.Why blame children?
Is it the politics of desperation or just a glimpse of Hamas' amoral nature? Either way it is triply vile of Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, to publicly declare that because Israel had killed Palestinian children, "they have legitimised the murder of their own children".
No person – and that certainly includes no Jewish person – can fail to be upset at the deaths of children in Gaza. Otherwise we lose our humanity. We may know that war always involves innocents paying a high cost – such as German children in Dresden killed by British bombers during the Second World War – but we still have to be appalled by it. Rationally it may be inevitable, but emotionally we should rebel against it.
But there is an enormous difference between children being the accidental victims when targetting others, and deliberately seeking out children as part of your hit list. The former is regrettable, the latter is despicable.
Yes, Hamas leaders must be pained at the suffering around them, but (leaving aside as to how much responsibility they carry for not renewing the ceasefire and for sending rockets into Israel) surely their response should be to vent their rage on the Israeli military. Why blame children? Whatever sympathy the Hamas leadership might have deserved has evaporated in this massive moral own goal.
If this was not bad enough in itself, there was a second level of vileness – for the Hamas leader went on to announce that this permission to kill extended "all over the world".
What does this mean other than attacking Jews? It is an astonishing stereotype, regarding Jews and Israelis as identical, confusing members of a 4000-year-old faith and citizens of a 60-year-old state. Many Jews support the right of Israel to exist, but there the bloc-comparison stops. They vary enormously as to what view they hold of the present government or its current policies. Regarding Jews as surrogate Israelis is factually wrong and again raises questions about Hamas' moral competence.
But the third aspect of the Hamas declaration is that it effectively extends the battlefield from a tiny sliver of land in the Middle East to a global conflict. The result could be that even more innocents are caught up in the killings if there are bomb attacks on Jewish schools in London, Madrid or Paris.
It totally undermines the many Muslim and Jewish leaders in Britain who are actively working for harmony, and who are saying "Yes, there may be a political conflict between Israelis and Palestinians over there, but we do not want to transport it here too."
Not so long ago, the local imam came to my synagogue and said a prayer for peace in Arabic, and I then went to his mosque and said a prayer for peace in Hebrew. We wanted to tell our respective communities that whatever territorial disputes occur the other side of the Mediterranean does not mean there has to be religious conflict between Jews and Muslims in Britain.
This is the way forward, a religious rapprochement which we might even be able to transport back to the Middle East – not declarations that promise to add more children to the death-toll.
Guardian
No person – and that certainly includes no Jewish person – can fail to be upset at the deaths of children in Gaza. Otherwise we lose our humanity. We may know that war always involves innocents paying a high cost – such as German children in Dresden killed by British bombers during the Second World War – but we still have to be appalled by it. Rationally it may be inevitable, but emotionally we should rebel against it.
But there is an enormous difference between children being the accidental victims when targetting others, and deliberately seeking out children as part of your hit list. The former is regrettable, the latter is despicable.
Yes, Hamas leaders must be pained at the suffering around them, but (leaving aside as to how much responsibility they carry for not renewing the ceasefire and for sending rockets into Israel) surely their response should be to vent their rage on the Israeli military. Why blame children? Whatever sympathy the Hamas leadership might have deserved has evaporated in this massive moral own goal.
If this was not bad enough in itself, there was a second level of vileness – for the Hamas leader went on to announce that this permission to kill extended "all over the world".
What does this mean other than attacking Jews? It is an astonishing stereotype, regarding Jews and Israelis as identical, confusing members of a 4000-year-old faith and citizens of a 60-year-old state. Many Jews support the right of Israel to exist, but there the bloc-comparison stops. They vary enormously as to what view they hold of the present government or its current policies. Regarding Jews as surrogate Israelis is factually wrong and again raises questions about Hamas' moral competence.
But the third aspect of the Hamas declaration is that it effectively extends the battlefield from a tiny sliver of land in the Middle East to a global conflict. The result could be that even more innocents are caught up in the killings if there are bomb attacks on Jewish schools in London, Madrid or Paris.
It totally undermines the many Muslim and Jewish leaders in Britain who are actively working for harmony, and who are saying "Yes, there may be a political conflict between Israelis and Palestinians over there, but we do not want to transport it here too."
Not so long ago, the local imam came to my synagogue and said a prayer for peace in Arabic, and I then went to his mosque and said a prayer for peace in Hebrew. We wanted to tell our respective communities that whatever territorial disputes occur the other side of the Mediterranean does not mean there has to be religious conflict between Jews and Muslims in Britain.
This is the way forward, a religious rapprochement which we might even be able to transport back to the Middle East – not declarations that promise to add more children to the death-toll.
Guardian
posted by madtom at 7:01 PM
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