An Eye For An Eye Makes The Whole World Blind

While I waited for my shift to fire, I read the newspaper which people usually left behind after eating. And I stumbled on this unique article. It is about the Iranian President: Ahmadinejad's burst on UN Conference against Racism last week.

The news received various response. And in Indonesia, people was hailing Ahmadinejad as hero, saying that he is the symbol of fighting for free Palestine.

What unique about this article that it was written by ambassador of Israel to Singapore. Whether it is right or wrong, I guess the world is already blinded by hatred. Since I can't find the online version of this article, I just retyped it without any changes.

As for my opinion myself, I believe that the only way to resolve hatred is by kindness, and sometimes by sacrificing your own right. And only the people who are closest to God can pull this string off.

"Today Newspaper
Friday April 24, 2009
News Comment
Ahmadinejad's Problem With Israel

The Jews have a basic and moral right to exist in their homeland.
Ilan Ben-Dov
Ambassador of Israel to Singapore

Another anti-Semitic outburst from Iranian President, this time at the United Nations Conference against Racism earlier this week, did not surprise anyone in Israel.

Mr. Ahmadinejad is acting systematically and with persistence through two channels: The first is an ongoing attempt to delegitimise the right of Israel to exist. To achieve this, every lie and every distortion is considered tools at his disposal, including the re-writing of history and the denial of the Holocaust.

The second is the Iranian nuclear weapon project. The Iranian President does not try to conceal his wish "to wipe Israel off the map".

It seems there is no limit to absurdity and hypocrisy: Mr. Ahmadinejad, a man who, from his very first moment in office did not stop preaching hatred, racism, and violence, was addressing a conference that is supposed to combat racism.

Mr. Ahmadinejad is a president who is leading a dictatorial regime that violates human rights on a daily basis, suppresing the rights of minorities living in his own country, including the rights of Iranian women. The same person, who preaches hatred, actively supports terrorism through his endorsement of Hamas and Hezbollah.

In his attempt to deny the Holocaust, he is joining a coalition of anti-Semites wishing for destruction of Israel.

The Iranian President is trying to spread the belief that the creation of Israel is allegedly an outcome of the Holocaust in Europe. He is trying to establish a "theory" according to which the suffering of the Jews in Europe caused them to arrive in the Middle East and to "rob" the land of Palestinians in order to establish a Jewish state.

He tends to forget that even a lie should be consistent.

First, he denies the very existence of the Holocaust, the murder of 6 million Jews in concentration and extermination camps during World War II.

Then he claims that the establishment of Israel (which is unjustified according to his theory) was an outcome of this historic event that according to him did not happen.

History is of course completely different and should be told in a clear, accurate, and unequivocal manner: The right of the Jewish people to land of Israel and to the establishment of its own state there is a natural and historic right that has existed for more than 3,500 years.

The Jews became a people, a nation, and amalgated as a religion and culture in the land of Israel hundreds of years before the Holocaust.

The Holocaust was the most traumatic event in the history of Jewish people and indeed, the history of all mankind. The Holocaust emphasised again and strenghtened the moral justification for the establishment of a Jewish state and more than this, the urgency for the need to establish a sovereign Jewish state for the Jewish people.

Moreover, it reiterated the natural right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in which they can live with dignity and security, free from prosecution and oppression as any other people in the world.

Therefore, the State of Israel was not "given" to the Jewish people as a "compensation" for their suffering in the Holocaust.

The State of Israel was established because Jews have a historic and moral right to live in their homeland and this right cannot be questioned.

One of the reasons for the establishment of the State of Israel was and still is the wish to give its citizens and to whole Jewish people a shelter, a place where every Jew can defend himself from prosecution, expulsion and discrimination, things that the Jews were subjected to for many years in exile.

The existence of Israel enables its citizens to protect themselves from people like the Iranian President who wish for its destruction and annihilation.

But this time history will not repeat itself.

This time, unlike, the situation in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, Jews have a state of their own and this state has the ability to protect itself against those who dream of its destruction.

It is a basic right, a justified right and a moral right."

Kartini's Spirit: Defeated by the "Holy" Values

Two days ago(21/4) Indonesia commemorated one important milestone in the history of equality and emancipation of women. We called it "Kartini's Day", taken from the name of national hero: Kartini who fought for gender equality mainly in education. Kartini's dream was that every girl will have the same right to pursue education as their counterparts: boys.

Also at the same day, Kompas published one news: "Hamil? Jangan Ikut Ujian Nasional". The news tells the story of a girl who gets pregnant and because of her pregnancy, she isn't entitled to sit on national level of final examination. Her parents even accompanied her to pledge to the school so she can sit in the examination. However, the school rejected the plea and considered that girl was no longer enlisted as student in that school.

Why should this be happened? The equation to this trouble is: pregnancy outside marriage + Indonesia's "pathetic" religious value.

Pregnancy
We (in Indonesia) celebrate pregnancy. We hailed it as a miracle from God Himself. We condemn every act to put an artificial end to pregnancy (abortion). We debate all the evolutionary teachings by saying even mankind can't create a single living cell, but God can create a perfect human.

What is the difference between pregnancy outside a marriage and pregnancy inside a marriage? Will it produce a human with wrong genes? Will the baby be born with more sins? Or perhaps the baby from pregnancy inside a marriage will be more handsome or prettier? I believe the answers are no.

Even the God, who we believe to create everything, do not put a difference between these two type of pregnancies, why we must? Why we must condemn the girl by getting pregnant? This of course always ends up in one sided judgment since the boy who made the girl pregnant is never being pregnant.

Pregnancy vs School Rules
It is common in Indonesia to have school implement rules that forbid any type of sexual activity which is included pregnancy as the result. Usually the sex part goes unnoticed but when the pregnancy part arrived, suddenly it can't be hidden anymore. As the tummy is getting bigger, at one point the school will trash the victim, saying that she will bring shame to the school's good reputation.

But please see the gender discrimination part. The victim of this rule will surely be the girl.

Pregnancy Outside Marriage is a Bad Example
This is the most common babbling of people who pro with the "no pregnancy at school rule". We should break this problem down very carefully.

Our main enemy is free sex which is absolute "no no" in school environment. Ok, this is acceptable. But pregnancy is the side effect of breaking this rules. So why we battle the side effect instead of battling the root problem?
Because it is easier to spot pregnancy instead of spotting free sex activity?
Why we must choose the easiest path instead of choosing the most correct one?
Please bear in mind that a future of a child is at stake here. Her future years perhaps as a scientist, rocket engineer, president, or a very smart mother.

What makes the courage to admit your mistake, and to embrace the consequences become shameful? There are a lot of choices which are more shameful, one of them is to abort the pregnancy.

What make a pregnant girl is not worthy to get her lesson? That she suddenly can't solve a quadratic equation because she is pregnant?

And the main question is: WHAT IS THE BAD EXAMPLE OF PREGNANCY?

"Pathetic" Religious Values
What is the purpose of religious values? So we can feel more righteous than other people?

The basic of religion is: acceptance. Basically a religion has an universal membership. Moreover it offers transformation, so a person life should not be the same after he/she embrace that religion. Religion symbolize the grace of God which is given to all mankind.

However, nowadays people like to use religion as a condemnation tools. Saying that other people who is sinful as trash of orderly religious society INSTEAD OF trying to embrace them.
The most common examples: prostitutes, gay and lesbian.

Where is the heart of God in religious people? How can we experience God if all that we care about is how many times we pray in a day, do we conduct our pray properly, or have we visit our holy place this week?

I pray to God, that one day we can all see each other as equals.
[He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.] -Luke 10:27