What is The Isaiah 62 Declaration?
The Isaiah 62 Declaration was written in the spring of 2022 by three Jews residing in Jerusalem and London, two of whom are historians and one a former journalist.
Over the previous two years, we had watched on in horror as events that we only knew from history books started manifesting in our own lives: draconian rules put in place by politicians in the name of ‘public health’, all too often enforced by over-enthusiastic law enforcement officers; the division of society into two castes: clean and unclean; the exclusion of those considered ‘unclean’ from shared and public spaces; and most alarming — the mob turning violent towards dissenters.
In exasperation, one of us quizzed a security guard at a Jerusalem museum over nonsensical, arbitrary rules only to be told by the guard that he was “only following orders”.
Finally we decided that a statement had to be made: a warning to the world over where this had led before, and could well lead again.
As we set about penning the declaration, the ostensible cause of all this division faded out. Omicron proved to be no more dangerous than a common cold, and people around the world were increasingly demanding a return to the Old Normal. Governments slowly, cautiously, dropped regulations and allowed populations to get back to work, back to their families, (with no apology for the damage that had been waged to livelihoods and lives during the previous two years).
Yet we decided to move ahead regardless, for the very simple reason: if governments can do that once, they can do it again.
All too soon our fears were realized, as the invasion of Ukraine by Russia allowed a new ‘undesirable caste’ to be created. Innocent Russians found themselves gleefully discriminated against by a population trained, by now, to persecute with moral impunity.
In Germany, 68-year-old Russian conductor Valery Gergiev was fired from the Munich Philharmonic orchestra for wrong-think.
The global freelancing platform Upwork, which states it’s mission as being “to create economic opportunities so people have better lives,” announced that it would be throwing Russian and Belarussian freelancers off its platform. With no sense of irony the company bombastically explained: “Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has challenged our mission, values, and our operational ability to bring economic empowerment to those who seek it.”
And Covid too has not been entirely dropped as a reason to limit freedoms. Despite mainstream media looking the other way, in April, many worldwide were horrified to view scenes of Shanghai residents screaming from their windows as they died of starvation, due to their government’s crazed pursuit of ‘Zero Covid’.
On April & 2022 we published The Isaiah 62 Declaration, which you can read in full and, if you wish, sign, by visiting www.isaiah62declaration.com.
In the words of Vera Sharav, “Never Again is now”. In these pages, we seek to raise awareness of the rise of the new totalitarianism as it happens. And we call upon the world to stand up to totalitarian policies in all their forms, regardless of which political entity is enacting them, before it is too late.
