by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

March 06, 2008

A documentary about Darfur by two New Jersey filmmakers is making common cause across races and religions.

Jews, Christians, and Muslims; whites, Asians, Africans, and African-Americans gathered at the Cooperman JCC Feb. 28 to view a documentary on the African genocide and take part in a far-reaching discussion on the crisis in Sudan.

“The only way we will ever have peace is if we have one race — the human race,” said Shelley Seidenstein of Verona, executive producer of the film, Darfur: Too Dark, Too Far, addressing the audience at the JCC before the screening.

The hour-long documentary includes powerful images depicting the suffering of the Darfurians, who since 2003 have been the target of attacks by government-supported militias. It is estimated that more than 200,000 have died from violence and disease, and that as many as 2.5 million have been displaced.

The film interweaves material on ethnic cleansing in other parts of Africa, references to the Holocaust and the genocides in Armenia and Kosovo, and to slavery, lynching, and segregation in the United States.

In keeping with the grim story on the screen, Seidenstein talked about incidents “right here in our own backyard — gang violence, substance abuse, and the continuation of hatred toward others — racism.”

She also injected a more optimistic note: “But there is a hope,” she said, “a shift of universal energy is definitely taking place. Voices are coming together.”

But it was the lethal effects of racism that director Hafiz Farid of East Orange stressed in remarks after the film. Quoting the words of Martin Luther King Jr., he said, “The ultimate end of genocide is death. The ultimate end of racism is genocide. People who don’t want to sit beside you or drink out of the same water fountain — they ultimately want you dead.

“Just as we see Darfur happening, just as we see Rwanda happening again, just as we see nooses being hung all over the country, just as we see in New Brunswick 499 Jewish headstones in a cemetery broken and desecrated, we have to deal with the root cause,” Farid said, referring to the vandalism in January at the Poile Zedek Cemetery. “Our youth demand that and we have the responsibility” to do that for them, he said.

Sitting beside Farid at a panel discussion following the film, Rabbi Jehiel Orenstein, religious leader emeritus of Congregation Beth El in South Orange, noted that “in the Bible, it says, ‘The bloods of their brothers are crying out.’ ‘Bloods’ is in the plural. It is not one person who dies. It is the children of that person and the grandchildren of that person who would have been born. The loss of one is a tragedy beyond speaking. We must do something together,” the rabbi urged.

Answering a question about the possibility of enlisting professional and Olympic athletes as role models against genocide and racism, Farid said, “If we had a Kobe Bryant, if we had a Tiger Woods — certainly African-American athletes should be in the forefront in a battle like this. It happened to us. We experienced government-sanctioned slavery. We also experienced racism in the name of religion from the Ku Klux Klan.

“This is an issue that should be close to our hearts,” continued Farid. “We have no athletes on the level of Muhammad Ali or Paul Robeson to stand up and put their careers and their wealth on the line. (Robeson, a native of Princeton and graduate of Rutgers University, was an outstanding scholar, singer, and actor as well as an all-American football player.) The athletes could really make an impact on this issue. They could put some pressure on China and America because America borrows money from China.”

Lori Heniger, a Quaker activist from Princeton who has worked with refugees from Darfur, cautioned the audience against wholesale condemnation of the Chinese. Pointing out that there are quiet dissenters to its policies in and outside of its government, she confessed to being “glib on a regular basis about people like ‘the Chinese.’ But if we paint everybody with the same brush, I think we run into some big trouble.”

Expressing the wish that fellow American Muslims were more involved in the struggle against racism and genocide, Farid described himself as “almost like a lone voice in the Muslim community, because Muslims are feeling they would be categorized as attacking Islam if they point their finger at what is going in Sudan.” The victims of the persecution include some 200,000 African Muslims killed, tens of thousands of women raped, and another 2.5 million driven from their homes by Sudanese Arab militias.

“We have taught Muslims to raise their voice if there is wrong anywhere,” Farid said. “That is a personal challenge I have taken because I am aware that this religion, as any other religion I have heard of, does not sanction rape, slavery, killing, and slaughter.”

The targeting of the Darfurians “is oppression in the name of religion,” said Farid. “The Arab world and the Muslim world have to stand up and look to Sudan and ask them, ‘What the hell are we doing? How can this be done in the name of God?’”

An audience member asked the panelists how they viewed the possibility of military action against the Sudanese government.

Dr. Jerry Ehrlich, a Cherry Hill pediatrician who has treated children in Darfurian refugee camps as a volunteer from Doctors Without Borders, said, “We don’t need U.S. military intervention in Sudan and Darfur. The Sudanese militias are very poorly trained and would be no match for a United Nations or African Union peacekeeping force. It would put them out of business very quickly. This is what I have been told many, many times.”

Ehrlich said a 26,000-person hybrid UN-African Union force adequately equipped with helicopters would put the people committing genocide “in the Nile overnight — but that is not happening.”

“A military response in Vietnam ended in disaster,” said Farid in response. “A military response in Iraq continues in disaster. Gandhi proved a revolution could be won in India without military intervention. Apartheid ended in South Africa without military intervention.

“I couldn’t have made this film without thinking about the atrocities in Europe, how the Jewish people suffered, and the Gypsies, and others,” Farid added. “And I couldn’t have made this film without thinking about the Armenians and how they suffered under the Ottoman Empire and did not have the capacity to record and document their holocaust.

“And I couldn’t have made this film without thinking about the African-Americans who lost their lives in slavery. You have to connect the dots to make the picture come together. That is what we are trying to do. We are trying to connect the dots. Looking across this stage there is the sign of possibility that it can be done.”

People wishing to arrange a screening of Darfur: Too Dark, Too Far may contact Donald Bernard at Foremost Films at 973-642-8760. The event was sponsored by the Holocaust Council of MetroWest with The African-American Heritage Parade Committee and NoCane, Inc.

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