Racism abundant...shocking!

The video and its story is splashing over the news and internet in Australia as much as the pope is filling US news outlets. And the video of a raging Israeli woman on a Sydney bus in Willoughby is shocking and embarrassing and horrible. The police arrested the woman of the video; the Chinese woman, Ms Lindsay Li will have a hard time believing that this woman is an anomaly. We can only hope.

Here's the Online story

NSW Police said the woman was arrested on Friday and taken to Merrylands police station with reports suggesting she was hurling abuse at yet another individual. The arrest comes after Lindsay Li, 29, filmed a prolonged verbal attack which started while she was waiting in Willoughby for the citybound 273 bus at lunchtime on Wednesday. Ms Li says the woman approached her and 'spat on her' before unleashing a prolonged verbal attack.

The woman, who referred to herself as a "Jew from Israel" then struck Ms Li with her shopping trolley and pushed in front of her when the bus pulled up.

The story above is only one of many in recent times of racial attacks and slurs and embarrassing commentary by patrons on public transportation around Sydney. What should anyone do; what should you do if you are sitting nearby this the next time it occurs?

The Bible in chapter 22 of Deuteronomy gives us significant help in knowing what to do. “You shall not see your countryman’s ox or his sheep straying away, and pay no attention to them; you shall certainly bring them back to your countryman." (verse 1) and again,
"If there is a girl who is a virgin engaged to a man, and another man finds her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city and you shall stone them to death; the girl, because she did not cry out in the city, and the man, because he has violated his neighbor’s wife. Thus you shall purge the evil from among you." (verses 23-24)

The assumption is that the girl would scream and since she did not, then no one came to help. But if she is in the field and no one is around who can help her, then only the man is responsible.(verse 25) In other words, we are (in the words of Cain after he struck and killed his brother) "our brother's keeper."

Maybe that's part of what informs Hillary Rodham Clinton in her "it takes a village" thinking. Maybe this helps us understand the subway echo in New York City where the mantra sounds, "If you see something, say something." That would help us understand the word "neighbourhood" itself. We have to acknowledge that we are neighbours before we can join together in a global village.

So what would you have done on that 273 bus? What would I have done?