The Jewish Exponent - Philadelphia, PA

The Jewish Exponent - Philadelphia, PA: "Many who have no idea who the 18th-century British parliamentarian and essayist Edmund Burke was are probably familiar with his observation that all that is needed for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing.

As the toll of murdered Darfurians in the nation of Sudan rises each day, I can't help think that the world has learned very little. Neither the Holocaust - in which six million Jews were killed - nor the Hutu massacre of co-religionist Catholic Tutsis, nor the murder of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo by Eastern Orthodox Serbs or Catholic Croats seems to have reached that part of our souls where we are so horrified that we demand that steps be taken to stop another genocide.

According to estimates, since February 2003, more than 400,000 African men, women and children have died, while another 2.5 million civilians have been forced into refugee camps in Sudan and neighboring Chad.

The destruction of villages has continued unabated, and the rape of women and young girls leaving the camps to collect firewood to cook has become an unrelenting occurrence.

Not long ago, I had a touching and instructive discussion with refugees from Darfur. They told me that growing up as Muslims in Sudan, they knew almost nothing about Jews and Judaism, and certainly had little awareness of the Holocaust or anti-Semitism.

One refugee observed that being a victim could lead a person to follow one of two paths. He said that it would be understandable for a victimized people to feel that in light of a history of brutalization and abandonment, they had no obligation to reach out to anyone else. He told me that he recognized that a self-protective instinct could easily lead to an overarching self-interest, where one could say since no one seems to worry about me, I must worry only about myself.

But, he continued, the Jewish community has responded in just the opposite way - and Darfurian refugees have been profoundly moved by this response."