In
recent days Left wing activists have distributed
photos throughout the Internet. They were of Lebanese
children, victims of Israeli terror attacks. They
were meant to shock and they did. Infanticide bombers
raining murder from the sky dilute the moral thrust
of any Israeli condemnation of Palestinian suicide
bombers who take the lives of Israeli civilians.
Apart from the infanticide bombers escaping the
destruction they wreak, in a way that the suicide
bombers can never hope to, there is nothing in the
actions of each that would ethically differentiate
one from the other as they seek to destroy the children
of a different nationality. Whatever contexts are
manufactured to simultaneously legitimise one cause
and undermine another, the legitimacy of a grievance
does not travel unfiltered to the actions used to
redress the same grievance. In societies that do
not practice barbarism a range of ethical barriers
spikes the grievance-to-action conductor. As the
old liberal adage would have it, process alone justifies
outcome.
There were also photos of Israeli children. Not
those killed by Hezbollah rockets, but of children
signing warheads destined to slaughter their young
counterparts across the border in Lebanon. Inculcating
children with murderous sentiment is hardly the
hallmark of a civilised nation. Were SS soldiers
to have allowed German children to autograph Zyklon
B capsules before they were tossed into the gas
chambers of Auschwitz, the bottomless pit that was
the sum total of their inhumanity would, more than
sixty years later, remain beyond out comprehension.
Those
who circulated the photos of Israeli children signing
warheads may have left themselves open to the accusation
that their action was a subliminal attempt to interpellate
recipients of the images into some warped ideological
framework seeking to excuse the Hezbollah bombs
that rain down on such children. The dispensers
of the photographs could as easily have chosen those
of dead and mutilated Israeli children who had as
much right to live as Lebanese children. That those
who govern them from Jerusalem are the primary aggressors
in the current imbroglio does not diminish by one
iota their rights not to be slaughtered by bombers
of whatever hue.
But
this is a propaganda war on top of whatever else
it may be. Hearts and minds are the territory to
be conquered. Although the selective eye of the
image disseminators is evident by their choice of
some dead children over others, it does not necessarily
follow that they think Lebanese children alone are
victims. Nor should it be presumed that they are
indifferent to the fate of the equally innocent
in Northern Israel. In their partisan way they are
simply trying to mobilise opinion against those
with their finger on the war button. And one-dimensional
as their depiction of the suffering tends to be,
they have correctly identified the hand from which
that particular digit extends.
Israel
is concerned about the impact of imagery depicting
it as the aggressor. Alarmed that the truth about
its brutal occupation of the Lebanon is reaching
into the living rooms of millions across Europe,
the Knesset is sending Deputy Prime Minister Shimon
Perez off to bamboozle Europeans, to ask us all
to shut up and remain silent while Lebanese children
in cancer hospitals scream in pain for want of proper
medication. At the very least, Perez should be told
ad nauseam the message from the EU presidency: 'Actions
which are contrary to international humanitarian
law can only aggravate the vicious circle of violence
and retribution.' And then photos of slaughtered
children, Israeli as well as Lebanese, should be
shoved in his face to let him know his government
is the key protagonist in the war on children.
For
there can be no escaping it. Israel's bellicose
intent in the Middle East fuels a cycle of violence.
When it slaughters Palestinian or Lebanese civilians
it authors a situational logic which substantially
increases the risk factor for its own population.
As the Palestinian writer Marwan Bishara has observed,
'Israel's harsh responses to Palestinian militancy
have generally increased, not reduced, the threat
to Israelis.' He cites US academic Steve Niva who
having monitored the cycle of violence from 2000,
concludes that major Palestinian suicide bombings
against Israeli civilians have been in retaliation
for Israeli aggression. Such a situational logic
in no way makes the killing of Israelis civilians
justified, but it certainly makes them likely.
A
humanitarian disaster looms if the Israeli Blitzkrieg
of Lebanon is not halted in its tracks. Only 127
kilometres from Beirut, the children of Damascus
must lie in bed at night wondering if the infanticide
bombers, safe in the cockpits of their modern Messerschmitts,
are coming for them.
