Dear Mark Zuckerberg,
I just read your status in which you welcome Muslims in Facebook Community.
‘As a Jew, my parents taught me that we must stand up against attacks on all communities. Even if an attack isn’t against you today, in time attacks on freedom for anyone will hurt everyone’ you say.
Dear Mark, Jews have been standing in first line for thousands of years, defending, protecting and teaching human rights.
We were standing in front of Mount Sinai more than 3,300 years ago, hearing G-d teaching us about slaves rights, their right to get food and a comfortable bed. And where there is not enough food and only one bed, the landlord has to sleep on the floor and give up eating. Because his slave has the priority. And after seven years that slave must be freed.
And this message was given when slavery was the basis and richness of the other societies.
G-d taught us to love strangers, to respect them, paying attention not to remind them where they are coming from. And this happened in a period when nations were conquering others’ lands, killing all those who were living there.
As a Jew you are not allowed even to harm animals and you have to respect and protect nature.
G-d wants us to respect and help every creature in the world.
This is Torah.
But Torah teaches us also even something else.
It teaches us ‘aniei irecha kodmim’, the poor people of your town must be helped and fed before everybody else.
If you encounter somebody who is need, who does not belong to your community and in the same time there is somebody who belongs to your community, and he is in need, the latter one has the absolute precedence.
In every battle you, as a Jew, engage, remember first you are part of a family. And your moral duty is to defend and protect your family first.
Our sages teach us that the trial for us is not standing only for others.
Our trial is standing for our brothers and sisters, for our own nation.
In the past years and especially in the past months, antisemitism has reached peaks that it was not touching since World War II.
Social media offer free lessons on how to stab Jews, how to recognize them while they are walking in the middle of the street.
On Facebook you can find hundreds of thousands of groups that instigate to the death of Jews, to Israel annihilation.
When I open Facebook, I am afraid. As a Jew I am scared.
I reported hundreds of times these violent and antisemitic inciting profiles and groups.
Everytime I get the same answer. It does not violate our standards.
It does violate a standard. My moral standard.
Dear Mark, since your baby Max was born, you are understanding a new whole range of feelings that you have never known before.
G-d tells us that when we want really to learn what it means standing for something, we should start standing for our homes,
If you really are standing for peace and love, please take care of those pages inciting against me, make me feel safe as I declare my Jewish identity.
Make me fell you are striving for my freedom too, for my freedom of walking through Facebook pages without the fear of meeting two years old children filmed by their parents while branding a knife and singing the song ‘death to the Jews’.
This is what I have been taught. If you really want to be in the first line for a cause, firtsable stand for the causes that belong to you.
Hoping that Max and my children too, will live in a world where colors, religion and belief, will be only an identity and life style sign. And not a target for hatred.
A Facebook user
Gheula Canarutto Nemni
Grazie Simonetta, non smettiamo mai di pregare…
Cara Gheula,da “non ebrea” mi trovi assolutamente in accordo con il tuo appello. Spesso ho segnalato persone,”avatar” usati per mascherare l’odio più feroce e commenti inconcepibili…rare volte sono stati presi in considerazione. Pensare che le parole siano solo “uno sfogo di bocca”,a volte,non è corretto,non tutti hanno la capacità di riflessione ed autocritica,a volte alle parole seguono i fatti e proprio i social network lo hanno rivelato quando,dopo stragi,si è saputo che erano state annunciate tramite FB o Twitter.
Sono preoccupata,e amareggiata,per i miei amici ebrei.
Voglio sperare che la luce di Channukkah ci porti a momenti migliori!
Un abbraccio!