Heroes are not the ones “just there writing on the keyboard”

Activists are replacing “heroes” in a politically correct era. True life heroes of the past actually put their lives and freedom at risk. As an employee of the Social Welfare Department, Irena carried a special permit to enter the Warsaw Ghetto to check for signs of a typhus outbreak the Nazis were trying to control. She used this cover to smuggle out babies and little children in ambulances and trams--even cleverly disguising them as packages. Replacing real life heroism with politically correct icons may have started with Irena Sendler, a candidate for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, who is credited with saving 2,500 Jews from the Holocaust--and Al Gore.

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In 1943, Sendler was caught and arrested by the fearsome Gestapo. She was severely tortured and sentenced to death. The organization, for which she worked, saved her life by bribing German guards when Sendler was on her way to execution. Listed among the many dead, Sendler, who had been left in the woods, unconscious with broken arms and legs, miraculously survived and went into hiding for the remainder of the war. Even then, she continued finding safe houses for Jewish children. One of the most touching parts of Irena Sendler’s true story is that she had buried the identities of some 2,500 children in jars, and when she could, dug the jars back up, returning as many children as possible to their overjoyed parents. Sendler, who died in May of 2008, took all of the chances. Al Gore got the prize and the million dollars that goes with it. Borrowing from a Barack Obama phrase, today’s heroes have “no skin in the game”. From the front page of FoxNews this morning comes the headline “Google Executive Hailed as a Hero Online.” “Google Inc. executive Wael Ghonim, released from detention by Egyptian state security Monday night, became the face of the country’s online youth movement after he conceded to creating a Facebook group that helped amass thousands of people for the anti-government protests rocking Egypt in their third week.” (FoxNews, Feb. 8, 2011). And as we know, another Google guy, Jared Cohen, Director of Google Ideas, heads up the Alliance for Youth Movement (AYM), a group that teaches digital activists to foment for revolution. AYM has connections to the April 6 group, which is at the forefront of the current protests in Egypt. Much has been made of Wael Ghonim after his release by Egypt’s Dream TV. Ghonim was interviewed on DreamTV just hours after being taken home from detention by the ruling National Democratic Party’s Secretary General Hossam Badrawi. Mona El Shazly had interviewed Ghonim on her program by telephone, on the government’s crackdown on the Internet, the night before he went missing. In fairness, Ghonim told the truth: I’m not a hero,” he said. “The heroes are the ones who protested, who are the ones who sacrificed their lives, who were beaten,” he said. “I was just there writing on the keyboard.”