The world is silent.

In the hallowed halls of the institutions that are charged with safeguarding our world and the protection of those that cannot defend themselves, the global community of representatives are silent. There are no resolutions, no emergency sessions.

Just silence.

Perhaps there should be less attention focused on Wonder Women’s breasts and more on the genocide in Syria….

From the lofty heights of social media platforms, where many have focused a disproportionate amount of attention on drivel, the armchair pundits and generals are silent.

The movers and shakers and opinion makers from the global media have not dedicated column inches and soundbites to the civilians of Aleppo. No righteous indignation from those that command the airwaves.

Elections Trump genocide.

Silence governs the human rights organisations.  One would expect these moral high ground practitioners to be leading the charge against the gross abuse happening in Syria but their energy is reserved for other parts of the Middle East…..

Anyone hear a peep from the BDS movement? If they really were concerned with human rights they would be front and centre.

When the leader of the free world tango’d with red lines and allowed the gas to consume tens of thousands of civilians the West was silent. Epic foreign policy failure, President Obama, epic!!

More than 310 000 Syrians have been killed and more than half the population displaced. The State of Israel, while having hostile relations with Syria, has provided humanitarian aid to civilians. While Israel maintains a policy of non-intervention, we have treated nearly 3000 civilians in field hospitals and in Israel.  IDF reserve doctors had this to say in a letter to the army chief-of-staff, in their demand to be called up to help:

“We know there are security considerations, and we know there are diplomatic considerations. But there is a principle, there is a truth, and there is morality: We must demand from ourselves to be there for them,” the letter, quoted by Israeli news site 04040.

Israeli doctor explains prosthetic leg to injured Syrian civilian (courtesy AFP)

Over 70 years after humanity’s greatest atrocity, the Holocaust, the world looked in horror and vowed NEVER AGAIN.  We debated why the railroads to Auschwitz were not bombed, why the Allied powers did nothing to stop the extermination of a third of world Jewry. Many recoiled in horror at the images of the tortured, starved and gassed and said we would never let crimes against humanity happen again.

It is ironic that next month, on the 27^th of January, many will commemorate International Holocaust Memorial Day, designated by the United Nations to remember the worst genocide in recent memory. There will be many who will make speeches filled with platitudes about the importance of education and remembrance so that atrocities of this kind never happen again.

But has the world learned anything from history?

Silence has failed the six million and their survivors. Silence has failed Rwanda, Srebrenica, Cambodia and Darfur. Silence has failed Aleppo.

We cannot afford to be silent anymore. None of us in good conscience can say “but we didn’t know”.

As we reach the end of 2016, a year filled with many horrors around the world, we need to use our collective voices. We need to take to the streets and to social media. As media consumers we need to demand proper, balanced coverage. As citizens of humanity, we need to look for WAYS TO HELP

Do not make NEVER AGAIN an empty platitude – make it your resolution. No more silence.