Last Thursday was Yom Ha鈥橲hoah or Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was a day not just to remember those who died in genocide, but to recognize that hate is alive today.
While many of us like to think that the world is gradually becoming a more tolerant place where unreasoning hatreds are relics of the past, disturbing trends suggest otherwise.
In 2018, hate crimes against Jewish Canadians reached 2,041, an increase of 16.5 per cent from the previous year, according to the League for Human Rights of B鈥檔ai Brith sa国际传媒. Around the world, senseless slaughter has struck Christians in Sri Lanka and Muslims in New Zealand.
These attacks are manifestations of an intolerance that seems to be surging amid the anger that permeates social and political life today.
For a few decades, the lessons of the Holocaust were fresh enough in our minds that we were committed to the goal of 鈥渘ever again.鈥� It seems the passage of time has dimmed those lessons, and the new horrors that blaze across our TV screens are treated as aberrations instead of fresh lessons.
Whether it is fear of the 鈥渙ther鈥� or a desire to blame someone else for our problems, nothing justifies this hatred. Don鈥檛 listen to those who preach intolerance. Instead, heed the voices of the few remaining Holocaust survivors.
They know where mindless hatred inevitably leads.
