Opinion
The media protesting Trump's restrictions should hold those same countries that they are defending to the same standards.
February 1, 2017 09:072 min read
Unless you've taken refuge under a rock, you'll be aware of the Tangerine Tyrant's latest (highly informed and logical) decision to ban Syrian refugees from entering the United States, and as well as the ban on entry of immigrants into the United States from six other Muslim majority countries for the next three months.
If you're clued up on your modern history, you will also be aware of the troubling similarity between that law, passed on Holocaust Memorial Day, and Hitler's 1933 Denaturalisation Law, which revoked the citizenship of German Jews and other 'undesirables.'
We must look at individuals, rather than statistics; this is the only way we will be able to retain a sense of compassion and humanity, rather than reducing the people affected to numbers.
That's the reason why Anne Frank's story has been and continues to be so poignant and hard hitting.
Nazanin Zinouri, a PhD graduate from Clemson University has been denied entry back into the country in which she has been studying for the last seven years. Sir Mo Farah, the Somalian born Olympic champion, feared he would be unable to re-enter the US to be reunited with his family in Oregon after a training trip to Ethiopia.
Nadhim Zahawi, the Conservative MP for Stratford on Avon who happens to have born in Iraq, is currently unable to visit his son in the US.
These are just a few of the stories of families that have been torn apart as a result of a rash, uneducated, and arguably unconstitutional decision by a clearly inept President. One who has taken a country that has long been considered to be the leader of the Free World, and turned it into his own personal playground.
The outrage on the international stage is entirely justified.
After seventy years of recoiling at the horror of the Holocaust and ingraining the mantra 'never forget' into the mouths and minds of our society, we must be vocal in our opposition to Trump's eerie echo of Hitler's scapegoating and propaganda.
However, there is a point that has been widely ignored: there are no fewer than sixteen countries which already ban Israeli passports. Twice as many nations as are affected by Trump’s Executive Order; and that list of 16 countries includes every single one on his no entry list.
Yet, there is not, nor has there ever been, the huge media outcry that we are now seeing.
While it is indeed true that the West, particularly America, should indeed aspire to higher standards and attitudes towards refugees than Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran, the media protesting Trump's restrictions should hold those same countries that they are defending to the same standards.
We should stand united in the face of fascism: this is an eteThe travel ban cuts two waysrnal truth that remains upheld today as strongly as it was seventy years ago.
However, alongside this, we must not allow ourselves to lose sight of the hypocrisy and double standards against the country that provided many of our ancestors with refuge when these same atrocities were being committed against us, and continues to do so today.
