29 Dec, 2023
Person of the Year: The Israeli conscientious objector Tal Mitnick, 18
The travel and tourism industry has long feigned concern about the “NextGen”. Multiple activities are organised regularly to help them inherit a better future. The way things are going, that does not seem likely. Today, I am making a small attempt to thwart that downward trend by conferring, for the first time, a Travel Impact Newswire Person of the Year award.
The winner is 18-year-old Tal Mitnick, an Israeli conscientious objector, for his refusal to join the Israeli army and participate in the genocidal slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. In standing up for what he believed to be right, and accepting the punishment of a 30-day jail term, perhaps more thereafter, he said, “I’m standing here at the Tel Hashomer base and refusing to be drafted, refusing to take part in the war in Gaza. I believe that slaughter does not solve slaughter. Violence does not solve violence.”
Conscientious objectors speak truth to power and leave their mark on history. The rest of the NextGens are merely cogs in the wheel, blissfully cocooned in their comfort zones. If NextGen legionnaires are vociferously demanding action against global warming, they need to be making the same demand about what I have termed “The Other Global Warming”.
The full story in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz (downloadable by clicking on the image above) provides details about Mr Mitnick’s rationale. It should resonate with the NextGen in Travel & Tourism as they flounder in a world suffering from a serious leadership failure, plagued by lying, genocidal demagogues bent on destroying democracy, freedom, justice and human rights.
Unless the “future generation” stands up to be counted, it faces a dark and uncertain future.
The fork in the road could not be clearer.
The NextGen of the 1970s, the so-called “Woodstock Generation”, helped end the Vietnam war by confronting the lying leaders of that era. Among them was the late champion boxer Muhammad Ali. In those days, the United States was fighting communism. Today, it claims to be fighting “terrorism.” Whatever the “ism”, the military-industrial complex constantly needs to reinvent and rebrand its enemies to preserve its obscene revenue stream, and deceive the mainly lower-middle income people into paying with both their lives and their meagre funds.
In November 1995, another NextGen Jew, Yigal Amir, an extremist fanatic terrorist then aged 24, shot dead the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a Nobel Peace Prize winer. Amir too, had been radicalised, brainwashed and incited, just like a Hamas terrorist. Today, many NextGen Israelis are advancing Amir’s cause. They serve not only in the Army. Hundreds are working in multinational companies, deceptively disguised by dual passports, to undermine the countries and communities deemed to be “enemies” of Israel.
One set of NextGen fanatics cut from the same live-and-let-die extremist cloth as Yigal Amir are pitted against the enlightened live-and-let-live NextGen liberals such as Tal Mitnick.
Jewish fanatic terrorist assassin Yigal Amir
The question for all those NextGen hoping to find productive jobs in the “Industry of Peace”: Whose side are you on?
For those who agree with my choice of Personality of the Year, dozens more Israeli heroes like Tal Mitnick can be found on a website “Breaking the Silence.” If they are to win, they will need extensive exposure via social media, speaking engagements and more.
The world is dangerously close to yet another all-out conflict that will make the nearly 200 million casualties of both the First and Second World Wars of the 20th century pale by comparison.
The Yigal Amir’s of this generation want that to happen. The Tal Mitnick’s do not.
You choose.
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