Declaration Against Genocide

From here. Sign it.

Declaration Against Genocide

There is a genocidal movement afoot in the world. Its advocates are legion, its resources prodigious, its atrocities mounting. But Americans still pretend that it doesn't exist.

Genocidal outrages are now an everyday occurrence in Africa. In the Middle East the murder of entire ethnic and religious groups is an obsession that inspires terrorist armies and heads of state. In the full glare of the global spotlight, Iran's Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah's Nasrallah, and Palestinian leaders are calling for the obliteration of the Jewish state. From the goose-stepping soldiers of Hezbollah, Syria and Iran to the broadcasts of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on al-Jazeera and Egyptian TV, homage is paid to the Nazi past by radicals in the Muslim world. In their sermons and public proclamations the most virulent Jew-hatred is trumpeted since the dark of days of the Second World War. And unlike the Nazis they do not conceal their malevolent goal.

Yet there is little or no response from the rest of us: no universal condemnation and outrage, no common call for resistance. Worse, excuses are made for the bearers of the hate. If only the "Great Satan," which is America, and the "Little Satan," which is Israel, will but change their policies, then the death sentences that have been pronounced against their citizens will be rescinded and the world can be at peace. Thus is blame transferred to the targets of the hate. It is time to oppose the complicity of silence. It is time to unite in condemning the hatred that is a blight on our times; it is time to repudiate the calls for genocide that darken our human horizon. Therefore we are submitting this Declaration Against Genocide to student governments, to campus human rights organizations, to Muslim Students Associations and to individuals in the academic community, to join us in drawing a collective line in the sand against barbarism and to declare ourselves for civilization and hope.

Whereas genocide – the murder, or plan to murder, an entire people – is a crime against all humanity;

Whereas genocide is a crime that has metastasized in the modern era, leading to the murders of millions of Armenians, Cambodians, Tutsis, Sudanese, Bosnian Muslims and others;

Whereas the largest and most devastating genocide on record is the Holocaust of European Jews;

Whereas a new genocide of the Jews is being called for by Islamic leaders in the Middle East;

Whereas global forces are being mobilized by the Iranian regime to eliminate the Jewish state;

Whereas the genocide of the Jews is called for in texts understood by some Muslims as authoritative and echoes through sermons in some mosques today, and is proclaimed by certain leaders of the Islamic religion;

Whereas Catholicism and other Christian denominations have condemned the Holocaust and repudiated anti-Jewish pronouncements that have stained their religious past;

We call on all Student Governments and campus Muslim groups to:

1. Condemn and repudiate the Hadith which reads: "The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time [of judgment] will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews and kill them; until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!" Sahih Muslim book 41, no. 6985

2. Condemn and repudiate the Hamas Charter which says: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it”

3. Condemn Ahmadinejad who has said “The accomplishment of a world without America and Israel is both possible and feasible."

4. Condemn Hezbollah and its leader Hassan Nasrallah who has said:

"The Jews are a cancer which is liable to spread again at any moment."

"There is no solution to the conflict except with the disappearance of Israel."

“If they all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”

5. Affirm:

* The right of all people to live in freedom and dignity

* The freedom of the individual conscience: to change religions or have no religion at all

* The equal dignity of women and men

* The right of all people to live free from violence, intimidation, and coercion

We call upon all campus political, cultural, ethnic and religious groups to stand with us in opposing all forms of religious supremacism, violence and intimidation.