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‘It Is a Holocaust’

Watch Israeli-Arab newscaster Lucy Aharish’s passionate speech about the ‘genocide’ in Syria: ‘Nobody is doing anything to stop it’

by
Jonathan Zalman
December 16, 2016
Omar Haj Kadour/AFP/Getty Images
Syrian rebel fighters and civilians who were evacuated from rebel-held neighborhoods in the embattled city of Aleppo arrive in the opposition-controlled Khan al-Aassal region, west of Aleppo, December 16, 2016. Omar Haj Kadour/AFP/Getty Images
Omar Haj Kadour/AFP/Getty Images
Syrian rebel fighters and civilians who were evacuated from rebel-held neighborhoods in the embattled city of Aleppo arrive in the opposition-controlled Khan al-Aassal region, west of Aleppo, December 16, 2016. Omar Haj Kadour/AFP/Getty Images

On Thursday, in the middle of a broadcast of a program called Sichat Hayom on Israel’s Channel 2, anchor Lucy Aharish switched from Hebrew to English to deliver a scathing and stark message to anybody listening: What is happening in Aleppo is a “genocide,” a “holocaust.”

“In this world,” said Aharish, “we are standing and doing nothing while children are being slaughtered every single hour. … I am ashamed that the Arab world is being taken hostage by terrorists and murderers and that we are not doing anything. I am ashamed that the peaceful majority of humanity is irrelevant once again.”

Here are her powerful words about a powerless population, addressed, in part, to those world leaders who remain inept in their assistance of the Syrian people who are being brutalized.

Jonathan Zalman is a writer and teacher based in Brooklyn.