The Moral Imperative?

If only because Australians were among its victims, there was extensive media coverage, both in the written and electronic media of  the most recent Islamist carnage in the  Indian city of Mumbai. Not unexpectedly, there was no lack of experts, local and overseas, casting a forensic eye over the horrendous events as they unfolded. Their analyses provided a plurality of views as to who was ultimately responsible and why.

On Christmas Day came television footage of the BBC Channel 4 programme,"An alternative Christmas message" presented by the notorious President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran   whose regime has a well-documented record of extreme hostility to  faiths other than Islam, including Christianity. This being so, what was so striking, apart from the choice of this highly immoral person to present  a discourse on the subject of peace, was the absence of a moral critique from any major spokesperson for the Christian Church.

From a media perspective, what links these two episodes is a total lack of concern for Jewish sensitivities.. In the case of Mumbai, for all the flurry of words,  and for all the erudition involved in discussions of the incidents, when it came to the massacre of the innocents at the miniscule and unobtrusive Chabad centre - Nariman House - cogent analysis was replaced by an eerie silence.  Was it simply that  this tragic event was too difficult to explain by the various geopolitical interpretations provided, or was something more fundamental involved? With very few exceptions indeed, questions which might have elicited  plausible answers were not asked.

How did such premeditated murder fit the fraught situation of Kashmir, the ever-simmering tensions between the nuclear states of India and Pakistan, Muslim grievances with Hindus in India, or indeed, the war in Afghanistan?  What political message was being sent by the targeting of this softest  of targets, and in particular, the reported humiliation and torture  of its victims? Why, with very  few exceptions, were no clues traced back to  the ideology of Islamist terrorism, with its origins of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has Jews, let alone Israelis, in the eye of its  political storm?  And this, when even for these commentators, their usual knee-jerk reaction to blame all Islamist terror on Israel and its alleged maltreatment of the Palestinians since 1948 appeared an absurdity?

The objective facts of the assault on  Nariman House could not denied,  if only because the media itself had documented them. It was not a matter of interpretation. However, the implications of even  these facts  were studiously avoided. Whenever  this attack was mentioned, it was generally only in passing, usually as a mere footnote  to what had happened at the two luxury hotels accommodating foreign visitors to India and at the city's main railway station. 

Those who have an absolutist belief in the virtues of free speech and multiculturalism will no doubt welcome the comedy of  a devout Judeophobe such as  the President of Iran  delivering his address on peace to the world on yet another international stage.  As usual, they will conveniently forget the lack of freedom for other faiths in this man's own backyard. It may all be BBC 4's British sense of humour of the kind so aptly portrayed in the zany  television series, "Monty Python" or the film  "The Life of Brian".  The television station received a gentle slap across the knuckles by the British Government only for the program's  inappropriateness.

The message of the tragedy of Mumbai for Jews everywhere is that no matter how they might differentiate themselves within the Jewish community, these are not nuances recognised or understood by  those seeking to do them harm. It would not have occurred to the architects of this Islamist terror attack, that like them, one of its victims refused to accept the legitimacy of the Jewish State of Israel, also for religious reasons.  And it  is also a message not likely to be absorbed by those whose Jewish identity is mainly  based on their own hostility to the same nation..

The reaction  of Australian Jews to the slaughter in Mumbai was not only visceral, but for some, quite personal. The latter because they had actually  met the murdered Rabbi Gavriel Holzberg and wife, Rivka, while vacationing in India. Some had been fellow rabbinical students. Perhaps this local sadness was more palpable because of the prominent role played by the Chabad movement in the religious life of Australian Jewry. The majority of Jewish houses of worship in Australia are of the Orthodox persuasion, and the majority of these are led by rabbis from the Chabad movement.

The Australian Jewish community's political roof-body, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, requested  the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, to extend his general condemnation of the Islamist rampage in Mumbai to include a special mention of its Chabad centre.  It did not happen. As no Australian citizens were affected directly in this particular horrific event, there was no apparent political need for him to do so.