Revenge Of A Child (KPFA)

[Guest guest]

Might want to listen to KPFA, especially " Flashpoints, " which gives

daily briefings on the Palestinian conflict. For the most recent

Tuesday, although this time, not about Palestine, click on

 

 

http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=18092

 

 

(About this program:

 

U.S. proxy war in Somalia expands with first direct attacks in 13 years.

 

Co-host Dennis Bernstein speaks with former U.N spokesman Salim Leon

in Kenya on fresh attacks by the U.S. military in neighboring Somalia.

Permanent plans for regional military presence move forward in an

attempt to control the resources of Africa.)

 

 

 

> by Uri Avnery, November 16, 2002

>

> (part of Chapter 7: Answers To The Hard Questions in the book

> Healing Israel/Palestine by Rabbi Michael Lerner. I am reading it

> as part of my negotiating through all the issues overt and covert as

> we speak on Monday's Middle Eastern Peace Forum.)

>

> 'Since last Sunday, a question has been running around in my head

> and troubling my sleep: What induced the young Palestinian, who

> broke into Kibbutz Metzer, to aim his weapon at a mother and her two

> little children and kill them?

>

> In war one does not kill children. That is a fundamental human

> instinct, common to all peoples and all cultures. Even a

> Palestinian who wants to take revenge for the hundreds of children

> killed by the Israeli army should not take revenge on children. No

> moral commandments says " a child for a child " .

>

> The persons who do these things are not known as crazy killers,

> blood-thirsty from birth. In almost all interviews with relatives

> and neighbors they are described as quite ordinary, non-violent

> individuals. Many of them are not religious fanatics. Indeed,

> Sirkhan Sirkhan, the man who committed the deed in Metzer, belonged

> to Fatah, a secular movement. These persons belong to all social

> classes: some come from poor familes who have reached the threshold

> of hunger, but others come from middle class familes, university

> students, educated people. Their genes are not different from ours.

>

> So what makes them do these things? What makes other Palestinians

> justify them?

>

> In order to cope, one has to understand, and that does not mean to

> justify. Nothing in the world can justify a Palestinian who shoots

> at a child in his mother's embrace, just as nothing can justify an

> Israeli who drops a bomb on a house in which a child is sleeping in

> his bed. As the Hebrew poet Bialik wrote a hundred years ago, after

> the Kishinew pogrom: " Even Satan has not yet invented the revenge

> for the blood of a liitle child. "

>

> But without understanding, it is impossible to cope. The chiefs of

> the IDF have a simple solution: hit, hit, hit. Kill the

> attackers. Kill their commanders. Kill the leaders of their

> organizations. Demolish the homes of their families and exile their

> relatives. But wonder of wonders, these methods achieve the

> opposite. After the huge IDF fulldoer flattens the " terrorist

> infrastructure " , destroying-killing-uprooting everthing on its way,

> within days a new " infrastructure " comes into being. According to

> the announcementsof the IDF itself, since operation " Protective

> Shield " there have been some fifty warnings of imminent attacks

> every day.

>

> The reason for this can be summed up in one word: rage.

>

> Terrible rage, that fills the soul of a human being, leaving no

> space for anything else. Rage that dominates the person's whole

> life, making life itself unimportant. Rage that wipes out all

> limitations, eclipses all values, breaks the chains of family and

> responsibility. Rage that a person wakes up with in the morning,

> goes to sleep with in the evening, dreams about at night. Rage that

> tells a person: get up, take a weapon or an exposive belt, go to

> their homes and kill, kill, kill, no matter what the consequences.

>

> An ordinary Israeli, who has never been in the Palestinian

> territories, cannot even imagine the reasons for this rage. Our

> media totally ignore the events there, or describe them in small,

> sweetened doses. The average Israeli knows somehow that the

> Palestinians suffer (it's their own fault, of course), but he has no

> idea what's really happening there. It doesn't concern him, anyhow.

>

> Homes are demolished. A merchant, lawyer, ordinary craftsman,

> respected in his community, turns overnight into a " homeless man, "

> he and his children and grandchildren. Each one of them a potential

> suicide bomber.

>

> Fruit-trees are being uprooted in their thousands. For the officer,

> it's just a tree, an obstacle. For the owners, it's the blood of

> his heart, the heritage of his forefathers, years of toil, the

> livelihood of his family. Each one of them a potential suicide

> bomber.

>

> On a hill between the villages a gang of thugs has put up

> an " outpost. " The army arrives to defend them. When the villagers

> come to till their fields, they are shot at. They are forbidden to

> work in all fields and groves with a one or two kilometers' range,

> so that the security of the outpost will not be endangered. The

> peasants see from afar, with longing eyes, how their fruit is

> rotting on the trees, how their fields are being covered by thorns

> and thistles waist high, while their children have nothing to eat.

> Each one of them a potential suicide bomber.

>

> People are killed. Their torn bodies lie in the streets, for

> everyone to see. Some of them are " martyrs " who chose their lot.

> But many others--men, women, children--are killed " by

> mistake, " " accidentally, " " trying to escape, " " were close to the

> source of fire " --and al the hundred-and-one pretexts of professional

> spokesmen. The IDF does not apologize, officers and soldiers are

> never convicted, because " that's how things are in war. " But each

> of the people killed has parents, brothers, sons, cousins,. Each

> one of them a potential suicide bomber.

>

> Beyond these are the families living on the fringes of hunger,

> suffering from severe malnutrition. Fathers who cannot bring food

> to their children feel despair. Each one of them a potential

> suicide bomber.

>

> Hundreds of thousand are kept under curfew for weeks and months on

> end, eight persons cooped up in two or three rooms, a living hell

> difficult to imagine, while outside the settlers have a ball,

> protected by the soldiers. A vicious circle: yestersday's bombers

> caused the curfew, the curfew creates the bombers of tomorrow.

>

> And beyond all these, there is the total humiliation which every

> Palestinian, without distinction of age, gender or social standing,

> experiences every moment of his life. Not an abstract humiliation,

> but an altogether concrete one. To be dependent for life and death

> on the whim of an 18 year-old boy in the street and at one of the

> innumerable checkpoints that a Palestinian has to pass wherever he

> goes, while gangs of settlers pass freely and " visit " their

> villages, damage property, pick the olives in the groves, set fire

> to the trees.

>

> An Israeli who has not seen it cannot imagine such a life, a

> situation of " every bastard a king " and " the slave who has becomes

> master, " a situation of curses and pushes at best, threats with

> weapons in many cases, actual shooting in some. Not to mention the

> sick on the way to dialysis, the pregant women on the way to

> hospitals, students on their way to school who cannot reach the

> clinic, cannot reach the hospital, cannot reach the school. Not too

> mention the youngsters who see their venerable grandfather publicly

> humiliated by some boy in uniform with a runny nose. Each one of

> them a potential suicde bomber.

>

> A normal Israeli cannot imagine all this. After all, the soldeirs

> are nice boys, the sons of all of us, only yesterday they were

> schoolboys. But when one takes these nice boys and puts them in

> uniform, pushes them through the military machine, and puts them

> into a situation of occupation, something happens to them. Many try

> to keep their human face in impossible circumstances, but many

> others become order-fulfilling robots. And always, in every

> company, there are some disturbed people who flourish in this

> situation and do repulsive things, knowing that their officers will

> turn a blind eye or wink approvingly.

>

> All this does not justify the killing of children in the arms of

> their mother. But it helps to grasp why this is happening, and why

> this will go on happening as long as the occupation lasts. "

>