This letter to the Editor (in the Australian Financial Review today - and published here in full) from the Centre for Global Affairs in New York, really should make us weep.....
"I urge every reader to spare a moment and imagine the plight of the Syrian people, especially the children. This is what you will see: more than 50,000 children under the age of 15 have been killed – if they stood shoulder to shoulder, they would form a line 80miles long. Two and a half million children are languishing in refugee camps, including 306,000 that have been born since the civil war began in 2011. Eight million children inside and outside the country are in desperate need of food and medical care. More than 15,000 children crossed Syria's borders by themselves; many were left to die not knowing what happened to them and why. One in three children have endured horrific violence against them and their families, and over 2.5million children have no access to basic education.
Take another moment and imagine children being pulled from the rubble – the dead, the severely wounded, the unconscious, and the ones who are still awake but do not know what struck them and why. The death toll of children and adults alike has been reduced to mere numbers – 'worthless' statistics – which no longer resonate as we have become comfortably numb. As you keep imagining, you will see countless children waiting like sacrificial lambs to be slaughtered on the altar of the international community's complete and utter moral bankruptcy.
What happened to our moral responsibility? How can we watch Aleppo's systematic destruction and allow the daily massacre of hundreds of innocent women and children? I shed tears for every child, I weep for every little lifeless body who never knew what was happening around them, or why they were ever born.
Perhaps the most catastrophic result of Syria's war is that two or three generations of Syrians have now been lost. No words can describe the atrocities and savagery raging in Syria, and yet they are met with indifference and ineptitude by the international community. Can we afford to remain silent, and if we do not rise to stop this madness, who will? How many more times should we attempt to establish a ceasefire with Russia only for it to be violated time and again? Vladimir Putin is a ruthless and deceitful dictator with no conscience or human decency. His ambition in the Middle East trumps the lives of every Syrian citizen; he is morally corrupt at his core."
Alon Ben-Meir
"I urge every reader to spare a moment and imagine the plight of the Syrian people, especially the children. This is what you will see: more than 50,000 children under the age of 15 have been killed – if they stood shoulder to shoulder, they would form a line 80miles long. Two and a half million children are languishing in refugee camps, including 306,000 that have been born since the civil war began in 2011. Eight million children inside and outside the country are in desperate need of food and medical care. More than 15,000 children crossed Syria's borders by themselves; many were left to die not knowing what happened to them and why. One in three children have endured horrific violence against them and their families, and over 2.5million children have no access to basic education.
Take another moment and imagine children being pulled from the rubble – the dead, the severely wounded, the unconscious, and the ones who are still awake but do not know what struck them and why. The death toll of children and adults alike has been reduced to mere numbers – 'worthless' statistics – which no longer resonate as we have become comfortably numb. As you keep imagining, you will see countless children waiting like sacrificial lambs to be slaughtered on the altar of the international community's complete and utter moral bankruptcy.
What happened to our moral responsibility? How can we watch Aleppo's systematic destruction and allow the daily massacre of hundreds of innocent women and children? I shed tears for every child, I weep for every little lifeless body who never knew what was happening around them, or why they were ever born.
Perhaps the most catastrophic result of Syria's war is that two or three generations of Syrians have now been lost. No words can describe the atrocities and savagery raging in Syria, and yet they are met with indifference and ineptitude by the international community. Can we afford to remain silent, and if we do not rise to stop this madness, who will? How many more times should we attempt to establish a ceasefire with Russia only for it to be violated time and again? Vladimir Putin is a ruthless and deceitful dictator with no conscience or human decency. His ambition in the Middle East trumps the lives of every Syrian citizen; he is morally corrupt at his core."
Alon Ben-Meir
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