​What does "never forget" really mean?

Why the Trudeau Government Won't Call Out Islamophobia
If politicians want to end hate, they have to name it for what it is

• Last year, the National Council for Canadian Muslims sent a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with a simple request: declare January 29 the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Islamophobia.
• It seemed like a reasonable suggestion. The date is the day that Alexandre Bissonnette’s attack killed six worshippers in a Quebec City mosque.
• During the M-103 debate, MP David Sweet read out loud from a National Post column from writer Raheel Raza, in which she explains her opposition to the word, contending: “The term Islamophobia was created in the 1990s, when groups affiliated to the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood decided to play victim for the purpose of beating down critics.”
• Search through the debates and committee transcripts from the House of Commons, or within the pages of the Toronto Sun, and this odd notion, that the word Islamophobia itself is some product of a global Muslim conspiracy, keeps coming up. Opponents of M-103 pushed this idea that Canadian Muslims, somehow at the behest of the shadowy brotherhood, were looking to overhaul Canadian laws to criminalize criticism of Islam.

What is not quoted from Raheel Raza's critique is this:

• If M-103 is passed, it will silence constructive criticism and widen the gulf between Muslim and non-Muslim Canadians.

Bingo! The powerful pejorative "antisemitism" has done exactly that. It has silenced constructive criticism of Israel and widened the gulf between Jews and non-Jews.

It strikes me as possible that Justin Trudeau has lived his whole life attempting to be everything to everybody - an impossible feat, as he has no doubt learned since becoming Prime Minister, though he continues to try.

The rational solution would be to allow neither.  If not, then it ought to be both. Personally, I don't mind having different words for all the ongoing prejudices that divide humans as if from different species. Anti-Irish, anti-Francophone (and don't imagine that doesn't exist in English Canada, including among some Irish I have known), anti-Portuguese, and so ad nauseum.

But if the Fundamental Freedoms guaranteed in The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms were being properly upheld by our government itself, there would be no need for special protective laws beyond that:

• (a) freedom of conscience and religion;
• (b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
• (c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
• (d) freedom of association.

If our Charter of Rights and Freedoms were upheld by government, the Security Certificate that has taken away the freedom of certain Muslims living in Canada could never have been invoked, nor indeed have existed -- and certainly not on account of something that came down in the United States -- or in Germany, for that matter.

We would not be treating Jews decently because of the "holocaust"; we would be treating them, and all fellow residents of Canada, according to what our flag pretends to represent.

Now if Jews want to invoke the "holocaust" every time they feel the same kinds of discomfort that most of us have felt at one time or another, based on our colour, our weight, our height, our gender, our religious practices, our style of dress, the neighbourhood in which we live, the schools we attend, our level of education, our accents, the size of our feet, our noses ... then they need to get a sense of proportion.

That's just life among humans who have a hard time dealing with anything different from themselves.

The treatment of Jews by the Nazis has nothing, or should have nothing to do with Canada's treatment of Jews. But we all do tend to react to others according to how we perceive that they react to us, or may react to us. Hence the expression: what goes around comes around.

I was raised by my religious parents to see Jews as God's Chosen People, and films of the camps brought me to tears. My mother bought her clothes at a Jewish-owned shop, and would come home with stories of the conversations she had with the owner.  it was "Mrs. Kizzell" this and "Mrs. Kizzell" that, as if Mrs. Kizzell were an important woman whose spoken thoughts mattered.

But now, I can't help wondering what Mrs. Kizzell said about my mother after she left the shop.  I certainly was not prepared at all to find out that my Jewish boyfriend was told by his parents to "Never trust a Gentile", and to "cool it" with me -- before they had even met me.

Apparently, even if I were a convert to Judaism, I would still be treated as somewhat of an outsider. Tips from a Jew by choice who's heard it all.

And I certainly don't appreciate Jewish females decrying the fact that every Jewish male has to have a "shiksa" fling. But it's common language amongst many Jews, and "gentiles" have no special day to protest that.

So,What’s a ‘Shiksa’ Already?
The term ‘shiksa’ ... is derived from the Hebrew work ‘shekkets’, meaning abominable or disgusting.

They may not kill us "gentiles", but many of them do assign us to metaphorical camps, and they sure know how to hurt us. They even invite for dinner the Jewish man you live with without including the "shiksa". Not nice at all.

Shunning is one of the most potent weapons known to human kind.  Doing this certainly does tend to diminish the goodwill Jews demand that everyone should have toward them. And it's their loss, not mine, or yours if the same things happened to you. Nobody needs an environment like that.

A dear cousin of mine phoned me long distance last week just to have a good long chat instead of sending an email. In the course of the conversation he reminded me that there is only this moment. Nothing else exists except as a memory.

We don't have to ruminate on old hurts. And if we remember them, we don't have to feel the pain; we don't have to elicit pity from all and sundry around us; we don't have to expect special treatment. We can just live each moment having learned what not to do unto others, and know that fear is our very worst enemy because it can make us cruel.

What have Jews learned from the "holocaust"? Many have learned to live in the present and treat their fellow humans as they would wish to be treated. Many have learned to live in fear that it could happen again at any moment, and as I said, fear can make us cruel.

In this very moment, the Israeli leadership shows it learned how to ghettoize, starve, imprison, terrorize and kill Palestinians, simply for exercising their internationally historic right to resist an illegal occupation -- not to mention steadily and incrementally encroaching on lands that Palestinian families have cultivated for generations. See map below*

In this very moment, somewhere in the ME, Muslims are being killed by real bombs and their children are huddled in real refugee camps, afraid to go to sleep at night.

In this very moment, there is a "holocaust" against Arab/Muslim states in the Middle East led by the United States, which just recently fanned the flames of injustice by acknowledging Jerusalem as the capital of Israel - thereby decreasing further the living environment for Palestinian Christians and Muslims!

Do The Math: Global War On Terror Has Killed 4 Million Muslims Or More

I can't say this strongly enough: What the hell does "never forget" mean, if it doesn't demand no further harm to humanity itself?

Read More:
Reflections of an Arab-Jew   

Listen: John Lennon "Imagine" (YouTube)