Mourning and Justice for victims of terror attacks on Paris and Russian MetroJet Flight A321.

Greg Krasovsky's comments on Facebook:

Victims of the terrorist attacks in Paris and on Russian Metrojet flight A321 that was blown up over Egypt deserve our prayers and efforts to bring all those behind and involved in the attacks to justice.

What they don't deserve is to have their deaths and the pain & suffering of their loved ones be exploited for political ends or to bring pain & suffering to thousands (if not millions) of other innocent civilians as "collateral damage" in military campaigns that could be launched with ulterior motives.

Remember the 3,000 people that we lost on 9/11/2001? Did their deaths justify the hundreds of thousands of innocent people killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, including the elderly, women and children?

If we had a chance to ask the souls of the deceased on 9/11 whether they support the deaths of all those women and children in Saddam Hussein's Iraq -- a country that didn't tolerate, allow to operate or help found Al Qaeda until it was invaded in 2003 -- what do you think they would say?

If we had a chance to ask the souls of ~100 people who died in Ukraine's capital city Kyiv in February of 2014 during the Euro-Maydan protests whether they wanted their deaths to be used to justify a civil war in Eastern Ukraine -- a war that has already cost over 6,000 lives, including thousands of innocent women and children the majority of whom were killed by Ukrainian Armed Forces artillery, mortars, bombs, multiple rocket launchers and even ballistic missiles -- what would they say?

That their deaths were justified because heaven forbid, that region could have gotten political autonomy from the new Kyiv government in political negotiations?

Did they ever want to risk having their country turn into the Former Yugoslavia, Iraq or Libya?

What will the souls of the victims of the Paris terror attacks say about the fact that many of their countries (and the allies of their countries) funded and armed extreme radical Muslim fundamentalist throat-slashing insurgents and terrorists -- terrorists who first tried to destroy their opponents in their own countries and then moved on to their traditional theological enemies - the infidels of Europe?

Would the victims of the terrorist attacks approve the fact that many of the perpetrators (residents or fellow citizens of the victims' countries) had gotten their training in Syria with weapons, uniforms and other supplies that were provided to the Syrian "moderate" opposition in part by France, Great Britain and the USA as well as their allies in the Middle East like Saudi Arabia?

I can't answer for the dead, but I do believe with all my heart that any soul who's not beyond redemption would disapprove of all government policies that involve the use of civil war, terrorism, torture, crimes against humanity, war crimes and false flag operations to achieve regime change or other political and economic ends.

We can mourn the innocent victims of terror and war by making sure that no country funds or supports political regimes or groups that espouse nationalism, racism, xenophobia, religious intolerance, mob justice, extrajudicial killings, war crimes, terrorism, torture, unlawful detentions, kidnappings and crimes against humanity.

This type of prohibition and condemnation cannot be selectively applied only against groups and regimes that we, our country or our allies don't like -- it must be applied universally and impartially to all regimes and groups that victimize the innocent domestically and abroad.

Last, we cannot honor and mourn victims of terror in good faith by having their deaths lead to the creation and growth of an Orwellian police state with immoral, unlawful and unnatural mass surveillance, search & seizure, detentions, illegal renditions, black sites, prosecution and inhuman incarceration of terror suspects.

After all, you can't beat Evil with Evil, because even using "just a little bit" of the "harsh" stuff to fight terrorists could send our societies down the slippery slope toward tyranny -- as the path to Hell is paved with good intentions.

So to the victims of war, terror and tyranny all I can say is this -- you will be in my prayers and I will try to do everything as a man, father, citizen, voter, taxpayer, lawyer and community activist to make sure that that we fight the plague that caused your suffering and death -- by treating its causes and pathology (immoral and illegal use of war & terror for political & economic goals) instead of treating just its symptoms with ineffective band-aids of short-lived condemnation & retaliatory bombings or worse, by fighting fire with gasoline of more wars and international military interventions.

What do you think?

Muslim and Jewish leaders gather at Paris concert hall memorial.

Greg Krasovsky's comments on "Muslim and Jewish leaders gather at Paris concert hall memorial."

My sympathies and condolences go out to the loved ones of the victims of the Paris terrorist attacks this past weekend.

We need to do everything to make sure that ALL the organizers, financiers, conspirators and executioners of this heinous crime against humanity are brought to justice.

We also need to remember who funded and supported the vast majority of Syrian terrorist groups, including ISIS, Al-Nusra and etc. -- it wasn't Assad's regime, Iran, North Korea or Russia. 

Sadly, this support was mostly covertly provided by states and organizations (government and private) who wanted to topple the Assad regime...and thought that supporting (or just allowing to grow) terrorist groups was a justified means.

What we should not do is allow another despicable terrorist act to feed xenophobia and religious intolerance, especially against Islam, one of the the Abrahamic faiths that grew out of Judaic and Christian traditions in the 7th century.

All faiths must unite to condemn all varieties of terrorism -- religious-based, racial or ethnic-based, political and state-sponsored -- and confirm that killing of innocent civilians is an indisputable sin under every faith and cannot be justified EVER by Satanist arguments of "sacrificing a hundred or a thousand of innocent civilians is justified if this act will save millions in the future."

We must mourn, honor and avenge (by Justice!) all victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity -- regardless of whether they are 

- victims of terrorists who proclaim themselves to be insurgents fighting for freedom of their people & land, or defenders of their faith 

- victims of state-sponsored terrorism, war crimes or crimes against humanity committed by military, intelligence, state security or law enforcement personnel.

- as we hear pretty often lately, unfortunate and inadvertent civilian "collateral damage" in artillery, bombing and drone strikes. 
   
Moreover, we must remember that all human lives have equal value before G-d, regardless of whether the victim is a citizen of France, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Israel, Egypt, UK, USA, Russia or Ukraine.

And we must do everything as people, citizens, tax-payers, voters, employees and members of community organizations to make sure that terrorism is condemned and fought on every level of our world-wide human society and government. 

The interfaith flower-laying ceremony in Paris was a good first step!
  
Am I wrong?
  
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Selected Excerpts from

Muslim and Jewish leaders gather at Paris concert hall memorial.

"The flower-laying ceremony, initiated by the Polish-born French Jewish author Marek Halter.

Representatives of the Jewish and Muslim communities join people gathered at the makeshift memorial near the Bataclan concert hall. 

They carried white roses, which they laid among the hundreds of candles and bouquets left by members of the public and were accompanied, as a show of inter-faith solidarity, by representatives of the French capital’s Jewish community.

In case anyone – specifically France’s far right and its supporters – were minded to miss it, Hassen Chalghoumi, the imam of Drancy, a Paris suburb, spelled it out.

“Anyone who uses hate speech has no place in France and those places that preach hate are not places of prayer but are those of a sect. After this tragedy and the more than 100 deaths, now is the time to close these places of hate,” Chalghoumi, president of the imams’ conference of France, told the crowd. 

Chalghoumi, who says he is the subject of an Islamic State “fatwa” calling for his killing, said: “1.5 million people are hostages of Daesh, 1.5 million people are hostages of these barbarians who are sullying the name of Islam and Muslims. It’s time to say no to this barbarity.”


Earlier, the imam of Bordeaux, Tarek Oubrou told Le Journal du Dimanche: “From a religious point of view, Islam’s position is very clear: these murders call for a triple condemnation – ethical, legal and theological.

“Ethical because no morality allows for the killing of innocent people, legal because these acts do not respect war as it is decreed in the Muslim tradition and theological because these suicide bombers are convinced they’re going to heaven when they actually risk finding themselves in hell.”

He said that communications from Muslim institutions, however, were not enough: “Muslims must also demonstrate to say ‘stop’ – to say that we don’t accept these actions being done in the name of our religion.”"

Please read the rest of the article at:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/15/muslim-and-jewish-leaders-gather-at-paris-concert-hall-memorial