A broad moral gulf separates us from our enemies. They sanctify death; we sanctify life. They sanctify cruelty, and we mercy and compassion. That is the secret of our strength.—Benjamin Netanyahu, at the funeral of three slain Israeli teenagers.
WTF? Israel shows no morality, no mercy, and no compassion for Palestinians. Israel’s strength is not a mystery. Their power is dependent on their belief that they are God’s Chosen, on sophisticated weaponry, US tax dollars, and bipartisan congressional support of Zionism that renders any “peace process” a charade.
During the funeral, right-wing protestors screamed for blood, “Death to Arabs.”
“There is no forgiveness for murderers of children,” said Israeli Economy Minister Naphtali Bennett. “Now is a time for actions, not words.” And action it was, has been for years, and is. Without due process, the Israeli military exploded family homes of two suspects—an uncivilized reaction that continues a cycle of retribution. Go door-to-door, terrorizing men, women, and children. Destroy homes. Bomb them. Strike Gaza. Don’t investigate to determine who’s responsible for the kidnapping and deaths of Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Fraenkel, and Gilad Shaar. And announce with chutzpa, as Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Avalon just did, that settlements will be built to memorialize the three slain teens. Yes, they’d have taken this measure regardless, any excuse, but now it’s exceedingly opportune—exploiting the deaths of the young as a sacrosanct right to seize more land.
Of course Barack Obama issued a statement:
As a father, I cannot imagine the indescribable pain that the parents of these teenage boys are experiencing. The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms this senseless act of terror against innocent youth.
Interesting. Seems Obama’s forgotten Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the teenager and US citizen on his Kill List, incinerated in a CIA-led drone strike. Obama can’t imagine the indescribable pain that this young man’s parent (singular) feels. That’s singular because the boy’s father, Anwar al-Awlaki also was on Obama’s Kill List and droned two weeks before the death of his son. The attack in Yemen on Oct 14, 2011, that killed the young al-Awalaki also killed his teenage cousin and at least five other civilians as they sat in a restaurant. Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was 16, the same age as two of the Israelis, but the murder of al-Awlaki was, well, sensible, to Obama.
Last week, I was in the lobby of my building where a TV is tuned daily to CNN. I stopped to view the faces of the three Israeli teenagers.
In May, two Palestinian teenagers were shot and killed in separate incidents by Israeli troops. Later, film from a surveillance camera was examined, providing evidence that neither teen posed a threat. Did world leaders speak to this horror? Call for justice? Of course not. Never do we see the faces of Palestinian children kidnapped and killed by the IDF—at least not on mainstream news networks. Nor do we see the wretchedness, the inhumanity, of Gaza.
Identical to American exceptionalism’s sadism, Israel’s violent acts are legitimized by righteousness and a response to the aggressor’s (?) viciousness.
The message is hypocritically clear: Some lives are more valuable than others. We hear the cries of the Jewish parents, the family members, their friends, and we feel their suffering. But let us understand that mothers and fathers, whether they’re Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghan, Syrian, Yemini, in the lands ravaged by US greed, anywhere, love their children as much as we love ours. Let us love not only the children of those we call our allies and our own but all children. Let us value all life.
Let us value all life was supposed to be the closing sentence in this piece. I should start over, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll just add more paragraphs.
The death of 16-year-old Muhammad Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian, has been reported by US mainstream news venues. Last Wednesday morning, the teenager was kidnapped, his burned body found a couple of hours later—apparently a reprisal killing. His cousin has demanded that the Israeli police and Israeli government do what they did in Hebron: “Demolish and blow the settler houses who have done this crime.”
Netanyahu, fearful of individual retaliations, this time has called for an investigation, issuing a statement that Israel is a country of laws and “Everyone is ordered to act according to the law”—despite the lawlessness unleashed after the kidnapping of the Israeli teens and further lawlessness after their bodies were discovered. Despite no inquiry to determine who killed them but instead a rampage of terror against the Palestinians.
Reading a New York Timesarticle, I gasped that a Facebook group was created to promote revenge for the deaths of the Israeli teens. A photo was posted of two girls, holding a sign: “Hating Arabs is not racism, it’s values!”
This is eye for an eye. And everyone will be blind.
Missy Comley Beattiehas written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. She was an instructor of memoirs writing at Johns Hopkins’ Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Baltimore. Email: missybeat@gmail.com.
RSS
An eye for an eye
Posted on July 8, 2014 by Missy Comley Beattie
WTF? Israel shows no morality, no mercy, and no compassion for Palestinians. Israel’s strength is not a mystery. Their power is dependent on their belief that they are God’s Chosen, on sophisticated weaponry, US tax dollars, and bipartisan congressional support of Zionism that renders any “peace process” a charade.
During the funeral, right-wing protestors screamed for blood, “Death to Arabs.”
“There is no forgiveness for murderers of children,” said Israeli Economy Minister Naphtali Bennett. “Now is a time for actions, not words.” And action it was, has been for years, and is. Without due process, the Israeli military exploded family homes of two suspects—an uncivilized reaction that continues a cycle of retribution. Go door-to-door, terrorizing men, women, and children. Destroy homes. Bomb them. Strike Gaza. Don’t investigate to determine who’s responsible for the kidnapping and deaths of Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Fraenkel, and Gilad Shaar. And announce with chutzpa, as Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Avalon just did, that settlements will be built to memorialize the three slain teens. Yes, they’d have taken this measure regardless, any excuse, but now it’s exceedingly opportune—exploiting the deaths of the young as a sacrosanct right to seize more land.
Of course Barack Obama issued a statement:
Interesting. Seems Obama’s forgotten Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the teenager and US citizen on his Kill List, incinerated in a CIA-led drone strike. Obama can’t imagine the indescribable pain that this young man’s parent (singular) feels. That’s singular because the boy’s father, Anwar al-Awlaki also was on Obama’s Kill List and droned two weeks before the death of his son. The attack in Yemen on Oct 14, 2011, that killed the young al-Awalaki also killed his teenage cousin and at least five other civilians as they sat in a restaurant. Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was 16, the same age as two of the Israelis, but the murder of al-Awlaki was, well, sensible, to Obama.
Last week, I was in the lobby of my building where a TV is tuned daily to CNN. I stopped to view the faces of the three Israeli teenagers.
In May, two Palestinian teenagers were shot and killed in separate incidents by Israeli troops. Later, film from a surveillance camera was examined, providing evidence that neither teen posed a threat. Did world leaders speak to this horror? Call for justice? Of course not. Never do we see the faces of Palestinian children kidnapped and killed by the IDF—at least not on mainstream news networks. Nor do we see the wretchedness, the inhumanity, of Gaza.
Identical to American exceptionalism’s sadism, Israel’s violent acts are legitimized by righteousness and a response to the aggressor’s (?) viciousness.
The message is hypocritically clear: Some lives are more valuable than others. We hear the cries of the Jewish parents, the family members, their friends, and we feel their suffering. But let us understand that mothers and fathers, whether they’re Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghan, Syrian, Yemini, in the lands ravaged by US greed, anywhere, love their children as much as we love ours. Let us love not only the children of those we call our allies and our own but all children. Let us value all life.
Let us value all life was supposed to be the closing sentence in this piece. I should start over, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll just add more paragraphs.
The death of 16-year-old Muhammad Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian, has been reported by US mainstream news venues. Last Wednesday morning, the teenager was kidnapped, his burned body found a couple of hours later—apparently a reprisal killing. His cousin has demanded that the Israeli police and Israeli government do what they did in Hebron: “Demolish and blow the settler houses who have done this crime.”
Netanyahu, fearful of individual retaliations, this time has called for an investigation, issuing a statement that Israel is a country of laws and “Everyone is ordered to act according to the law”—despite the lawlessness unleashed after the kidnapping of the Israeli teens and further lawlessness after their bodies were discovered. Despite no inquiry to determine who killed them but instead a rampage of terror against the Palestinians.
Reading a New York Times article, I gasped that a Facebook group was created to promote revenge for the deaths of the Israeli teens. A photo was posted of two girls, holding a sign: “Hating Arabs is not racism, it’s values!”
This is eye for an eye. And everyone will be blind.
Missy Comley Beattie has written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. She was an instructor of memoirs writing at Johns Hopkins’ Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Baltimore. Email: missybeat@gmail.com.