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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Dec. 29, 2008 / 2 Teves 5769

How many more corpses before Mugabe is ousted?

By Nat Hentoff


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | If Eleanor Roosevelt were still here, she would be enraged and sickened by the utter failure of the United Nations, which she nurtured into being, to stop the continually mounting horrors inflicted on the people of Zimbabwe by its insatiably evil president, Robert Mugabe. While the United Nations just mutters away, in a Dec. 7 lead editorial, the Washington Times got to the rotting core of his rule: "People are starving and compete in the countryside with baboons, jackals and goats for roots and wild fruits; health care has imploded and cholera is on the march as water and sewer systems collapse; and refugees by the millions have left the country." Some of those refugees bring cholera with them to neighboring states.


South Africa keeps shaming itself by continuing only to "mediate" this virulent crisis as if it's possible to mediate relations with a plague. And the 15-nation Southern African Development Community also continues its minuet with deadly Mugabe. Only Botswana and Kenya face the naked truth and call for his removal." Said Mugabe (Associated Press, Dec. 19): "Zimbabwe is mine."


On Dec. 18, I heard Mugabe himself on the BBC actually saying that the ravages of cholera among his people are "a disease planted by former colonial masters to foment war." Those Western masters, he implies, must have also caused hospitals to shut down, water taps to go dry and food supplies to vanish. But what of the continuing kidnappings of Zimbabweans opposing Mugabe as well as the kidnappings of humanitarian workers? The kidnappers must be agents of former colonial masters disguised as Mugabe's police and soldiers?


There are many anxious commentaries on how to pressure the United Nations to break the political deadlock unmovingly maintained by Mugabe as he refuses to give the opposition any means to rein in the official thugs who savagely beat and have murdered many of the Zimbabweans who do not revere their Liberator. And even if there were a U.N. Security Council resolution to at least threaten action, armed action, against this oppressor, Security Council members China and Russia would automatically veto even an intimation of real force against the ruler of this utterly broken sovereign state.


The headline of the Dec. 7 Washington Times editorial — rare among voices on this international treadmill of protest — was: "Forced action for Zimbabwe?" And the editorial ends:


"Alas, at some times in some places diplomacy just doesn't work because one side's...values are so averse to civilized society that words, hopes, logic and reason are pointless...there seems — to us, at least no debate going on in Zimbabwe under Mr. Mugabe. Has anyone in that part of the world thought of the 'f' word — force?"


Some have thought of that word in this part of the world. George W. Bush had been thinking of force against the genocidal tyrant, Gen. Omar al-Bashir, in Sudan, and was dissuaded by advisers. I expect the destructions of families, including so many children, in Zimbabwe also affects him deeply, but he will soon be leaving.


The new vice president, Joe Biden, has recommended force so that we can actually say never again in Darfur. And the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain — acutely aware of United Nations' impotence not only in Sudan and Zimbabwe — has been strongly advocating a "league of democracies" — nations whose fundamental values would impel them to intervene when sovereign states are exercising that sovereignty to dismember their people.


Enter President-elect Barack Obama. Whatever other goals he achieves in his presidency, despite the unprecedentedly enormous domestic and international obstacles confronting him, he could eventually leave office having helped make possible a stunningly historic coalition of nations that would be ready to use force to stop genocide and such other atrocities now wholly uncontrolled in Sudan and in Zimbabwe. At least, Bush now states there can be no government power sharing with Mugabe still in office.


Members of that coalition — which could save untold numbers of lives — could include, among others, England, France, Canada, Germany, India, Australia and Japan. Since delay means more deaths, Obama and his foreign relations team could soon begin initial contacts with prospective members of "the league of democracies" to start planning for crucially necessary interventions.


Meanwhile, to spark interest in this desperately humanitarian intervention, there is a report by Lydia Polgreen form yet another massacre in the Belgian Congo (New York Times, Dec. 11):


"As the killings took place, a contingent of about 100 United Nations peacekeepers was less than a mile away, struggling to understand what was happening outside the gates of its base. The peacekeepers ... short of equipment and men (were) already overwhelmed, (U.N.) officials said, and they had no intelligence capabilities or even an interpreter who could speak the necessary languages."


If Obama were to become an inspirer and facilitator of the league of liberators, what a global legacy of exceptionally audacious hope he would leave in the name of the United States!


Listen, Mr. President, to Samuel Adams: "Our contest is not only whether we ourselves should be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty." And now, real-time asylums beyond borders.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights and author of several books, including his current work, "The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance". Comment by clicking here.

Nat Hentoff Archives

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