Unnatural disasters
GARY SAMOWITZ
WATCHING the news this week has been torture. Shocked ashen faces staring into the cameras in utter disbelief. Families, schools, communities collapsed into dust. As if a magnitude 7.0 quake striking the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere last Tuesday afternoon wasn’t enough, the timing coincided with children sitting in school.
As Barack Obama observed, for a country so heavily immersed in hardship and suffering, “this tragedy seems especially cruel and incomprehensible”.
Eighty per cent of Haitians live below the poverty line and the country also has one of the highest rates of infant, under-five and maternal mortality in the world. Desperately poor and politically volatile, Haiti could scarcely be less well equipped to organise a massive relief effort after an earthquake. An earthquake doesn’t strike because of structural poverty, illiteracy and corruption, but the chaos it creates is amplified by those factors.
One of the roles of international development programs is to increase the resilience of communities to traumatic events, lessening the tragic loss of life and providing the infrastructure to manage relief efforts during such turbulent times. The figures of at least 100,000 dead and 300,000 left homeless are very difficult to comprehend.
The images of abject human suffering, littered all over the media landscape, evoke an overwhelming sense of empathy. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been flooding into aid agencies to support the relief and rescue operation. Dozens of Jewish humanitarian organisations around the world have set up appeals to support these efforts, including Jewish Aid Australia.
The Israeli rescue mission was one of the first on the ground and is made up of 220 soldiers and officers, including 120 medical staff who are operating a makeshift hospital in the Haitian capital. Out of a tragedy like this, the generosity of the human spirit shines through.
Unfortunately, the deep and genuine compassion currently being directed towards this tragedy will not last. In a few weeks, the Haiti earthquake will be a distant memory to the world media and, indeed, to most people. We have a short attention span. But before we retreat back into our own lives, it is worth noting that around the world more than 20,000 children die every day due to poverty.
They lack access to clean water, sanitation, food and basic health care. Those numbers are equivalent to a “Haiti earthquake” a week. If the natural disaster in Haiti is an extraordinary event, then the deaths of thousands of children every day has become the ordinary — the “unnatural disaster”. It is a scary thought that we have become deaf to the silent screams for help coming from the world’s poor and destitute.
There is a significant focus on aid agencies at the moment owing to their Haiti relief appeals, however, we also must remember what they do all year round. Most community-based aid and development organisations have as their core goal to reduce the number of preventable deaths through sustainable long-term development programs, as well as creating awareness about the constant suffering that afflicts large parts of the developing world.
It is vital that concerned citizens appreciate the urgency of this mission, and that the generosity of spirit witnessed this week is not only reserved for when an extraordinary disaster hits. Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer asserted: “Thou shall not be a victim. Thou shall not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shall not be a bystander.”
As concerned global citizens and as Jews, it is our moral obligation to respond to humanitarian crises. We are implored to care for all people and not to “stand idly by the blood of your neighbour”. In Isaiah 1:17 it states: “Learn to do good, seek justice, aid the oppressed. Uphold the rights of the orphan, defend the cause of the widow.”
The call for us to pursue social justice is clear. If Judaism is only focused on Jews, and doesn’t take responsibility for the greater world, it may fade away into an insignificant sect.
However, if we use our Jewish narratives, values and traditions to shine beyond our own concerns, we can mobilise our tremendous resources and contribute our time and services to the Australian and global societies we live in.
Gary Samowitz is CEO of Jewish Aid Australia.
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