TV and film producer, writer and director Gary Sinyor delivers an uncompromising assessment of social cohesion and interfaith relations amid the Gaza war
The fact that babies have been killed does not matter to me more than adults being killed. I cannot compare the pain of one human with another, nor the life potential nor their relative innocence. I will not be goaded by the terrorists’ lack of feeling for I know that blood lust appears through human history.
There is no method of killing any human with a sword or knife that is pleasant to watch.
If you’ve murdered the damage has been done. Do your worst. I will not view it, I will not explain it in detailed emotive words. The dead are no longer. Post-mortem abuse is the act of an adult with the mind of an angry child.
Defiling a human body after murder is a war crime. How sensitive we are. Whether you bury them or burn them or jump on their heads, the crime I grieve is the killing.
I go contrary to Israel, which is prepared to trade terrorists for a soldier’s corpse. Better to pray at an empty grave than more full ones.
Dear journalists, TV pundits, talk show hosts and phone-inners – and, yes, lawyers – rabbiting on about international law. International law was written by flawed humans. It doesn’t mean it’s right.
The UN has failed to stop war, failed to stop drought, failed to stop starvation, disease, the rise of uber capitalism, global warming, desperate dictators, corporate manslaughter, drug dealers, the mafia, religious extremism, racism…I say this not because of Israel’s demonisation by gleeful ambassadors from the 50-odd Muslim states but because of absolutely everything else. “There hasn’t been a world war since it started” goes the cry. Big f**king deal.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is idealist legal claptrap. It stands against sexism. That’s doing well. It says everyone has the right to clean water. We’re 75 years in and one third of the global population does not. Either put it into action or rip it up. Best to rip it up so that smarmy politicians can’t quote it, and I mean this ironically, as gospel.
European Human Rights laws did not stop 500 women and children dying in the hold of a boat off the coast of Greece last summer.
The concept of human rights laws came from the Hague Convention of 1895. Before both world wars. Before the Holocaust. Outstanding work, guys.
If 6,000 Hamas terrorists have died and there are still another 20,000 terrorists left in Gaza, I expect that number to reach 26,000. You can repeat the numbers in your news channels with the Israeli deaths at 1,400, and the Gazan deaths going up and up. If the aim is to eliminate the terrorists, I will worry when you pass that number of Hamas terrorists, not before.
My own yardstick is a the greater good, the greater logic dictated by how best to stop human pain. You have two irreconcilable fighting brothers in the same house. Logic dictates you separate them by all means necessary.
Keep warring factions apart.
Humans are tribal. The lion will never lie down with the lamb. That’s precisely why is Messianic. I’m not against hope but impossibility is another matter.
I don’t believe everything the Israelis are saying. I certainly don’t believe what Hamas is saying. I don’t believe a word of what any politician is saying. Behind the scenes, there are diplomatic channels and until they play out, people die. Every visit to Israel by a western leader, every statement from an Arab leader is a coordinated to achieve an aim that suits them.
Nothing else. Them.
A note to the powerful: Even combatants deserve not to have their lives snuffed out for no reason.
I believe many British Muslims want to lead respectful family lives. I have read that the first time the national anthem was sung in a British mosque was when the Queen died last year.
Muslims in the UK are scared of a backlash. If I were a Muslim influencer I’d instigate singing the national anthem in schools pretty quick. Make some small compromises for the sake of the bigger picture. Swedish Muslims accept a lesser form of halal in order to conform to Swedish law. Religion can adapt when it chooses to.
The Western Wall is the holiest site in Judaism. The Al Aqsa mosque is the third holiest site in Islam. So it has two holy sites that score above it. If it was the 5th or 6th, would some Muslims kill for it?
When I get the Tube, a voice tells me to look out for something suspicious. See it, say it, sort it. I ask you, who am I being asked to look out for? Jews? Christians? Hindus? Or young Muslim males with rucksacks? How do you think that makes young Muslim males feel?
Any person who does not acknowledge the right of Israel, within pre-1967 borders, to be a Jewish state, has no place in interfaith dialogue. Those leaders in the Jewish community who have given tacit approval to this thought process have been misguided and they have proven themselves naïve. This goes right back to Blair and the fall-out from 9/11. Make no bones about it, British Jews have been failed by many – including British Jews.
Here’s an idea. Put simple Arab-understanding Sephardim in charge to sort out the mess and only call on intellectual Ashkenazim to do the legal drafting.
Anyone who grabbed news headlines to moan about whether casting a non-Jewish actor as Jewish was in any sense important should hang their head in shame.
Witness the intended pogrom at an airport in Russia. You don’t need the wordy, confusing IHRA definition to see actual antisemitism.
When I get the Tube, a voice tells me to look out for something suspicious. See it, say it, sort it. I ask you, who am I being asked to look out for? Jews? Christians? Hindus? Or young Muslim males with rucksacks? How do you think that makes young Muslim males feel?
Jews are lucky that we haven’t had other Jews blowing themselves up at pop concerts. Maybe lucky isn’t the right word. Reasonably well led. Multiculturalism can work. It involves having a dominant culture and other cultures accepting that dominance not a free-for-all.
You cannot say that Britain is a tolerant society without acknowledging that some have to accept being tolerated. Jews have taken that board.
If I was the Archbishop of Canterbury I’d stop addressing LGBT+ rights and start working out how to attract people to church with enjoyable family and community affirming rituals.
Start by calling the Tooth Fairy the Tooth Angel so that kids can ask what an angel is. Bring back the family Sunday lunch. That’s how communities work. Big up your Saint’s Days. Complain about the morality of our TV shows which pander to the basest instincts.
Encourage people to count their blessings. Sing popular hymns. Give people in the here and now reasons to go to Church.
But then if your background is banking, maybe better to hand over to someone who is more qualified to speak for the Christian values.
The west cannot expect other nations with different values to jump to its tune just because it got to a liberal position quicker. That liberal position is looking precarious. Yuval Harari’s book Sapiens is a searing indictment of evolution – until he suddenly collapses his whole argument by being hopeful in his outlook. Only fools think that society is always heading in the progressive direction. Read Ecclesiastes.
Finally: non-Jews and non-Muslims in Britain don’t care about what goes on in the Middle East. They have mouths to feed, love to fall into and football teams to cheer on.
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