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Words cannot adequately convey the horror, disgust and outrage we feel at the appalling murder by a gunman of 50 innocent people while they were at Friday prayers in two mosques in Christ­ch­urch on March 15, and the injuring of many more.

This was a hate crime directed against Muslims simply for being Muslims.  To kill ordinary citizens peace­fully gathered at prayer in a place of sanctuary, is an act of causeless hatred and monstrous evil. It is a bestial and cowardly crime of a kind that the Jewish people recognise all too well.

We mourn with our Muslim brothers and sisters for what they have lost. For the desec­ra­tion of their sanctuary. For the loss of their loved ones. For the depriva­tion of their sense of peace and security. We extend our deepest sym­path­ies to the com­munit­ies affected, to the people of Christ­ch­urch and to the Islamic community in Australia.

This shooter obscenely videoed his own actions during what he described as the “firefight”. It was no such thing.  It was a vicious, unpro­voked slaughter of innocent people, including a 3 year old child.

The shooter described himself as a soldier in a militant movement fighting back against what he sees as Muslim encroach­ment into Europe and other Western societies. He is no such thing.  He is self-deluded coward, who cannot tell the dif­fer­ence between peaceful immig­ra­tion by dis­tressed people seeking refuge from per­se­cu­tion and strife, and an organised military invasion by the armed forces of a State.

The ideology that drove this par­tic­u­lar terrorist, known as the “white genocide” myth, which supposes that Europeans are being exterm­in­ated by non-European immig­ra­tion and mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, has been invoked to justify the massacre of African-American wor­shipers at a church in Char­le­ston, South Carolina in 2015. It was invoked by the terrorist Anders Breivik in 2011 when he murdered 77 innocent people in Norway; and it was invoked again by the terrorist who massacred Jewish wor­shipers in a synagogue in Pitt­s­burgh just last year.

The old evil of Nazism may have developed a new theme and new ‘enemies’; but its hate-filled, murderous core remains unchanged. It threatens the found­a­tions of civil­isa­tion itself, and the bonds of our common humanity. To adapt the words of Winston Churchill, the atrocity in Christ­ch­urch  “illus­trates as nothing else can the utter degrad­a­tion of the Nazi nature and theme, and degrad­a­tion of all who lend them­selves to its unnatural and perverted passions”.

Free and demo­crat­ic societies urgently need to do two things in response.

First, we must examine and improve the way we conduct political debate.   As the Nazi Holocaust and the mass crimes in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia demon­strated all too clearly, genocide does not begin with killing. It begins with words.  Political, community, religious and civil society leaders all have a duty to lead by example, by setting the right tone of discourse from the top.

Secondly, our law enforce­ment agencies must take to heart the fact that the threat of terrorism does not emanate exclus­ively from one source.  The old saying that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance remains as true as ever.

We are not helpless before these new threats to our way of life. Far from it.  The quiet determ­in­a­tion of peace- and freedom-loving peoples is infin­itely superior to the mania of fanatics.  It is our resolve, not theirs, which will ulti­mately prevail.

By Anton Block (President ECAJ), Peter Wertheim (Co-CEO ECAJ) , Alex Ryvchin (Co-CEO ECAJ).

Contact
Peter Wertheim AM | co-CEO
ph: 02 8353 8500 | m: 0408 160 904 | fax 02 9361 5888
e: [email protected] | www.ecaj.org.au 

Contact
Alex Ryvchin | Co-CEO
ph: 02 8353 8505 | m: 0478 297 245
e: [email protected] | www.ecaj.org.au