Educating all the Children

“…If we are to reach real peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with children” – M.K. Gandhi

A woman named Jessica Hale, who makes documentary films, made me open my eyes to the fact that the future changes the world will need to undertake will rest heavily or lightly on the shoulders of the world’s youth. How many people know or care what the differences are between an illegal alien, a legal alien, an economic migrant from the newly expanded European Union territories that are allowed entry, or someone from Rumania or Bulgaria, who are not allowed entry to our fair shores. I could go on but you get the picture. We don’t have a true number of the people in the UK, and we’re drowning in our own ignorance.

As Jessica correctly said, if you ask these young people what an asylum seeker is or what organizations like the UNHCR does, and most look at you with blank stares or they would more likely look away to avoid the question. As world crisis spreads it seems more and more important to educate the very age being most effected by social persecution. In thirty years our children will be running the world. If children are sheltered from the wrong doing of today how can they prepare to turn things around for the millions who already suffer?

It is our responsibility to make future generations aware of social and political issues that will directly affect them throughout their lives. Our children must be educated so that we enable them to recognize similarities between themselves and the refugee children, as well as show global concern, social responsibility, empathy and respect for others.

I attended a meeting that was addressed by Ron Lauder, the President of the American Jewish Congress and he said much the same thing. We won’t get anywhere without the kids knowing where they come from and where they’re aiming to go.

In Los Angeles I met with Rabbi David Wolpe, who was recognized by Newsweek magazine as the leading pulpit rabbi in America. We agreed that the future lay in educating the young. However therein is a dichotomy. If we, the liberals of the West, do our best to educate as many of our children as we can, what protects them from the haters in our world’s midst?

How do we get these horsemen of the apocalypse to stop poisoning the minds of their young? I honestly don’t think you can. I believe that there is nothing we can say or do to stop them hating us and wanting us dead. By us I mean the liberals, the West, the Jews, America, Great Britain and Israel, and not necessarily in that order. By them I mean the leadership of Iran and the terrorist organizations such as Hizballah, Hamas, Al Quada and the Taliban plus quite a large number of radical, fundamentalist Muslims. As everyone knows the leadership in Iran has called for the total elimination of the State of Israel and is developing the means to achieve this.

Therefore, and I say this with great reluctance, I feel the time has come to recognize that these are our implacable enemies and to stop trying to appease them and to stop talking with them unless and until they stop their campaigns against the world at large, and everyone I have listed in particular, renounced violence and declared this irrevocable. Then and only then, should we think about talking with them. I would impose a five-year waiting period before we did so, to prove they were serious in their intent.

In the meantime I would hit them time and again wherever they can be found and whenever the opportunity arises. This is a war, and they must be made to understand that they cannot continue to hit us with impunity. If we wait their attacks will proliferate, grow in size and be more spectacularly destructive, as threatened. The consequences of our waiting will be apocalyptic.

What do you think will happen if Iran staged a strategic nuclear attack on Israel?

Iran must be stopped before the clock chimes midnight.

If we can stop this disaster happening then perhaps, we can start to educate all the children, as this is so clearly vital. As John Lennon sang, Imagine?