Simon Wiesenthal Center Protests N. Korean Atrocities

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, is flying to Seoul for a fact-finding mission on North Korean human rights issues on November 22nd and 23rd. In Seoul, he will meet with human rights activists and defectors, and will conclude his visit with a press conference at the Seoul Foreign Correspondent’s Club, Korea Press Center Building (Taepyongno-1Ga, Jung-Gu), 18th Floor, at noon on the 23rd.

This is a point of some personal pride for me; I first wrote to Rabbi Cooper late last winter when the reports of the gas chambers emerged. In early March, he wrote back, asking for a link to one of the reports. Chris Beaumont helped me find the link, and we put him in touch with Suzanne Scholte. The result was the addition of one of the world’s foremost human rights organizations (400,000 member families in the United States alone) to the cause of saving the people of North Korea. Rabbi Cooper wrote this op-ed, hosted this special event at the Museum of Tolerance, and at the invitation of Rep. Tom Lantos, testified before Congress.

Rep. Lantos, a powerful California Democrat and Holocaust survivor, almost certainly swayed a number of Democratic votes in favor of the North Korean Human Rights Act, making an important contribution to getting the bill voted on this year and passed without a single opposing vote.

That’s how dominoes fall. Flick one out of the line and they stop falling.

Remember this the next time someone suggests that the North Korean Human Rights Act is a neocon plot to make North Korea safe for evangelizing, or when someone says that liberal voices aren’t an important part of what we’re trying to do here. In fact, neocons and evangelicals played an important part in passing this bill, along with Korean-Americans, Jews, and people of every faith, ethnicity, and political affiliation. What they all shared was enlightened compassion.

Forgive me in advance for the syrupy plea, but I say it because it’s perfectly true–what unites us as Americans is our belief in the rebuttable presumption that every human being is entitled to a decent shot at a full and dignified life. I hope no terrorist, no self-hating pusher of moral equivalence theories, no cheap politician will ever blind us to that.