Obama´s Holocaust speech raises a sharp tone
Akanksha Bhalla Ahluwalia
April 27, 2009
President Obama has delivered many a rousing speeches, including the speech on race, just as he was being shown down by the buzz created by Rev. Jeremiah Wright´s hate speech. The President knows well how to turn problems around to his advantage and at the same time leave people gaping at the message and sentiment he leaves them with.
President´s speech at the 'Holocaust Days of Remembrance' ceremony on Capitol Hill on April 23 was yet another shining example of how he can silence in an instant many illegitimate accusations of him being mild on foreign policy by people taking unkindly to his diplomatic overtures all over the world especially with America´s age old enemies. But if one heard his speech on Thursday carefully, there was an unmistakable retort to the anti-Israel comments made by the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the U.N. conference recently. Without taking names, President Obama noted some still deny the Holocaust. "There are those who insist the Holocaust never happened, who perpetrate every form of intolerance-racism and anti-Semitism, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism and more-hatred that degrades its victim and diminishes us all," Obama said.
Obama´s manner was as curt while taking a swipe at Ahmadinejad as endearing was his recent handshake with Raul Castro that caused many to be up in arms with the over courtesy extended by the American President to an out and out dictator. The ways of the President just go to show that his actions are not to be perceived as naiveté but as doing the right thing at the right time. After all he´s the same man who got a whole country after him with just a slogan.
However, the greatness of the speech does not lie only in showing the wrong people their place but by an all-encompassing message to everyone about renouncing apathy which threatens to become the order of the day as lives get more individualized. The President was speaking in context of the genocide by Nazis and the more recent inhumanity in Northern Ireland, Rwanda and Darfur. His words were striking as he asked people not to wrap themselves "in the false comfort that others sufferings are not our own." He further asked people to "make a habit of empathy, to recognize ourselves in each other." And asked them to "fight the impulse to turn the channel" from distressing TV images of suffering around the world and chuck the role of bystanders.
The President said in sharp words that a part of the responsibility for the Holocaust lies with the people who "accepted the assigned role of bystander."
In this way the President gave yet another red-letter message calling out: "Never again" to be a witness to terror, injustice and intolerance in the world. "We've seen it, in this century, in the mass graves and the ashes of villages burned to the ground and children used as soldiers and rape used as a weapon of war," he said.
It is said that silence means assent. And when you remain silent when there is violence, it means you approve of it.
The President issued a warning against the dangers of silence at the solemn Holocaust ceremony. And as always ´the President of hope´ interspersed his message with stories of success and revival. "Our fellow citizens of the world are showing us how to make the journey from oppression to survival, from witness to resistance, and ultimately to reconciliation," Obama averred.
President´s speech at the 'Holocaust Days of Remembrance' ceremony on Capitol Hill on April 23 was yet another shining example of how he can silence in an instant many illegitimate accusations of him being mild on foreign policy by people taking unkindly to his diplomatic overtures all over the world especially with America´s age old enemies. But if one heard his speech on Thursday carefully, there was an unmistakable retort to the anti-Israel comments made by the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the U.N. conference recently. Without taking names, President Obama noted some still deny the Holocaust. "There are those who insist the Holocaust never happened, who perpetrate every form of intolerance-racism and anti-Semitism, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism and more-hatred that degrades its victim and diminishes us all," Obama said.
Obama´s manner was as curt while taking a swipe at Ahmadinejad as endearing was his recent handshake with Raul Castro that caused many to be up in arms with the over courtesy extended by the American President to an out and out dictator. The ways of the President just go to show that his actions are not to be perceived as naiveté but as doing the right thing at the right time. After all he´s the same man who got a whole country after him with just a slogan.
However, the greatness of the speech does not lie only in showing the wrong people their place but by an all-encompassing message to everyone about renouncing apathy which threatens to become the order of the day as lives get more individualized. The President was speaking in context of the genocide by Nazis and the more recent inhumanity in Northern Ireland, Rwanda and Darfur. His words were striking as he asked people not to wrap themselves "in the false comfort that others sufferings are not our own." He further asked people to "make a habit of empathy, to recognize ourselves in each other." And asked them to "fight the impulse to turn the channel" from distressing TV images of suffering around the world and chuck the role of bystanders.
The President said in sharp words that a part of the responsibility for the Holocaust lies with the people who "accepted the assigned role of bystander."
In this way the President gave yet another red-letter message calling out: "Never again" to be a witness to terror, injustice and intolerance in the world. "We've seen it, in this century, in the mass graves and the ashes of villages burned to the ground and children used as soldiers and rape used as a weapon of war," he said.
It is said that silence means assent. And when you remain silent when there is violence, it means you approve of it.
The President issued a warning against the dangers of silence at the solemn Holocaust ceremony. And as always ´the President of hope´ interspersed his message with stories of success and revival. "Our fellow citizens of the world are showing us how to make the journey from oppression to survival, from witness to resistance, and ultimately to reconciliation," Obama averred.
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