Your editorial, “Miss SA represents our values”, requires a response.
Beauty pageants have been held globally for over 75 years, without any hiccups. This year's Miss Universe contest is being held in Eilat, Israel. The escalation of suffering in the war zones of this area fuels anger and hatred unprecedented in human history. It is no longer about beauty in a global contest, it is about the violation of human rights that makes humanity cringe. Beauty has ceased to exist in this area. The weapons of war have been beautified and sanctified by the warlords of the holy lands.
War continues in the Middle East on a scale that is truly shocking. The global community looks on while the savagery continues. The battle for the heart and soul of Palestine rages on unabated. This is the story of a courageous people who face horrors beyond belief, a people whose story is seldom told in the West and a story about war and its consequences.
When blood is spilt, there are no winners, only various kinds of pain. The combination of revelations about the scale and intensity of the killings, the complicity of Western nations, the failure to intervene and the suppression of information about what is actually happening, is a shocking indictment, not just of the UN Security Council, but even more so of governments and individuals who could have prevented what was happening but chose not to do so.
This war is about blood and gore. It is shredding people into bloody little pieces, it tears them from limb to limb, or it burns them alive. It is the ultimate horror that man inflicts upon man. The war mongers have left almighty God out of the equation.
The tragedy of brutal warfare in the conflict zones has taken on a new dimension. Many have come to accept the conflict as a perpetual state, an enterprise to be managed rather than ended as soon as possible. What will continue is a state of perpetual war or a “forever war”, a lasting state of war with no clear conditions that would lead to it’s conclusion.
It was Charles Colton who once said: “For what are the triumphs of war, planned by ambition, executed by violence and consummated by devastation? The means are the sacrifice of many, the end, the bloated aggrandisement of the few.”
If the conflict is allowed to continue on its present trajectory, then within the next 15 years we will, in all probability, witness a chilling nuclear exchange – the ultimate war to end all wars. Humanity will be the ultimate victim. The cry of “never again” rings hollow.
A people who were victims of Nazi genocide should know better.
Any unbiased observer will agree that Gaza is our 21st century concentration camp.
Farouk Araie, Benoni
No beauty in Middle East war zone
Your editorial, “Miss SA represents our values”, requires a response.
Beauty pageants have been held globally for over 75 years, without any hiccups. This year's Miss Universe contest is being held in Eilat, Israel. The escalation of suffering in the war zones of this area fuels anger and hatred unprecedented in human history. It is no longer about beauty in a global contest, it is about the violation of human rights that makes humanity cringe. Beauty has ceased to exist in this area. The weapons of war have been beautified and sanctified by the warlords of the holy lands.
War continues in the Middle East on a scale that is truly shocking. The global community looks on while the savagery continues. The battle for the heart and soul of Palestine rages on unabated. This is the story of a courageous people who face horrors beyond belief, a people whose story is seldom told in the West and a story about war and its consequences.
When blood is spilt, there are no winners, only various kinds of pain. The combination of revelations about the scale and intensity of the killings, the complicity of Western nations, the failure to intervene and the suppression of information about what is actually happening, is a shocking indictment, not just of the UN Security Council, but even more so of governments and individuals who could have prevented what was happening but chose not to do so.
This war is about blood and gore. It is shredding people into bloody little pieces, it tears them from limb to limb, or it burns them alive. It is the ultimate horror that man inflicts upon man. The war mongers have left almighty God out of the equation.
The tragedy of brutal warfare in the conflict zones has taken on a new dimension. Many have come to accept the conflict as a perpetual state, an enterprise to be managed rather than ended as soon as possible. What will continue is a state of perpetual war or a “forever war”, a lasting state of war with no clear conditions that would lead to it’s conclusion.
It was Charles Colton who once said: “For what are the triumphs of war, planned by ambition, executed by violence and consummated by devastation? The means are the sacrifice of many, the end, the bloated aggrandisement of the few.”
If the conflict is allowed to continue on its present trajectory, then within the next 15 years we will, in all probability, witness a chilling nuclear exchange – the ultimate war to end all wars. Humanity will be the ultimate victim. The cry of “never again” rings hollow.
A people who were victims of Nazi genocide should know better.
Any unbiased observer will agree that Gaza is our 21st century concentration camp.
Farouk Araie, Benoni