Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur...

"Today (9/10/08), Yom Kippur, the holiest date in our calendar, most of the world's 13.3 million Jews will be seeking repentance for their - and indeed all of humanity's - sins. And our list is wildly longer than yours. It runs to more than 50 sins. And we say them 10 times during the course of Yom Kippur. As we reel off the list, we ask God to 'pardon us, forgive us, atone for us'."

So writes Dan Goldberg, "a writer and former national editor of the Australian Jewish News," in an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald (Fifty sins to get off your chest: the guilt trip with a happy ending). He goes on, "The apology in Parliament was Australia's Yom Kippur - our collective day of repentance, when we asked foregiveness for our sins against Australia's indigenous people*... Our actions were, and are, responsible for terrible sins, and our inaction is often worse... silence, according to the legal maxim, implies consent. Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur... and more than a few cases closer to home. We've been guilty of the sin of silence in the past, and in the present. As for the future? To paraphrase the philosopher George Santayana: those who don't learn from their sins are doomed to repeat them."

And to paraphrase the novelist Joseph Conrad: "The hypocrisy! The hypocrisy!"

[*And another thing. Goldberg may not have thought this through, but it's clear he subscribes to the false notion of collective guilt. It's worth quoting Israeli activist and author Uri Davis, always a reliable guide: "There is no collective guilt. Children are not guilty of the crimes of their parents; Germans in general are not guilty of the crimes of the Nazi occupation of Europe; western Christians in general are not guilty of the genocide of the holocaust; and Europe in general is not guilty of crimes against humanity perpetrated against Jews. Only anti-Jewish racists are guilty of what they did and continue to do to Jews. And, by the same token, children of Zionist settlers in geographical Palestine are also not guilty of the crimes perpetrated by their parents. Responsibility is, however, a different matter. While children of Zionist settlers in geographical Palestine are not collectively guilty of the crimes perpetrated by their parents against the native indigenous Palestinian Arab people, citizens of the the State of Israel have a responsibility, a duty, which citizens of other states do not have in the same way, to raise their voices against these crimes, act in defence of the victims of these crimes and work for due reparations, compensation and return of the dispossessed and expelled Palestinian Arabs. This is the case not because children of Zionist settlers are collectively guilty of these crimes, but because these crimes were committed and continue to be committed by the successive governments of the State of Israel in their names." (Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, 2003, p 12)

Ditto for those (both Jewish and non-Jewish) engaged in the task of selling Israel and the Zionist project to the rest of us. Goldberg might like to consider adding the sin of wiping Palestine off the map to his list.]