Haïm Korsia's solidarity
In case you missed this last week: Haïm Korsia, the recently elected chief rabbi of France, used the occasion of an event commemmorating Holocaust victims to call for solidarity with religious minorities in the Middle East:
The situation of religious minorities all over the world and especially in the Middle East resonates, unfortunately, with our commemoration today. . . As our parents wore the yellow star, Christians are made to wear the scarlet letter of ‘nun.’
Korsia specifically cited the plight of the Yazidis, too. He also may well have in mind the security of the region's Jews. But by explicitly comparing the yellow star with the mark of the Nazarene, he made a provocative suggestion: Middle Eastern Christians are to ISIS what European Jews were to the Nazis, namely a primary (though not the only) target of a horrifying, genocidal violence. And this fact alone demands the world's solidarity.
It's common for people to distance themselves from the other by reaching for a Hitler comparison. Korsia does roughly the opposite here: he uses a Holocaust-victim comparison to associate himself and the people he influences with a group that could use all the friends it can get. It was an eloquent and courageous moment of leadership.
Contrast that with U.S. senator Ted Cruz, who remains unrepentant for using his keynote slot at a gathering of Middle Eastern Christian leaders to scold them for being insufficiently pro-Israel. For Cruz, solidarity with brutalized, existentially threatened people—with fellow Christians—apparently comes with conditions. Korsia, on the other hand, simply offered it full stop. I wonder if even the chief rabbi of France is pro-Israel enough for the junior senator from Texas.
