Why do we ignore genocides besides our own tragedy? - The Jewish Chronicle

For a 19 year old like me, the study and prevention of genocide is quite the uncommon passion.

Brought up as a member of the Jewish community, I was educated on the horrors of the Holocaust from a young age. As a budding historian, I was fascinated by its causes and thus, like many other people, questioned how a select group of people can be this evil and how the world could allow this to happen.

On International Genocide Awareness and Prevention Day last month, I felt particularly let down by my community — including the Jewish Chronicle and other significant Jewish organisations — because there was barely any interest in the commemoration.

It led me to question whether I still belong in a community which I have been active in for my whole life.

I see our community as a microcosm of society more widely and thus the issues I discuss here afflict humanity as a whole.

At the age of 16, I started to become aware that the Holocaust was not the only genocide. As I continued my research I realised I had been completely blind to the suffering caused by genocide unless it affected my community.

This made me angry and upset. This new comprehension led me to quickly realise that I was in the majority of the population who knew very little about genocide.

The fact that, as of 2014, 53 per cent of people in the UK could not name a genocide since the Holocaust speaks volumes.

I am now the Youth Trustee for the Ishami Foundation, which draws on genocide survivor experience to connect us to our common humanity. I have made it my mission to mark International Genocide Awareness Day each year in order to raise as much awareness as possible.

Up until this year, I believed that in order to work towards preventing genocides in the future, we needed to raise awareness and educate people about the suffering that took place in the past and continues in the present.

I thought that a wave of anger and injustice would form in the public which would eventually encourage those in power to make a stronger commitment in law to do their upmost to prevent genocide.

This year, with Ross Green and others, I created a four-minute video featuring survivors of four different genocides talking about their experiences accompanied by a call to action.

December 9th 2019 marks the 71st anniversary of the passing of the genocide convention. After the Holocaust, the 1948 convention represented an international commitment to prevent the killing of innocent individuals because of their group identity. pic.twitter.com/Oi2rFXbdOv
— Ishami Foundation (@FoundIshami) December 9, 2019

The video went live on December 9 and received many more views and shares than I expected.

While I was happy with this, I could not understand why so many people and organisations consciously decided to not raise awareness of the day along with past and present genocides, especially when I had made them aware through emails or messages on group chats.

I thought that articulating how the crime that took place in the Holocaust continues in the present day was enough incentive to join the campaign. It wasn’t.

The problem appeared to lie not just in a lack of awareness but also in an apparent lack of care. One of the founding philosophies of the Jewish religion is to love your neighbour as you love yourself.

Until influential organisations in the community and the ordinary person truly take this to heart, baseless hatred and genocide will continue to devastate humanity. All we need to do is to care enough so that the suffering experienced by other groups does not go unnoticed.

Joel Freedman is the Youth Trustee for the Ishami Foundation