“Did You do that?” - asked the German officer, pointing to “Guernica.” “No,” Picasso replied, “you did that!”
Excerpts
from an article by Canadian writer and publicist Yuri Polakiwsky
"On confronting evil in the modern world"
Full text of the article – on the NE Global website, October 26, 2023
*** 1 ***
Now is an appropriate time to morally clarify the underlying narrative of what is happening in Israel and Ukraine.
Survivors of the last century’s greatest genocides, the Holocaust and the Holodomor, these countries again find themselves at the forefront in the world’s mind by providing a courageous example of what it takes to respond to a direct challenge to their existence, or put another way, how they must deal with the evil of genocide.
*** 2 ***
‘Evil’ is the deliberate destruction and ruination of human beings.
Its purpose is to kill and destroy human beings while causing fear through massacre and acts of intimate barbarity, like torture and rape.
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Its’ present practitioners, Russia and Hamas, form the basis of a political ideology whose societies are bereft of respect for the dignity and the spiritual sanctity of human beings. This is because Hamas and Russia are essentially “death societies”, cultures which are not inspired and have no regard for the pursuit of the affirmation of life.
*** 4 ***
The Western world is quite aware that something is amiss, but they have failed to understand the full implications of this underlying moral component.
They have come short, finding themselves within their peaceful and comfortable cultures, to contemplate evil’s horribleness, and in so doing, have created barriers for what requires definitive action. Timothy Snyder, the Yale historian, has suggested that the reason Westerners don’t ascribe the word ‘genocide’ to Russia’s action in Ukraine is because then they would have to act decisively.
This is not so for Ukrainians and Jews. If they wait and don’t ‘resist’, they will cease to exist.
*** 5 ***
The West’s fear of supporting decisive military action is a denial of the existence of the insidious nature of evil in the modern world and the fact that evil must be confronted by power.
Bloodied children, women who have been tortured and raped, the elderly being shot in the chest, the beheadings of captured soldiers are just too ‘horrible’ to see. However, for Jews and Ukrainians, this is the reality of daily life.
The Western mind cannot comprehend and neither can it imagine evils’ horribleness. But it must.
*** 6 ***
Societies based on fear or “fear societies” as the Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky argued, deny the freedom of individual expression in language,the liberty for unique cultural expression. They are authoritarian, offshoots of totalitarian ideology, whose order is defined by causing disorder.
Such societies are led by those who ... are not law abiding, nor care for the fundamentals of human rights.
*** 7 ***
For both Ukrainians and Jews, there is little gain in defining ‘evil’ in philological terms. They experience evil as a threat to their existence. They don’t need to define it. They see it, they live amongst it, they feel its oppressive power, they are terrorized by it. They know what evil is when it is visited upon them.
They have no choice but to ‘resist’ it and to seek the isolation of its practitioners.
Their existence depends on it.
*** 8 ***
At such a time, words are ineffective, negotiation is of virtually no use, calls for a ‘cease fire’ inadequate and for cessation of hostilities naive for it will only prolong human tragedy.
*** 9 ***
The real purpose of the barbarians is to challenge and create doubt as to the intentions of their evil deeds, for like the Nazis and Soviet communists, such cynical authoritarians want to hide and escape accountability of the perpetuation of their crimes against humans. But today, with the availability of modern technologies, the evidence of evil acts cannot be denied. These disruptors of normal democratic and peaceful order seem to revel in the transgressions and perpetuation of human tragedy. They don’t rely on the considerations of contemplative thought on the moral implications of their terror actions, but on images that fuel the objectives of their cynical and nihilistic propaganda ends.
*** 10 ***
Evil must be judged in the present. Evil doers must be held accountable for their crimes. However, the ascribing of legal responsibility must wait. Justice must be waited for with patience. Evil identified in this moment, must be resisted. More specifically, “good” people of conscience, must ‘stand up’ against the present evil and fight it even by military means.
*** 11 ***
We must resist evil by standing with Ukraine and Israel. And whether it is accepted or not, there can be no compromise with evil.
On the cover: the painting “Guernica” by Pablo Picasso. By Jules Verne Times Two / www.julesvernex2.com, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=149356484. Pablo Picasso began painting this painting the day after the horrific bombing of the Spanish city of Guernica by Franco's troops in 1937.
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