Sunday, March 17, 2019

History Repeating Itself

Friday, awaking to the horrific news of the massacre at the Mosques in Christchurch New Zealand, I was shattered to think it was happening again, still happening, starting once more.  Hatred for the other seems to know no bounds.

In the past month, I completed a novel which begins with the pogroms in Lithuania in 1905, where hundreds of Jews were massacred because they were Jews.  Yesterday, one hundred and fifteen years later, Muslims are murdered because they are Muslims.  We do not seems to know how NOT to hate the other.

In 1905, pogroms barely made the news.  Most people did not know about them.  In 2019, the shooter posted live footage of his carnage and it went viral on social media.  Everyone know what happened.  But whether we are inundated with violence, week after week, or the stories are ignored, it does not seem to matter. People who hate will find a way to murder those who are different from them.

The numbers of good people who rush to help the victims, who deplore violence and try to stop it,  far outstrips the numbers of deranged perpetrators, but we still cannot stop the murderers.

It is hard not to feel despair.