September 19 2026 Silence Is Complicity: the Case of Ed Sheeran

The case of Ed Sheeran, a musician who will now be forever identified with his silencing of dissent and complicity in evil as he caves to the demands of the billionaire cabal which controls the stadium venues for live performance and the Zionist lobby in pulling Macklemore from his show over the championing of our universal human rights and the plight of the Palestinians under the hammer of Israeli genocide, ethnic cleansing, institutional torture, rape, and murder by the IDF, and imperial conquest and dominion to build a riviera of casinos for elites on the bones of a people for the profit of Netanyahu and Trump, underscores a principle we must remember always; Silence Is Complicity.

And this principle has an important corollary; All Art Is Political.

This is a ground of struggle intertwined with the historical genesis of modern fascism as we must fight it now, born with Hitler’s line when he abandoned painting as interrogated in the great film Max; “Politics is the new art.”

In the struggle between tyranny and liberty there is no neutral ground; in the words of Jesus as given in the King James Bible, Matthew 12:30; “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.”

As written by Zoe Williams in The Guardian, in an article entitled Dear Ed Sheeran, fence-sitting is so last century: musicians can no longer opt out of politics; “Ed Sheeran, seeking to stay out of politics, has become, in this moment, the most political artist in the world. And in trying to leave himself room to manoeuvre, he has backed himself into a corner. Since the rapper Macklemore was dropped as a support act on Sheeran’s Loop tour on Monday, every other opening act has pulled out. Finneas O’Connell kept it brief on Tuesday: “Artists must not be silenced when they speak up for the oppressed. I stand with Palestine and its people.” Aaron Rowe was already out, saying: “I cannot stand by and allow billionaires to use their position of power to silence … rightful voices.”

Beoga, Sheeran’s actual backing band, then pulled out, along with the Danish band Lukas Graham, who probably made the mildest statement, managing to not even mention any countries: “We should be able to speak about war, about civilians being killed, about children who deserve to grow up. Wherever they live. Whatever flag flies over them.”

Sheeran said the decision to drop Macklemore was entirely down to venue owners and promoters, adding that there was a reason he didn’t talk about politics on stage: “My audience includes young people, often children, of all backgrounds.” Both statements sound weak, but more importantly, it is not true that Sheeran doesn’t take political stances. He has taken part in a fundraising gig for Ukrainians, telling them, “I love you, I stand with you”; in 2017 he outed himself as a “Corbynista fanboy” (TM the Sun), and has been a vocal supporter of LGBTQI+ rights, on stage and off, throughout his career. More specifically, it seems unlikely he didn’t know the views of his support acts when he chose them: Macklemore had a song about Hind Rajab, the five-year-old killed by the IDF in 2024, on his set list; Beoga are founding members of Irish Artists for Palestine.

To try to psychoanalyse Sheeran, and say definitively whether he was trying to borrow the spirit of these artists while distancing himself from their beliefs, or in fact shares their views, would be premature; ultimately, he’s bound to declare himself. So far he has simply said he was “appalled by the conflict between Israel and Palestine” and that the “suffering and pain caused on both sides is a human tragedy”. Just because he didn’t choose to speak publicly, he said, “doesn’t mean I don’t care”.

This omertà won’t hold. But what we can say for certain now is that the idea of keeping politics out of entertainment, music, or art, is last century’s fantasy. Censorship is swift – but often not as overt as in this case. It is simply a fact that if artists don’t studiously avoid voicing certain opinions, they will get caught up in politics. It’s unclear whether it’s possible to create art – at least art that will be seen by a mass public – in those conditions.

At the vanguard of the move to jettison Macklemore from the tour was the Israeli-American Council, whose chief executive, Elan Carr, told the Today programme on Wednesday that the rapper had “put forth a blood libel against the state of Israel and, by connection, the Jewish people”. He was pressed by Justin Webb on what Macklemore actually said: “The words free Palestine don’t necessarily mean … that anything awful should happen to Jewish people or indeed to the state of Israel.” “Free Palestine absolutely is a call for the extermination of the state of Israel and the Jewish people,” Carr replied.

So what kind of Palestine is it acceptable to want? The other difficult strand of Carr’s argument was that a concert audience was “captive … people have paid to be there”. If you’ve paid money to be somewhere, the logic runs, you shouldn’t be subjected to politics of any kind. Yet billionaires have no qualms about having a political agenda. Macklemore, both onstage and in his own statement, has rebuffed the argument that voicing support for Palestinians and criticising Israel and its actions in Gaza and the West Bank is antisemitic. (In 2014, he apologised for a costume he wore on stage, which critics said was antisemitic, saying: “I respect all cultures and all people.”)

The concern of many of the artists was that they were facing not just censorship, but censorship by billionaires: specifically Robert Kraft, who demanded Macklemore’s removal with the threat of axing the whole show from his Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts. Kraft has so far not commented on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s charge that he put pressure on other stadiums to follow suit. In his own statement, he insisted his decision to ban Macklemore from Gillette was “not about diminishing the suffering of innocent Palestinians or denying anyone the right to advocate on their behalf”, but that such advocacy, “should not … obscure the responsibility of Hamas”.

What next, Ocasio-Cortez asked an interviewer, rhetorically: “It could be speaking out about AI … you can now just get a handful of stadium owners to ensure that an entire person’s career can be jeopardised.”

Ultimately, now, the only acceptable thing to say is nothing: there is no statement mild enough about Israel and Palestine that can be made on a stage to a general audience. Even to wish for a world in which children aren’t killed is too political, and even the Sheeran fix – that there’s a lot of pain on both sides – which might or might not have been devised to soothe billionaire interests, does not meet their preference. They would simply prefer that everyone pretend the situation doesn’t exist, that they’ve never heard of it, that nothing has happened, and if anything ever had, they wouldn’t be able to find it on a map. The slippery slope argument, that an enforced public silence could spread to protests against datacentres next, is plausible but unnecessary: we don’t need this censorship to get worse before we take it seriously.”

As written by Laura Snapes in The Guardian, in an article entitled Ed Sheeran wants to stay out of politics. By quitting his tour, his support acts have exposed the hollowness of neutrality; “n a statement about Macklemore being dropped from his US stadium tour for making pro-Palestinian comments, Ed Sheeran defended his own publicly apolitical stance: “If we only ever focus on shouting the loudest, nothing will ever change. There are different approaches to being an advocate for change.”

Every other musician involved with the tour – support acts Finneas (Billie Eilish’s brother), Danish band Lukas Graham and Irish songwriter Aaron Rowe, plus Sheeran’s Irish backing band, Beoga – has made their approach to advocating for change clear, pulling out of the remaining dates to protest against the censorship of Macklemore and to express support for the Palestinian people.

In a statement released yesterday, Sheeran stressed that it wasn’t his decision to remove Macklemore, who called for a free Palestine on stage at the MetLife stadium in New Jersey last week. “I am not complicit,” Sheeran wrote. Macklemore (who in 2014 had to apologise after being accused of perpetuating antisemitic stereotypes with an onstage costume) wrote that his removal from the tour was organised by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who owns Gillette Stadium outside Boston, where Sheeran’s Loop tour is due to play in late September.

Kraft confirmed he barred Macklemore from opening for Sheeran at the Gillette Stadium, but did not respond to claims he organised the boycott by the other venues. (In a statement he said his decision was “not about diminishing the suffering of innocent Palestinians or denying anyone the right to advocate on their behalf” but that such advocacy “should not obscure the responsibility of Hamas”.)

Sheeran explained that he doesn’t use his platform for politics in order to be “a place of safety and sanctuary, to maintain diplomacy and keep conversations open”. Though this isn’t accurate: he performed at the Concert for Ukraine in 2022, signed an open letter to Theresa May about Brexit, endorsed Jeremy Corbyn and supported the equality act in the US.

Either way, the consequences of his apolitical stance have proven beyond doubt that there is no such thing as a neutral position, especially when you’re operating in a political culture that rarely obstructs corporate overreach. Kraft is friends with Trump and is a major donor to Israel: Netanyahu said at a 2019 awards ceremony honouring Kraft that “Israel does not have a more loyal friend”.

The decisive actions of every other musician on the tour have made a mockery of Sheeran claiming to be powerless in this situation. In his statement, Sheeran wrote that he would never “let down the fans who had made plans” by cancelling shows, “nor would I abandon the touring crew and the other support acts and musicians who rely on me for work and to make a living”. What might initially appear as a sign of solidarity – not inconveniencing fans, not leaving other artists and crew out of pocket – has been upended by a group of artists who understand that losing financial and professional opportunities and creating inconvenience is precisely what it takes to show backbone and stand against genocide and billionaires crushing free speech.

Macklemore’s speech in New Jersey introduced his 2024 song Hind’s Hall, which castigates censorship of protest against Israel’s genocide in Palestine, particularly the student encampment at Columbia University in New York, and is named after Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli forces. “What you willin’ to risk?” he asked in the song. “What you willin’ to give?” Many musicians and actors who have spoken out against Israel’s actions in Gaza have talked about losing work as a result: Susan Sarandon said last week at the Venice film festival that she has had acting gigs taken away; Irish pop star CMAT said a lucrative beauty contract was withdrawn; Swedish star Zara Larsson said she was dropped from brand deals and awards shows.

That hasn’t stopped them and other figures from continuing to speak out, putting moral imperative above personal gain, and recognising that any such “loss” bears no relation to what is happening to human life and habitat in Gaza, where Israel’s military offensive is estimated to have led to a death toll of 70,000. Dublin songwriter Aaron Rowe, by far the smallest support act on Sheeran’s tour and thus the one with the most to lose, thanked him for the life-changing opportunity. “But as Irish people we know all too well about genocide, forced famine and violent occupation,” his statement continued. “I need to be true to myself and my ancestors who resisted colonisation, and fought for a freedom that I enjoy today in Ireland.”

Sheeran and countless others take the line that pop culture should be somewhere fans can go to escape politics. “I do understand that for a lot of people, they just want to leave politics aside for a bit and be able to enjoy the music,” culture secretary Lisa Nandy said of the Sheeran situation on LBC this morning. But the fact that most right-wing politicians also take that view indicates the fact that they see pop cultural figures, with their largely left-leaning views and huge reach among young people, as a genuine threat best silenced.

As Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said yesterday, this isn’t just about the musicians on Sheeran’s tour, but “how just a handful of stadium owners can prevent [discussion of] an entire massive issue, in this case, the genocide in Gaza”. Prominent figures who go along with that view and deny the power of their voice allow these billion-dollar corporations to rob us of our rights step by step until one day there is nothing left. “We need to be very clear about how dangerous a precedent this is,” said Ocasio-Cortez.

At worst, Sheeran – who has always been open about his commercially minded approach to pop – looks like a corporate shill; at best, wilfully naive. Sheeran loves to dabble in the music of other cultures to present a toothless pan-global vision of togetherness lifted from the latter-day Coldplay playbook. But you can’t play with the aesthetics of global music without also being willing to engage in the lived reality of those cultures.

“Those who have been to one of my shows will know that they are about unity, joy, escapism, love and a place for everyone to feel welcome,” Sheeran wrote in his statement. Just as long as they shut up and sing: Sheeran’s inaction and humiliation at the hands of his principled supporting musicians have irrevocably compromised a position that’s no longer fit for purpose, if it ever was.”

All of this conceals the implicit question; What is the purpose of art, and what is its place in society and the self-construal of our identity?

As written by Jason Okundaye in The Guardian, in an article entitled Ed Sheeran thought fans didn’t want artists to be politically engaged. He’s finding out how wrong he was; “t must have come as a surprise to Ed Sheeran when all of his support acts withdrew from the remainder of the US leg of his tour. The American rapper Macklemore had triggered the walkout when he gave an impassioned speech calling for a “free Palestine” on stage and was dropped for doing so. The decision by the remaining acts to drop out in solidarity exposed a deep divide in the modern music industry. Some artists still insist on keeping politics out of music, while others expect music to speak to our perilous times.

After he was dropped, Macklemore wrote that Sheeran’s “typical apolitical stance was being challenged in a way it never had been before”, to which Sheeran responded: “I am not complicit” and “those who come to my shows do not expect a political forum”.

I think that the concept of expectation is worth probing. The idea that artists should make their political sentiments known is often dismissed as a parasocial delusion, one particularly rampant among young people on social media who “call out” musicians for their silence (indeed, young people are far more likely to be in favour of musicians using their concerts to make political statements). Artists aren’t politicians, the criticism goes, and to consider them as such distracts from, even compromises, the purpose of art as a forum for personal expression and of escapism. In other words, why not just enjoy the music instead of expecting activism from musicians, too?

The problem with that idea is that it treats a separation of art and politics as natural rather than something determined by historical convention. It wasn’t so long ago that expectations were quite different. There used to be a neater division between countercultural musicians who were relegated to the periphery and mainstream artists who would be disciplined if they spoke up.

The MTV era of music in the 2000s prioritised blockbuster, spectacle and glamour, while avoiding political, social and economic controversies. Artists were generally expected to keep politics out of their music. When Madonna challenged that idea in 2003 with her single American Life, which opposed US foreign policy and jingoism at the onset of the Iraq war, the backlash was heavy: she was forced to dump its “un-American” music video, and faced heavy radio blacklisting. It took years for the Chicks, then known as The Dixie Chicks, to recover commercially from the backlash they faced to their criticism of the Iraq War and George W Bush around the same period.

Today, the expectations that audiences have of artists are different from two decades ago. Partly, this is because the economics and the technology behind the music industry has changed. In the age of streaming, it is harder to silence artists who have made politically problematic statements – radio station blacklisting is far less fatal than it was before people discovered music through their phones and algorithms.

Interestingly, this greater political autonomy also means that the biggest artists take less of a commercial hit in their worst moments. After Kanye West’s antisemitic rants (which the rapper apologised for), his album Vultures still reached No 1 on the Billboard charts in 2024. On his most recent tour, he performed at AT&T stadium in Arlington, Texas, one of the venues that banned Macklemore from performing.

In any case, this greater autonomy pushes young fans to ask: why not take the risk? Why not speak? Particularly in the case of Palestine, it has often been smaller and less influential artists who have done so. Think of how the scale of Sheeran’s commercial reach, by contrast, dwarfs that of the artists around him who have risked more by speaking out.

Artists, both alternative and mainstream, have also set this expectation for each other. The stances a musician has taken on pressing issues are no longer just cudgels used against them. Rather, silence on these matters has become a source of shame.

Billie Eilish rebuked her fellow celebrities for not taking a stance against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the US and its killing of civilians. The Irish singer-songwriter CMAT, who I saw at Glastonbury last year leading a “free Palestine” chant on the Pyramid Stage, had this to say while receiving the award for best album at the Ivor Novello Awards this year: “I have a very specific idea of what songwriting is supposed to be for, and I think it is to reflect the times through your own personal view so that everybody can have something to connect to and something to learn from years later. And now I would compel my fellow artists in the room, it is not the time to sit on the fence.”

The political shift in music also reflects a tonal shift. Artists have become more emotionally intimate with their audiences. I was struck by an analysis published earlier this year by the music data company Musixmatch for the Economist, which assessed lyrics from the Billboard charts to conclude that pop music has become “gloomier”. The most popular songs increasingly invoke sadness, angst and heartbreak.

A study in the Times also found that the musical mood has become more downbeat. This is in itself not surprising – listeners increasingly want authenticity from musicians and depend on it for a sense of connection. Think of the music of Eilish and CMAT, both of whom are popular with young audiences and praised for filterless emotion. They invoke that gloom, vulnerability and emotion – in other words, they communicate pain as a central tenor of their sound.

As CMAT said of her music, which muses on isolation, capitalism and disillusionment: “Everyone has the same wants and desires, and if you’re really honest as an artist with your pain, it will always connect.” For many young people, part of the pain they have felt in the past few years has been in witnessing the events in Gaza, as well as the rising global tide of far-right populism, the climate crisis and instability. So for a generation that is increasingly accustomed to having their despair made audible through gloomier music, why would they not increasingly expect artists to draw connections between their personal pain and what is causing it?

Artists, then, cannot assume that the old bargain still holds. Sheeran’s insistence on an apolitical arena of music is increasingly anachronistic – a position that has exposed the faultlines of modern music. Many listeners increasingly seek emotional clarity as well as moral clarity. Whether popular music has risen to that moment will be judged by history. But for now, as the expectation changes, it is down to artists to decide if they change with it.”

As I wrote in my post of As I wrote in my post of January 16 2021, Silence Is Complicity: No One Gets to Sit This One Out; A post in which I quote Adam Parkhomenko elicited an interesting reaction from someone, one which makes me question how the rhetoric of fascist and racist privilege creates complicity; the quote is in reference to the massive responsibility avoidance and denial on the part of the Republican lawmakers who refuse to join the call impeach our Clown of Terror, Traitor Trump, and his rabble of murderous barbarians.

Here is the quotation; “I have a very simple message for Republicans calling for unity without accountability: the United States does not negotiate with terrorists.”

This was the reaction; first, repetition of the very call for unity without accountability, which I would characterize as granting permission through failure to consequent behaviors, which the quote calls out; “These words are just creating more divisions!”

Second, an attempt at silencing dissent; “Please Stop!”

Third, an attempt at blame shifting; “Whenever one person thinks they are right and everyone else is wrong you are the problem!”

And Fourth, the very worst of the apologetics of historical fascism, a claim of moral equivalence; “Everyone just needs to stop all of these posts because there are good people on both sides!”

And this last I cannot let pass, for on the last occasion of its general use this propagandistic lie and rhetorical device led directly to the Holocaust and the global devastation of total war.

I am unclear which good people she could be referring to; the ones who were going to capture and hang or guillotine members of Congress, the ones who murdered a police officer and attempted to bomb both the Democratic and Republican offices, the white supremacist terrorists who have rallied to the cause of treason and armed sedition, or the mad tyrant who commanded them?

To this I replied; You are wrong. Treason, terror, and the murder of police officers has no excuse. You are either with us as American patriots or against us; no one gets to sit this one out and be counted among the honorable, the moral, and the loyal.

Silence is complicity.

Such is the Talmudic principle, “Shtika Kehoda”, famously paraphrased by Einstein in his 1954 speech to the Chicago Decalogue Society as “If I were to remain silent, I’d be guilty of complicity”, and referenced by Eli Weisel as “the opposite of love is not only hate, it is also indifference.”

Martin Luther King said it this way in Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story; “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

John Stuart Mill expressed a related idea in his 1867 Inaugural Address to the University of St. Andrews; “Let not anyone pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.”

Leonardo da Vinci formulated it as resistance to tyranny, with which he was very familiar in the wars of dominion between the princes of Renaissance Italy; “Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”

Silence is complicity.

Should this concept require further clarification, please refer to the following recording and transcript of Elie Wiesel’s Millennium Lecture at the White House, on April 12 1999, hosted by President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton; “Mr. President, Mrs. Clinton, members of Congress, Ambassador Holbrooke, Excellencies, friends: Fifty-four years ago to the day, a young Jewish boy from a small town in the Carpathian Mountains woke up, not far from Goethe’s beloved Weimar, in a place of eternal infamy called Buchenwald. He was finally free, but there was no joy in his heart. He thought there never would be again.

Liberated a day earlier by American soldiers, he remembers their rage at what they saw. And even if he lives to be a very old man, he will always be grateful to them for that rage, and also for their compassion. Though he did not understand their language, their eyes told him what he needed to know — that they, too, would remember, and bear witness.

And now, I stand before you, Mr. President — Commander-in-Chief of the army that freed me, and tens of thousands of others — and I am filled with a profound and abiding gratitude to the American people.

Gratitude is a word that I cherish. Gratitude is what defines the humanity of the human being. And I am grateful to you, Hillary — or Mrs. Clinton — for what you said, and for what you are doing for children in the world, for the homeless, for the victims of injustice, the victims of destiny and society. And I thank all of you for being here.

We are on the threshold of a new century, a new millennium. What will the legacy of this vanishing century be? How will it be remembered in the new millennium? Surely it will be judged, and judged severely, in both moral and metaphysical terms. These failures have cast a dark shadow over humanity: two World Wars, countless civil wars, the senseless chain of assassinations — Gandhi, the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Sadat, Rabin — bloodbaths in Cambodia and Nigeria, India and Pakistan, Ireland and Rwanda, Eritrea and Ethiopia, Sarajevo and Kosovo; the inhumanity in the gulag and the tragedy of Hiroshima. And, on a different level, of course, Auschwitz and Treblinka. So much violence, so much indifference.

What is indifference? Etymologically, the word means “no difference.” A strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur between light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime and punishment, cruelty and compassion, good and evil.

What are its courses and inescapable consequences? Is it a philosophy? Is there a philosophy of indifference conceivable? Can one possibly view indifference as a virtue? Is it necessary at times to practice it simply to keep one’s sanity, live normally, enjoy a fine meal and a glass of wine, as the world around us experiences harrowing upheavals?

Of course, indifference can be tempting — more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person’s pain and despair. Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbor are of no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the other to an abstraction.

Over there, behind the black gates of Auschwitz, the most tragic of all prisoners were the “Muselmanner,” as they were called. Wrapped in their torn blankets, they would sit or lie on the ground, staring vacantly into space, unaware of who or where they were, strangers to their surroundings. They no longer felt pain, hunger, thirst. They feared nothing. They felt nothing. They were dead and did not know it.

Rooted in our tradition, some of us felt that to be abandoned by humanity then was not the ultimate. We felt that to be abandoned by God was worse than to be punished by Him. Better an unjust God than an indifferent one. For us to be ignored by God was a harsher punishment than to be a victim of His anger. Man can live far from God — not outside God. God is wherever we are. Even in suffering? Even in suffering.

In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony, one does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it. Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response.

Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor — never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees — not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity we betray our own.

Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment. And this is one of the most important lessons of this outgoing century’s wide-ranging experiments in good and evil.

In the place that I come from, society was composed of three simple categories: the killers, the victims, and the bystanders. During the darkest of times, inside the ghettoes and death camps — and I’m glad that Mrs. Clinton mentioned that we are now commemorating that event, that period, that we are now in the Days of Remembrance — but then, we felt abandoned, forgotten. All of us did.

And our only miserable consolation was that we believed that Auschwitz and Treblinka were closely guarded secrets; that the leaders of the free world did not know what was going on behind those black gates and barbed wire; that they had no knowledge of the war against the Jews that Hitler’s armies and their accomplices waged as part of the war against the Allies.

If they knew, we thought, surely those leaders would have moved heaven and earth to intervene. They would have spoken out with great outrage and conviction. They would have bombed the railways leading to Birkenau, just the railways, just once.

And now we knew, we learned, we discovered that the Pentagon knew, the State Department knew. And the illustrious occupant of the White House then, who was a great leader — and I say it with some anguish and pain, because, today is exactly 54 years marking his death — Franklin Delano Roosevelt died on April the 12th, 1945, so he is very much present to me and to us.

No doubt, he was a great leader. He mobilized the American people and the world, going into battle, bringing hundreds and thousands of valiant and brave soldiers in America to fight fascism, to fight dictatorship, to fight Hitler. And so many of the young people fell in battle. And, nevertheless, his image in Jewish history — I must say it — his image in Jewish history is flawed.

The depressing tale of the St. Louis is a case in point. Sixty years ago, its human cargo — maybe 1,000 Jews — was turned back to Nazi Germany. And that happened after the Kristallnacht, after the first state sponsored pogrom, with hundreds of Jewish shops destroyed, synagogues burned, thousands of people put in concentration camps. And that ship, which was already on the shores of the United States, was sent back.

I don’t understand. Roosevelt was a good man, with a heart. He understood those who needed help. Why didn’t he allow these refugees to disembark? A thousand people — in America, a great country, the greatest democracy, the most generous of all new nations in modern history. What happened? I don’t understand. Why the indifference, on the highest level, to the suffering of the victims?

But then, there were human beings who were sensitive to our tragedy. Those non-Jews, those Christians, that we called the “Righteous Gentiles,” whose selfless acts of heroism saved the honor of their faith. Why were they so few? Why was there a greater effort to save SS murderers after the war than to save their victims during the war?

Why did some of America’s largest corporations continue to do business with Hitler’s Germany until 1942? It has been suggested, and it was documented, that the Wehrmacht could not have conducted its invasion of France without oil obtained from American sources. How is one to explain their indifference?

And yet, my friends, good things have also happened in this traumatic century: the defeat of Nazism, the collapse of communism, the rebirth of Israel on its ancestral soil, the demise of apartheid, Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt, the peace accord in Ireland. And let us remember the meeting, filled with drama and emotion, between Rabin and Arafat that you, Mr. President, convened in this very place. I was here and I will never forget it.

And then, of course, the joint decision of the United States and NATO to intervene in Kosovo and save those victims, those refugees, those who were uprooted by a man whom I believe that because of his crimes, should be charged with crimes against humanity. But this time, the world was not silent. This time, we do respond. This time, we intervene.

Does it mean that we have learned from the past? Does it mean that society has changed? Has the human being become less indifferent and more human? Have we really learned from our experiences? Are we less insensitive to the plight of victims of ethnic cleansing and other forms of injustices in places near and far? Is today’s justified intervention in Kosovo, led by you, Mr. President, a lasting warning that never again will the deportation, the terrorization of children and their parents be allowed anywhere in the world? Will it discourage other dictators in other lands to do the same?

What about the children? Oh, we see them on television, we read about them in the papers, and we do so with a broken heart. Their fate is always the most tragic, inevitably. When adults wage war, children perish. We see their faces, their eyes. Do we hear their pleas? Do we feel their pain, their agony? Every minute one of them dies of disease, violence, famine. Some of them — so many of them — could be saved.

And so, once again, I think of the young Jewish boy from the Carpathian Mountains. He has accompanied the old man I have become throughout these years of quest and struggle. And together we walk towards the new millennium, carried by profound fear and extraordinary hope.”

Elie Wiesel – April 12, 1999”

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