Revenge Of A Child

[Guest guest]

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. "