Killing children is no longer a big deal

by soccerdad

' at the Bush administration's first National Security Council meeting, Bush asked if anyone had ever met Ariel Sharon. Some were uncertain if it was a joke. It wasn't: Bush launched into a riff about briefly meeting Sharon two years before, how he wouldn't ''go by past reputations when it comes to Sharon. . . . I'm going to take him at face value,'' and how the United States should pull out of the Arab-Israeli conflict because ''I don't see much we can do over there at this point.'' Colin Powell, for one, seemed startled. This would reverse 30 years of policy -- since the Nixon administration -- of American engagement. Such a move would unleash Sharon, Powell countered, and tear the delicate fabric of the Mideast in ways that might be irreparable. Bush brushed aside Powell's concerns impatiently. ''Sometimes a show of force by one side can really clarify things." '

So now the results of Bush's hands off policy giving Sharon a blank check have become clear. The roadmap has been tossed into the trash. There will be no Palestinian state. And the remaining Palestinians will be no better off than 3rd world slaves. But for today lets look at the human cost mainly incurred by the Palestinians but also the loss of humanity of many Israelis. Lets be clear, terrorist bombing of the Israelis is unacceptable. That aspect of this diaster has been well covered, but the other side, the effects on the Palestinians, has not. That is why I will concentrate on that side of the equation for today.

There is an article in Haaretz entitled Killing children is no longer a big deal . It laments the lack of humanity shown by the Sharon government in its actions against the Palestinians. One point that I'm not sure is well understood by US citizens due to the lack of press coverage is that there are many Israeli citizens opposed to the actions of their government.

Before the recent military actions in Gaza there were 557 Palestinian minors killed compared to 110 Israeli minors; palestinians - 42 were 10, 20 were 7, 8 were 2, and 13 were newborns who died at checkpoints during birth.

Mr Levy continues in the article

The plain fact, which must be stated clearly, is that the blood of hundreds of Palestinian children is on our hands. No tortuous explanation by the IDF Spokesman's Office or by the military correspondents about the dangers posed to soldiers by the children, and no dubious excuse by the public relations people in the Foreign Ministry about how the Palestinians are making use of children will change that fact. An army that kills so many children is an army with no restraints, an army that has lost its moral code.

As MK Ahmed Tibi (Hadash) said, in a particularly emotional speech in the Knesset, it is no longer possible to claim that all these children were killed by mistake. An army doesn't make more than 500 day-to-day mistakes of identity. No, this is not a mistake but the disastrous result of a policy driven mainly by an appallingly light trigger finger and by the dehumanization of the Palestinians. Shooting at everything that moves, including children, has become normative behavior.

Mr Levy describes a number of incidents whick make it clear that the troops knowingly shot children. He then concludes the article:

The public indifference that accompanies this pageant of unrelieved suffering makes all Israelis accomplices to a crime. Even parents, who understand what anxiety for a child's fate means, turn away and don't want to hear about the anxiety harbored by the parent on the other side of the fence. Who would have believed that Israeli soldiers would kill hundreds of children and that the majority of Israelis would remain silent? Even the Palestinian children have become part of the dehumanization campaign: killing hundreds of them is no longer a big deal.

The terrorist bombings of innocent Israels must and have been condemned. But the terrorist murder of innocent Palestinians must also be condemned or we also have lost our humanity and our moral bearings.

We see quite clearly that the actions of the Israelis against the Palestinians mirror our actions against Iraqis. We have dehumanized them to the point where the indiscriminate killing of civilans is of no concern to the soldiers, this administration, the press, and a great many of our citizens. So there you have it. Two of the supposedly great, well educated, self-proclaimed moral democracies of the world engaging in inhuman, indiscriminate killing of innocent people including children without much protest. We have lost our souls and our moral bearings. If this is what democracy is about, why would anyone want to adopt it? For us, we need to ask ourselves is this really the kind of country we want? One that murders during elective wars and doesn't care. I personally am ashamed.