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Letter of a baby killed by the silence of the world

Bye Mum,

Shalom Dad,

I have seen you only for a few instants but my time has arrived.

I love you so much, I cannot believe I will never see you again.

I was  ready to come to the world in two months, I was already imagining how I would taste my mother’s milk, I was wondering how it feels to open your eyes and find out what is around.

But none of these things will never happen in my life.

I felt the shootings going through the womb, I heard the screams of fear and terror through the amniotic liquid and I understood that something was wrong.

My hearbeat that until that moment was beating at a perfect rythm, started slowing down.

I am not able to explain why everything happened, why a man, whom I have never seen before, wanted to shoot my mum and me.

I heard people saying that all this happened because we were waiting for the bus on a disputed piece of land, that the cause that moves these murderous hands lies in the land itself.

Eighty years ago when this land was only sand, babies, infants and children who did not have time to learn how to talk and walk, were brought to the slaughter house with the same charge: Jude.

Bye grandma and grandpa,

it was an honor to be part of a family that teaches to love while our enemies go on inciting to kill.

Though I was born on the seventh month of pregnancy, though I could breath only for a few days, I can affirm with no doubts that the content of Universal Declaration of Human Rights about the right for life, freedom and safety, is not universally true.

It is not true that every child has the right to a home, a mother and father.

It’s a lie. The world does not try hard to protect every child from cruelty as the U.N Declaration on Youth Rights states.

People who were raised in hate and intolerance made me leave this world with a name, Amiad Yisrael, a name that was never called but only engraved on my gravestone.

The book of my life was closed by democratic societies and mass media that consider the death of a Jew on his land less worthy of the death of other men.

 

My dear love,

let me kiss for the last time the shroud that wraps your tiny life.

Let me say goodbye to your tiny hand and foot, to you heart that bumped inside my body for the last seven months.

Ask in Heaven why all this is happening to us. And please don’t move until you don’t get an answer.

You have been a child for a few instants before the hate of men transformed you in an angel.

Send me a kiss, my little love, a big kiss like that one I would have asked you in a few months if the incitement to violence, if the education to death, did not tear your soul away from me and from this world.

Gheula Canarutto NemniSchermata 2018-12-13 alle 12.39.29

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Why Condé Nast and Vogue do not respect Jews

An open letter to Robert A. Sauerberg, president and CEO of Condé Nast.

On October 4, 2018, Vogue Arabia published a letter by Ahed Tamimi, the Palestinian teenager who is becoming an icon, despite the culture she represents.

My name is Raya Schijveschuurder. Today I would be 31 years old.

I would be probably married and I would have my own children.

They would be the same age of my little brothers who were 2 and 4 years old when they were killed together with my parents and me, inside a pizza store in Jerusalem, seventeen years ago.

We were a happy family until 2 pm of August 9th 2001. We were eight children, four girls and four boys, the perfect balance. My parents were still young, 43 and 41 years old.

But that day we were hungry.

And we wished for a pizza and some Coke.

And my parents decided to take us to Sbarro, one of the most famous pizza stores of Jerusalem.

I chose a pizza with mushroom and olives topping.

And my mother asked me: are you sure you will like it?

These were the last words I heard from her.

A few minutes Ahlam Tamimi brought Izzadin al Masri until the entrance of Sbarro.

Tamimi knew perfectly the store would be packed at that hour. She had been studying that place for a long time.

Al Masri had a guitar with him, but from that guitar no music note would have been played.

As he entered the store that guitar played a death music, throwing 20 pounds of nails, screws and explosives in men, women and children bodies.

We have just washed our hands as Jews use to do before eating the bread.

But I never ate that pizza.

I was blown up and killed by nails that pierced my heart, my liver, my vital organs.

In a few seconds my parents, my brothers, Shoshana Greenbaum, a pregnant woman, other ten people and me, were transformed in shreds of meat.

My grandparents were Dutch.

During the war they were deported from Holland to concentration camps.

They survived to all their families and tried to build a normal life in that same country that offered them death.

They pushed their children to go and live in Israel, the only place in the world where Jews would never be discriminated for their religion.

My parents tried to build a new life in that tiny country.

But Ahlam Tamimi decided that even there Jews do not have the right to live.

‘

When they announced in the radio there had been a martyrdom attack at the Sbarro restaurant and that three people were killed, I admit I was a little bit disappointed because I had hoped for a larger toll’, she tells in an interview.

‘Have you ever thought about the families, the children, who were victims of this attack?’ Tamimi smiles ‘No’.

Ahed Tamimi, the seventeen years old teenager who became the symbol of ‘Palestinian resistance’ was brought up in these values. Ahlam Tamimi is her aunt. Her family was defined by international media as an ‘activist family’

Vogue Arabia, a magazine that belongs to Conde Nast group, has just published Ahed Tamimi letter.

In this letter Tamimi writes: I wanted to become a football player but I don’t play here because there is no time. Instead, I have been involved in demonstrations and confrontations with the Israeli army since I was a child.

 

I went on Conde Nast code of Ethics, where you can find the following words:

Reaching more than 270 million consumers across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, we are committed to delivering beautiful, influential content and brand experiences for individuals who demand to be inspired.

And I asked myself:

Does Conde Nast think Ahed Tamimi words should inspire  its readers?

Does Conde Nast agree that children, instead of becoming football players, should be raised in the dream to become martyrs one day?

“I hope that everyone will take part in the demonstrations as this is the only means to achieve the result. Whether it is stabbings or martyrdom operations or throwing stones, everyone must do his part and we must unite in order for our message to be heard that we want to liberate Palestine”

These are the words that Tamimi says on Facebook to her followers. 

We pride ourselves in respecting the individual no matter what gender, race, religion or orientation. We are committed to doing business in an ethical way, with honesty, integrity and humanity.

This is the message you can find on Conde Nast website.

Dear Conde Nast, mr. Robert A. Sauerberg,

you have proved to be committed to doing business.

But with this article that celebrates a teenager who was raised in death and martyrdom values, a girl whose aunt helped killing more than 15 human beings guilty of being Jews, you have not only lost many Jewish readers..

You have lost your commitment to integrity and humanity.

Gheula Canarutto Nemni

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We are dwarfs on the shoulders of giants…

I’ve repeated many times in my life

Who am I to do this?

This message  is definitely not for me…

I’ve repeated these sentences many times in my life.

Until I’ve been invited as a speaker to Jli, the Jewish National Retreat.

And there 1200 people, from different cultural, religious and geographical backgrounds, made me change my mind.

I found Jews thirsty for their history, for their identity, for the next steps to undertake.

Jews who woke up so early every morning, in the few days they had of vacation. Every minute was an opportunity to absorb messages, values, lessons from a religion in which they are born but of which no one wanted to teach them anything about.

Jews eager to fill a void in their soul, to recover from years lived in a too similar way to the outer world.

Jews who wished to be Jewish again.

I was called to be a speaker, but I became a full time listener.

I heard so many stories about people whose parents were Holocaust survivor, I never imagined there were so many still.

I listened to their wish to get out from the safety bubble their parents tried to protect them in.

I sat beside people who grew up without Shabat, without a mezuzah on their door. And without Abraham’s, Isaac’s or Jacob’s G-d.

Jews who found out they belong to a chosen and persecuted nation a few minutes before their parents passed away.

And instead of running away from this uncomfortable identity, they jumped into it with all their mights.

I spent six days with these people and I understood that they were not simple people. But heroes.

A hero is not only a person who jumps into the water to save a drowning fellow.

A hero is a person who dares again and again, leaving its comfort zone, its habits, its safe areas and dares to face the unknown.

The word hero comes from Greek and it means ‘a person who is admired for its courage and outstanding achievments’.

The most outstanding achievement a human being can reach is to try and free himself from his habits, from his usual way and go further.

The couarge does not belong only to those who defeat their enemies.

The courage belongs to those who get up in the morning and challenge their status quo and their own certainties through new thoughts, words and actions,

It’s easy to walk in a path where you’ve already walked in before.

It is much harder to undertake a new path in an unknown place, that has never belonged to us.

Our sages say that moshiach will come in our times beacuse we are dwarfs on the shoulders of our ancentors, who were giants,

But maybe moshiach will come in our days also because now more than ever before, our nation is being enriched by baalei tshuva, Jews who are leaving the void of their souls and coming back home.

In the place where a Baal Teshuva, a returnee to Judaism, stands, a completely righteous person cannot stand.

A giant is not a person who was born tall. A giant is a person who tries to surpass every day the level of the prevoious day.

Thank you to all my new Jli teachers.

And a special thank you to all the amazing staff of Jli who worked so hard for making that miracolous week come true.

Gheula Canarutto Nemni

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Open letter to President Obama on climate change and it consequence on terrorism

Schermata 2017-05-11 alle 22.18.56Dear President Obama,

A few days ago your words filled the air of Milano, the town where I live.

You gave an interesting perspective about technology; about the impact it is having on our children’s future. You spoke about healthy food and waste.

And then you spoke about immigration, about refugees who suffer from food shortages because of the climate change and how this has an impact on unemployment.

“I am certain that this is part of the problem that instigates radicalization and terrorism in many countries of the Middle East and South Asia. If many young people are unemployed they will channel their energies in an unhealthy way.” These were your words. I read them three times. It was hard for me, as a parent and as an educator, to believe that unemployment can be claimed as one of the causes of terrorism. It was against the values I was raised in, against all my credos; to delude oneself into thinking that a person can arrive to the point of killing somebody else simply because he himself does not have a job.

Dear President Obama, we cannot encourage the future generations in the belief that everything revolves around a job, material needs, and money.

Yes, we need these things. Food and work should be universally granted rights.

But life is complicated, and sometimes you can be unemployed, and maybe even without any food in the fridge, due to an economic crisis period or a war.

But none of these conditions can be used as a justification for killing young people in a disco, putting a bomb in a bus or throwing an airplane into the Twin Towers.

Most of the terrorists who shook our world with their heinous crimes were not unemployed or hungry. In fact, some of them were educated people, educated under a Western point of view. And extremist Islam too.

In Middle East, South Asia and Europe, people channel their energies in unhealthy way, simply because no one is nourishing their souls in a positive way.

Our society is a big ideological vacuum, where violent ideologies are free to burrow their roots. We don’t provide young generations with real values. We are trying to nourish only their bodies, and maybe their culture, sometimes. Yet we are neglecting their souls. This is the reason why youngsters run towards harmful ideologies as they grow up. Human beings are made of flesh, and a soul. Of body and spirit. We need to nourish both of these dimensions.

New generations are hungry for values; they are thirsty for life’s principles and goals.

If you wish for real human progress, you cannot deal only with the material aspects of life. You can give a person millions of dollars, but if you deprive him of a goal, of an objective to run for, he will be the emptiest person in the world, ready to be filled with good or evil.

We should do our best to provide a healthy education to every individual. This goal, this directive, depends on you. It depends on all those who can change our world.

It is not climate change that makes people turn to terrorism. It is not dry fields. It is dryness in education, in values.

We must provide them with moral food too.

Sincerely,

Gheula Canarutto Nemni

P.S. You mentioned that activists need to propose pragmatic solutions. If you are interested, I have them ready for you.

 

 

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May your soul, Eden Attias, rest in peace

eden-attias

Good bye little boy whose life was robbed in a middle of a dream.

With that sweet snack in the pocket that mum has given you when you were already out of the door.

With the phone ringing because she wanted to know how far you were from the military base where that coffin on wheels was supposed to take you.

Good bye to your dreams, to the family you will never build.

To your room, to your music, to all the things and people you loved.

You have now millions of brothers and sisters praying for your soul.

Feeling the pain of your mum and dad like a knife in the heart.

Tonight, in front of our renewed shabat candles a special prayer will be whispered for you.

That your future life will be like the name you were given at eight days. Eden. Only that. Only paradise and good.

And from above, where we are sure, angels are embracing you welcoming you like a king, ask G-d to protect all his children. On buses, on their way home, in synagogues, schools and battlefields.

Dear Eden Attias, may your departure from earth be not in vain, making the world understand that peace is possible only with somebody who is taught from childhood that life and not death is the most precious and desirable gift.

May your soul be tied for ever and ever with the bond of life.
We all love you
Am Israel

Gheula Canarutto Nemni