The image was no less than heart-rending. A Turkish policemen standing on a beach, at
water’s edge. In the water, at his feet,
is drowned child who has washed up against the shore. We are told that the name of the
three-year-old child was Aylan Kurdi.
That he and his family were forced to leave their home in Syria, because
of the civil war. All except the father,
Abdullah, drowned when trying to reach the Greek Island of Kos in a small
plastic boat. The Aegean Sea often looks
far more benign than it is. And Kos
looms across only about three kilometers of water, within clear sight of the
Turkish coast. It appears to be easily
reachable in a small boat. But for the
Kurdi family, and others, the reality has been otherwise.
To not find the
image of Aylan Kurdi, and his story heart-rending, is to be heartless. The Reform Siddur, Mishkan T’filah,
says it succinctly when in the Friday evening prayer it declares of the world
around us: There is evil enough to break
the heart, and good enough to exult the soul.
Some days, only the first clause is apparent. Some days, it seems as if there’s so much evil
in the world that we despair of seeing any good. Our hearts cry out that such a tragedy as a three-year-old
child drowning in the sea as a refugee from war, demands a response.
To many, the only valid
response is to open the floodgates for war refugees to reach the havens they
seek. Jews, especially are vocal about
this. We have been busy reminding the
world, and one another, about the world’s refusal to accept Jewish refugees
from Hitler’s Germany in the 1930’s.
This refusal led directly to their demise in the gas chambers of the
Third Reich. There’s no question that,
for Jews in particular, there is a strong imperative to act in some way.
But that begs the
question: to act how?
The civil war in
Syria began in the year 2011, as part of uprisings in various Arab countries
that are referred to as ‘The Arab Spring.’
In several countries, the popular unrest succeeded in toppling
authoritarian and totalitarian governments.
In Syria, the government of Bashar Assad dug in and sought to
exterminate the uprising. Assad had the
pedigree to respond thus. His father
Hafez Assad, in the late 1970’s, brutally put down an Islamist uprising.
Perhaps you remember
the urgent calls for Western governments to intervene in the blood-letting in
Syria. But none of the Western powers did
intervene. In part, it was because
the Western powers were loath to get involved in what would be a messy and
dangerous situation. We’d had enough
involvement in wars in the Middle East. But additionally, there didn’t seem to be a
horse worth backing. As brutal and bloodthirsty
as the Assad regime is, the developing opposition – that would have been a
number of groups including Al Qaeda and the until-then obscure ISIS – was not a
series of players we could back. In
other words, there were only Bad Guys – and worse guys – in the
neighbourhood.
US President Obama
and other leaders were very late in calling publicly for Assad to step down or
call elections, but it was predictable that he would reject all such calls in
any case. Obama also dismissed the
danger of ISIS, in January 2014 referring to them as a “JV Squad,” meaning
Junior Varsity. It’s a reference to a
school’s second string team that plays other schools’ second string teams.
Whilst the US and
other Western Powers were content to grind their teeth and ‘tutt tutt’ the
issue, ISIS became stronger and more brutal. They learned to use social media to get out
the word about their atrocities. They
apparently calculated that images of executions by beheading and burning alive
would sicken most of the world. But that
they also seem to have calculated that the reign of terror would, for some
macabre reason, cause recruits to their Islamic army to swarm in from among
disaffected Muslim populations around the world. Finally, reluctantly, as the Syrian and Iraqi
Kurds alone began fighting back at ISIS, the West began to support them with
air and drone strikes against ISIS. But
that did nothing to still the hands of Assad, who is just as brutal if less
open and social media-savvy.
The result is a
tsunami of refugees from Syrian and Iraq:
from Assad and from ISIS. Turkey
has been accepting the refugees for several years, especially since several of
the epicenters of the fighting are close to the Turkish border. But Turkey is not interested in resettling
the refugees. They are left to their own
devices, or to the care of international NGO’s or relatives abroad, in the
hopes that they will ultimately move on.
Turkey has a reputation as ‘the Sick Man of Europe’ – an interesting appellation
given that the vast majority of her landmass is in Asia. But despite that, Turkey is a large country
with a population of over 75 million. She
also has a decent and growing economy with a per capita GDP of about $11,000
and a life expectancy of 75 years. Not
First World, but not one of the world’s failed states either. Also Turkey is an Islamic country, and the
vast majority of the refugees are Muslims.
One would think that the refugees could find shelter in Turkey which,
whilst close to the war zones, is not at war.
But Turkey is not
interested in absorbing refugees – especially Kurds. Kurds already make up between 15 and 25
percent of Turkey’s population, most of them concentrated in the country’s
southeast quadrant. There has been a
persistent movement among those Kurds towards seceding from Turkey to join with
Syrian and Iraqi Kurds in a greater Kurdistan.
Turks already feel the loss of their once-great empire and are unwilling
to cede any more land.
Meanwhile, the northern hemisphere
summer is ending. The camps and slums of
Turkey are preparing for a cold, wet winter.
Hundreds of thousands of refugees in Turkey, loath to remain, are on the
move. They are desperately trying to
reach Germany and the UK, where warm homes and social benefits await. And some would say, opportunity to Islamise
those countries by their sheer numbers.
The Kurdi family who provided a face
on the refugee problem, were awaiting resettlement in Canada. Abdullah Kurdi has a married sister who has lived
in Vancouver for 20 years. She, and
members of her community, were applying to sponsor the Kurdi’s and were
providing them financial support to support them in Turkey. But frustrated with the slow pace of the
process, Abdullah Kurdi decided to take the initiative to move the family to Europe. They set out to cross over to Kos in a
plastic boat. And they met tragedy.
We in the West cannot but grieve at
the human tragedy being caused by the Syrian civil war and the rise of ISIS. One cannot ignore a heart-breaking
situation. And yet, one must keep one’s brain
– one’s rational side – intact. Perhaps
our governments could have intervened several years ago. The Obama Administration clearly erred by
pulling out of Iraq on schedule. It
could have been predicted that Iraq would quickly descend into chaos. And that Assad would take America’s eagerness
to quit, as a green light to do whatever necessary to consolidate his power. And now the world is stuck with powerful
images of masses of people driven to move.
It does not seem an auspicious start
to the Jubilee Year, which will begin in three days. Perhaps miraculous events can only be ushered
in by the cataclysmic. May the world’s
inhabitants find peace and succor through the cataclysmic events unfolding. May we find ways to ameliorate the suffering,
whilst at the same time protecting our own shaky democracies and the values
that underpin them. May we all find a
path through the upheaval with our humanity intact. Shabbat shalom, and Shana tova.
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