How much is a Lebanese life worth?
I can't bear to keep posting up figures of all the people killed in the attacks in Lebanon. In fact, I have felt so distressed that the world is sitting by and doing nothing, that I've been unable to write anything over the weekend. I've been trying to work out what is going to break the international community's paralysis and stop the killing frenzy.
It's just so very hard to see how the US and my very own UK government can possibly toe the Israeli line in saying Israel has the right to totally destroy Lebanon. If I'm not mistaken Israel is supposed to be a Jewish state. Doesn't Judaism direct its adherents to live in peace with its neighbours? Every time Israel doesn't like what someone else is doing, it takes a heavy hand and literally steam rollers in. In my lifetime Israel has occupied more of its neighbours than any other middle eastern country. If Israel genuinely wants to live in peace, why does it keep picking fights?
I was heartened this morning to hear that Human Rights Watch (whatever you may think of them) are investigating Israel for war crimes because they believe that Israel's attacks are "indiscriminate and disproportionate".
However, my most horrific moment over the weekend was seeing photos of young Israeli children sending "gifts of love" on missiles destined for the children of Lebanon. These pictures were taken at a heavy artillery position near Kiryat Shmona close to the Lebanese border. You can argue your case as to whether these are real or not. But it falls into a pattern which highlights the inability of Israelis to see Arabs as human beings.
I remember travelling to Jerusalem and Gaza in the late nineties when things were by comparison at a low level of activity. I would watch young Israeli soldiers with huge rifles and barely a hint of stubble on their chins, pulling over Arabs indiscriminately, demanding their ID, detaining them when they were clearly going about their own quiet business. I watched at the border with Gaza as they were herded like cattle through the high barbed wire fences and their possessions were tipped out of their bags and ransacked in the search for who knows what. I spoke to a young woman in Gaza who told me that in her twenty years of life she had never been permitted to visit Jerusalem and the holy sites - places less than 30 minutes drive away.
The torture, the poverty, the pain must be unbearable, but what struck me most was how Israel had taken away these people's human-ness. How it saw them just as pests, not human beings. And here we are again in Lebanon, with the same mindset seeping through.
If I had to do some maths on the value of life it seems as though 2 Israeli military personnel kidnapped = 300 Lebanese civilians dead (and counting) and 500,000 Lebanese displaced.
The tragedy is that the holocaust showed the heinously disgusting and disastrous results of dehumanising people through the way that the Nazis acted against those who were 'other'. How tragic it is to see the victim turning perpetrator. The world after the second world war was supposed to be a brighter place. When did the flame of hope blow out?
It's just so very hard to see how the US and my very own UK government can possibly toe the Israeli line in saying Israel has the right to totally destroy Lebanon. If I'm not mistaken Israel is supposed to be a Jewish state. Doesn't Judaism direct its adherents to live in peace with its neighbours? Every time Israel doesn't like what someone else is doing, it takes a heavy hand and literally steam rollers in. In my lifetime Israel has occupied more of its neighbours than any other middle eastern country. If Israel genuinely wants to live in peace, why does it keep picking fights?
I was heartened this morning to hear that Human Rights Watch (whatever you may think of them) are investigating Israel for war crimes because they believe that Israel's attacks are "indiscriminate and disproportionate".
However, my most horrific moment over the weekend was seeing photos of young Israeli children sending "gifts of love" on missiles destined for the children of Lebanon. These pictures were taken at a heavy artillery position near Kiryat Shmona close to the Lebanese border. You can argue your case as to whether these are real or not. But it falls into a pattern which highlights the inability of Israelis to see Arabs as human beings.
I remember travelling to Jerusalem and Gaza in the late nineties when things were by comparison at a low level of activity. I would watch young Israeli soldiers with huge rifles and barely a hint of stubble on their chins, pulling over Arabs indiscriminately, demanding their ID, detaining them when they were clearly going about their own quiet business. I watched at the border with Gaza as they were herded like cattle through the high barbed wire fences and their possessions were tipped out of their bags and ransacked in the search for who knows what. I spoke to a young woman in Gaza who told me that in her twenty years of life she had never been permitted to visit Jerusalem and the holy sites - places less than 30 minutes drive away.The torture, the poverty, the pain must be unbearable, but what struck me most was how Israel had taken away these people's human-ness. How it saw them just as pests, not human beings. And here we are again in Lebanon, with the same mindset seeping through.
If I had to do some maths on the value of life it seems as though 2 Israeli military personnel kidnapped = 300 Lebanese civilians dead (and counting) and 500,000 Lebanese displaced.
The tragedy is that the holocaust showed the heinously disgusting and disastrous results of dehumanising people through the way that the Nazis acted against those who were 'other'. How tragic it is to see the victim turning perpetrator. The world after the second world war was supposed to be a brighter place. When did the flame of hope blow out?
posted by Shelina Zahra Janmohamed at 13:25
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