Tidying up my posts, I found this one in draft, from back in May. Since then we have had Beslan and uncounted further dead in Iraq, Israel and Palestine - not to mention Darfur. I debated with myself whether to post but decided in favour - not to stir things up but because of the conclusion I reached then still seems to hold true.
'They started it' is not the answer - it wasn't the answer in May and it still isn't. What is the answer? I wish I knew.
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Two Arab terrorists executed each little girl at point blank range with a shot to each one's head, the youngest child being only a two-year-old, after they first blew their mother to bits. The murders were witnessed by a CNN crew who watched with horror only 30 meters away.This is such a horrific and repulsive act that, quite frankly not wanting to believe it possible, I googled a query.
I found only this report from CNN.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/05/02/gaza.shooting/
The incident was one of several acts of violence Sunday, beginning with the killing of a pregnant Israeli woman and her four children by terrorists near a Gaza settlement, according to witnesses and Israeli military sources.I'm not suggesting in any way that these murders are not appalling but they are appalling without the nasty detail of executing each child in turn - something which clearly any sane person will find totally abhorrent.
Nothing however on the CNN site - or anywhere else - supports the statement that the killings were done in this way and witnessed by CNN staff. Everything I have found references the same single report which incidently also names a particular CNN producer. This report for example makes no mention of this seemingly telling detail or of the presence of CNN staff.
In the absence of any clear evidence I wonder if someone has invented this grisly detail simply to stir things up even further - if that is the case it is a pretty sick act in its own right. The alternative is that all the other media have supressed it.
My Lai was 30 years ago, but I remember the horror of that too.
Calley joined in the massacre. At one point, a two-year-old child who somehow survived the gunfire began running towards the hamlet. Calley grabbed the child, threw him back in the ditch, then shot him.http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/trial08.jpg
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/trial09.JPG
[warning - distressing images]From:http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/Myl_intro.html
I have linked these two cases not because I see one as inherently worse than another. Nothing, nothing, nothing can excuse such vile, inhuman behaviour. Even so we have to deal with the world as it is, and we cannot do this by taking some abstract moral high ground. I very much doubt that any country can claim to be able to cast the first stone.
Belgium and the Congo
Israel's links with apartheid South Africa
US support for Stroessner in Paraguay and the overthrow of Allende (another September 11th) - and for Saddam against Iran - see here for a full but unchecked (by me) list.
France in Algeria and the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior
Britain in Iraq and in South Africa during the Boer War.All these events were the result of political policy - some of them claiming more lives even than in Israel/Palestine or in Saddam's Iraq.
All our histories are tainted. Basing our foreign policy on playground taunts that 'they started it' is not the answer. The cycle of violence must be broken - it must.
UPDATE: Following up on Andrew's comment)
The 'cycle of violence' is real - if you are a 15 year old Palestinian in a refugee camp or a 15 year old Israeli living on the West Bank all you have seen is violence and death around you. You don't look at the history, you see your family and friends being killed by 'them' and you want to do something. There are always choices though - if 'they' won't negotiate or 'you' cannot deal directly with those you see as murderers it doesn't (necessarily) follow that the only way forward is to bomb the hell out of them and their neighbours.
It is probably most effective to target young people - not with bombs or military hardware but with ideas. The (slightly hysterical to my mind) campaign brewing up against allowing Turkey into the EU misses what I think would be a golden opportunity to change attitudes not of the minority of nutters who make up most active terrorist groups but of the majority who otherwise passively allow these things to happen. Keeping entire Islamic countries at arms length makes no sense. If we think our ideas and our society are so good then let others share them.
All easier said than done of course. But to paraphrase what was said about internment in Northern Ireland anything else would simply be recruitment propaganda for terrorists.
