When Will Somebody Stop Thinking of the Children?
Tim Cavanaugh | August 26, 2006, 6:31pm
At Spiked, Brendan O'Neill has a characteristically interesting take on the way kids make such top-notch war propagandists:
Increasingly, the Middle East is viewed through the eyes of a child. In culture, media and politics, images and stories of Lebanese, Palestinian and increasingly Israeli children, too, are dominant. There are films, both documentaries and fictional features, that tell the story of the Middle East from 'the children's view', which provide, according to one gushing report, a 'deeply humanistic insight into the complexities of the Middle East conflict that political analysis or frontline news coverage often lacks' (4). Journalists and photographers on the ground constantly seek out children, whether it's Palestinian kids throwing stones or Israeli kids weeping at the funeral of a loved one killed in a suicide bombing. Even the West's political interventions in the Middle East are increasingly conducted in the name of children. UN officials and NGOs chastise Israel for failing to adhere to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in its treatment of young Palestinians, as if Israel is an errant father and the Palestinians its wide-eyed charges (5).
This infantilisation of Israel, Palestine and now Lebanon shows the true relationship between the West and the Middle East today. It suggests that what really motivates Western media and political interest in the Israel-Palestine and Israel-Lebanon conflicts is less political solidarity, or anything to do with liberty or justice, but more a vicarious politics of pity. Images and stories of distressed children allow Western commentators and viewers to feel simultaneously upset and superior; it gives them both an emotional kick and makes them feel like responsible adults who wish to care for these damaged children far, far away.
This is a legitimate point, but I have to ask: when were things any different? I'd say the new characteristic in the latest Lebanon war was that all those Beirut hipsters provided something usually lacking in the dead-child-heavy coverage of Arab-Israeli conficts: a substantial number of westernized Arab sophistos with good English skills who were able to do talking-head duties on the news networks. The icons of Arab self-pity—dusty dead children, shrieking old women in chadors, trashed extended-family homes—have been with us since the beginning of time, and have never produced much emotional effect on American audiences. It was the large numbers of American-looking people on the receiving end of the Israeli offensive that made this event different. The argumentum ad puerum is by contrast an old chestnut that gets rolled out because it's easy to use. O'Neill sees a sinister purpose in all this:
The new child's-eye view of the Middle East also has the effect of reducing the debate about the future of the region to the level of a childish spat. Some argue that interviewing and photographing children captures the essence of the Middle Eastern conflict in a way that news reportage or analysis fails to. 'The kids', apparently, speak more truthfully and profoundly about their lives and experiences, because they are unpolluted by adult politics and outlooks. In fact, as anyone who has ever met a child will know, children can be extremely prejudiced and blinkered in their views. In fact, it seems that one reason why some reporters and filmmakers are drawn to the children of the Middle East is because they express the region's various prejudices in a sometimes shocking and unguarded way, thus sustaining the idea that this is a deeply bred and largely intractable conflict.
We should be so lucky. If dead child porn really had the capacity to make the Arab-Israeli conflict appear intractable to Americans, that would be a reason to favor it, because it might finally convince us to steer clear of the whole business.
James | August 27, 2006, 10:42am | #
Shannon Love: Sure, some people in the world quietly acquiesce to being second-hand citizens. But most fight back. The Tamil Tigers are largely unknown to most Americans and the Tamil people themselves are not nearly so vilified as the Palestinians. The Karen people of Myanmar have been at war with their government since...forever. The grow opium to finance terrorism. The Basque people have never had to suffer the intense personal loathing of the American press in the same way as the Palestinians. The Irish fought the British from the time of Cromwell until 1921 and are now widely admired for it.
The Polish people went without a country for a hundred and thirty-four years, with periodic uprising and generalized anti-German activity. The Vietnamese fought the Chinese, off and on, for a thousand years in order to prevent assimiliation. Like all underdogs, they used kidnappings and assassinations of collaborators and Chinese government officials to keep the pot boiling.
The blacks in South Africa used to "necklace" police informers in their ranks. An ugly business, that, but it certainly made it difficult for the police to recruit informers. The ANC and SWAPO both used terrorism and both have largely been exonerated in retrospect. The Jews themselves fought Roman occupation for hundreds of years. Do they now hang their heads in shame at the memory of it?
The Palestinians may have been the occupants of a backwards former province of the Ottoman Empire, with little national feeling, in the years prior to 1948, but fifty-plus years of shared suffering has hardened them into a nation without a state. Bad news for the Israelis, who did much to create their common consciousness.
We are left with the observation of Moshe Dayan, to the effect that as long as the Palestinians are on the West Bank, Israel cannot keep it. As long as the settlements are there, she can't give it back. Dayan was no Palestinian-lover himself, but he at least recognized them as human beings with normal human responses to the stimulus of occupation. It's only in the US that we see the hurt surprise that the Palestinians are behaving exactly the same way nearly every other population in the world would under the same circumstances.
It's a peculiar form of racism that asks the question: why are they acting like us?
Elmo | August 27, 2006, 1:20pm | #
Yes, it's terrible to see pictures, and hear stories of dead and maimed children, Yes, Yes, Yes.
But where is the child that leads them?
Or is it even a child that leads them at all?
In fact, are they not taught from the first suckling at their mother's breast to sacrifice themselves for Allah? So what else are they to know?
James writes of centuries of conflict that have become icons of "resistance". I have to ask, "When will the "resistance" to Allah's teachings become an icon, , , ,in the west?
Allah's teachings begin with Jews being dogs and pigs and monkeys. It ends with Jews having no right to life itself. In the last decades that anti-jew teaching has come to include everyone who not only supports the Jews, but also to everyone who does not subscribe to Allah's teachings. Remember the death fatwa against Salmon Rushdie just because he wrote a book exposing the teachings of Allah in language any sixth grader could understand? Or the killings that followed the cartoons in a Danish newspaper? Neither of these events were ever declaimed as lies or misrepresentations by any follower of Islam. They were simply condemned for having been made available to the eyes of infidels.
It is an old, and many times over, proven fact of conflict that to beat your adversary you have to know him. The West has an adversary, and the West better get to know him, if the conflict is to have any results even somewhat favorable to the West.
Some place the blame of the West that there is a conflict. But none that I have seen has any substance.
Maybe to pictures of dead and maimed little children will wake the western world up to how they got that way, , , , and why. They didn't get that way by their own design.
On the other hand, how many Jewish children have had their pictures and stories flashed to the world as they were laid on the funeral bier? Why is it the media completely ignores that Allah makes to distinction regarding children?
Nor do the followers of Allah.
Elmo | August 27, 2006, 6:45pm | #
James,
Now is your chance to do something that no one else has been able to do for centuries, and ceteanily not since 1948 when the current Israel was partitioned out what was at the time called "Palestine".
You keep referring to "their" land being "occupied". You also keep saying "settlements are being built there. Can you be more specific? And can you tell us just what land does Israel now occupy or where "settlements" are being built on land that is even remotely recognized Internationally as belonging to the Palestinians?
It would also be of some interest, to me at least, to know your version of just which of the dozen or so times, (wars), the Jews have made headlines over killing children that they started the conflict.
And of some interest too, is the question of time, money, effort, and technology being squandered by Jews, (and just about everybody else who shoots back at Arabs), on paraphenalia to avoid killing civilians, as opposed to IEDs, automobiles-turned-into-bombs, children-under-sheets-lined-with-C-4, and SCUD rockets, all of which are "intended" to kill civilians and children, how would you categorize the response thus far to the "higher standard" to which you and so much of the world want the Jews should display?
It wouldn't be "Not good enough" now would it?
So, tell me, just what would be "good enough"?
About the only thing left is for them to just lay down their arms and take it. Is that what you recommend?
If not, then as I started out, here is your chance to make a/some proposal/s that will work, for both the Palestinians and the Jews both. Rhetoric, rants, replaying old themesongs and making lame accusations do not count. Only concrete proposals, please.
You have the floor.
Elmo | August 27, 2006, 6:45pm | #
James,
Now is your chance to do something that no one else has been able to do for centuries, and ceteanily not since 1948 when the current Israel was partitioned out what was at the time called "Palestine".
You keep referring to "their" land being "occupied". You also keep saying "settlements are being built there. Can you be more specific? And can you tell us just what land does Israel now occupy or where "settlements" are being built on land that is even remotely recognized Internationally as belonging to the Palestinians?
It would also be of some interest, to me at least, to know your version of just which of the dozen or so times, (wars), the Jews have made headlines over killing children that they started the conflict.
And of some interest too, is the question of time, money, effort, and technology being squandered by Jews, (and just about everybody else who shoots back at Arabs), on paraphenalia to avoid killing civilians, as opposed to IEDs, automobiles-turned-into-bombs, children-under-sheets-lined-with-C-4, and SCUD rockets, all of which are "intended" to kill civilians and children, how would you categorize the response thus far to the "higher standard" to which you and so much of the world want the Jews should display?
It wouldn't be "Not good enough" now would it?
So, tell me, just what would be "good enough"?
About the only thing left is for them to just lay down their arms and take it. Is that what you recommend?
If not, then as I started out, here is your chance to make a/some proposal/s that will work, for both the Palestinians and the Jews both. Rhetoric, rants, replaying old themesongs and making lame accusations do not count. Only concrete proposals, please.
You have the floor.
Shannon Love | August 28, 2006, 12:00pm | #
Herb Schaffler,
You are buying into the Israeli propaganda. Civilians were deliberately targeted to turn the Lebanese people against Hezbollah
No, I used Google Earth. Try this: Open up Google Earth and go to southern Lebanon. Set you camera to 1,000 feet. Now "fly" over the entire region. Do see any place to hide a truck holding a rocket launcher except within civilian buildings? The region is mountainous and covered solidly by buildings, terraced fields and inaccessible peaks. Moreover, the place simply isn't that big. Use Google Earth's measuring tool to measure the distance from Soursour (Tyre-36"16' North, 35"11' East) eastward to the Israeli border (36"16' North, 35"34' East). That's a distance of 36km(22.38miles).
Hezbollah didn't have any choice but to use a shoot-and-scoot system of launching rockets and then hiding in civilian buildings. That, in fact, is quite legitimate warfare. However, the rules say that if you station legitimate targets in civilian areas the responsibility for civilian safety falls on you. Hezbollah should have immediately evacuated all the civilians from buildings were they positioned their weapons. The did not do this largely because people like you reward them with a propaganda coup every time their irresponsible and illegal actions get someone killed.
Likewise, Google Earth shows that their aren't any "military" bases, roads bridges etc. If Israel wanted to immobilize Hezbollah they had to strike civilian infrastructure.
The land offered was such a small area.
Again, Google Earth will show you that the entire region is a "small area." At its widest point, the Westbank is only 57km(35miles) wide. Israel at the same point is only 16km(10 miles) wide. Most of the Westbank is mountainous. The actual settle areas comprise less than 50% of the land.
Even though it was claimed to be 94% of the disputed land, it was only 46% of 22% of the disputed land.
Did you even run those numbers at all? The Westbank and Gaza together have a combined area of 6001km^. 46% of 22% of that is 607km^2 (a square 25km on a side). The Gaza strip alone, which Israel has already withdrawn from, has a area of 307km^2. I don't know where you got your numbers but they don't pass the sniff test.
The internet gives you the tools to do your own research and your own thinking. Use it.
Elmo | August 28, 2006, 3:26pm | #
Herb,
>>>>>>What about the fact that the West took land away from the Palestinians to give to the Jews? Would you fight to get your land back if it was taken from you?
Just to get the discussion framed, let's remember that it was not the "West" that took land away from the Palestinians. In fact, I believe no land was taken from them in the first place.
What was done was that in 1947 a proposal was made in the Unitd Nations General Assembly, and voted on in 1948, (which was made up of all the member nations in the UN at the time). And let's go back a little further, to the League of Nations after World War one, when all the countries in the Middle East had new boundaries drawn. Israel, (the Jews), was left out entirely, just as they have been left out since biblical times.
Too, let's remember that all that was done in 1948 was to give the Jews a home, and did not expel anyone. The Palestinians were not sent packing as many people believe, but were incorporated into the new fact of Israeli territory.
Instead, and with a degree of understandable rationale, they wanted their old boundaries, just as the Jews had wanted theirs. The problem they presented then, and still yet, was/is that they don't want the Jews to have any land of their own.
The worst part is that the Palestinians are pawns for the other countries in the Middle East who have never had the strength, or international support, to redraw those boundaries and do away with Israel.
They, (the Palestinians), have been offered boundaries, time and again, and whether at their own instance or the prompting of another source, they have ursurped the offers, the truces, the peace talks, and the boundaries, and they have done it all in the name of doing away with Israel.
To further frame the discussion, in answer to your question about fighting for my land, of course I would. Just as the Jews are fighting for theirs. But I believe "how" I would fight is the gist of this thread, so would you permit me the option of fighting with and against children in the name of preserving, or regaining my land?
It would seem that you surely don't permit the Jews that option, even when the children are placed there as shields against military targets.
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