Hold Your Fire: Children and Civilians In Gaza

In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag's meditation on images depicting the atrocities of wartime, she cites Virginia Woolf's lacerating indictment of war, written in 1936 as the Spanish Civil War was unfolding. Woolf's polemic was a response to a lawyer who had engaged her on the issue of war.

She opened her argument by declaring that the lawyer as a man and she as a woman could not possibly see war in the same way. Woolf proposed reconciling the disparity by looking at some images of war together. "Let's see whether when we look at the same photographs we feel the same things," she wrote, for she believed, according to Sontag, "that the shock of the images could not fail but unite people of good will".

Many people around the world, looking at the same photographs together--of bloodied, broken, mangled bodies of civilians and children killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since December 27th--have felt the same things. And they have united in compassion for the Palestinian people.

No matter which side of the Israeli-Palestinian issue we stand on, we ought to feel empathy, and pain, and sorrow for the people killed in Gaza--not because we're pacifists, or weak, or pro-Palestine, or anti-Israel, or pro-terrorist, or anti-Semitic, but because they were unarmed civilians in a blockaded war zone, who had nowhere to run and no place to hide.

"One body can hold all the suffering the world can feel," wrote Graham Greene in The Quiet American, another polemic about war. Upon seeing the photographs from Gaza-- of babies with war wounds and third degree burns, children with missing body parts, screaming toddlers with blood pouring from their sides, tiny corpses turned blue in death, silent and still as no child ever ought to be--should the proper response from our government and leaders be the morally feeble talking point: "Hamas is to blame"?

According to the latest reports, more than 149 children have died in Gaza since Israel began its attacks on December 27th.

In Zeitoun, one of the poorest sections of Gaza, Masouda al-Samouni, 20, was preparing food for her baby when Israeli warplanes launched missiles in her neighborhood; one of them struck her house killing her baby, her husband, and her mother-in-law. "He died hungry," she said of her infant.

In Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza, a missile killed three Palestinian children, aged 8-12, as they played on a street. One boy was decapitated; another had both his legs blown off. Madth Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor working in a Gaza hospital said, "These injuries are not survivable injuries."

Protection for civilians in wartime is a fundamental principle of international humanitarian law set in the Geneva Conventions of 1949--ironically, established as a response to the Holocaust--and in the treaty's Additional Protocols of 1977. Unarmed civilians not engaged in war must be spared and protected, and may not be attacked. In situations not covered by the specific laws of the Geneva Convention, civilians are protected by the fundamental principles of humanitarian law and human rights law.

In the face of international outrage over the killing of unarmed civilians, Israel defends itself by saying that Hamas is using children and civilians as human shields and hiding among civilians. If this is true, Israel and its military need do only one thing to inoculate itself from charges of wanton disregard for human life and war crimes: hold their fire until civilians have been cleared from the area.

There are lies we tell ourselves, delusions we adopt, just to get through each day with our political convictions intact. But our leaders unleash something close to immoral into the geopolitical incubator, when they and our allies embrace norms that they deem barbaric or monstrous--in other circumstances and when practiced by others.

If the killing of unarmed civilians by terrorist groups is wrong, Israel's killing of unarmed Palestinian civilians and our defense of Israel's conduct cannot be right. Hamas may be guilty but Israel is not innocent, and neither are we when our leaders defend the slaughter of innocents. The situational ethics our government chooses to practice in this matter can only come back to haunt us.

"Sooner or later one must choose a side if one is to remain human," Greene wrote in The Quiet American. Since December 27th, people of good will everywhere have stood in solidarity with the Palestinian people because they believe intuitively, emotionally, and intellectually in the preeminent rights of unarmed civilians and children in wartime. The Geneva Convention treaties, humanitarian law, and human rights laws are in place to remind governments of the same.

Comments

[Paul]

The sad fact is that both sides benefit from the death of innocents.

Hamas translates the tide of Gazan anger at Israeli bombing into politcal support..

Israeli politicans outdo each other to see who can be "tuff on terrorists".

The Israeli military creates just enough collateral damage to insure... that another military response will be required in the future.

One side gains from terrorism and the other side creates the conditions that insure the success of the terrorists.

The losers are the Gazans.

[voyager0]

Thank-you for putting into words what I feel when I look at the photos and quietly cry at the barbarity of it all.

[chaos4700]

"If this is true, Israel and its military need do only one thing to inoculate itself from charges of wanton disregard for human life and war crimes: hold their fire until civilians have been cleared from the area."

If you had typed this sentence and this sentence alone, your article would still have soundly answered the debate on the morality and legality of Israel's actions. As it stands, I'm glad you wrote the article in its entirety. It's a solid analysis and it touches on both the rational and the emotional facets of understanding what is happening.

[jrb35]

If you think that Hamas would clear civilians from an area under fire so that the Israeli's could avoid collateral damage, you're crazy. Hamas intentionally uses their own civilians as human shields. Hamas knows that Israel will respond to rocket attacks with military force and so they place the rockets and ammo dumps in civilian areas. Hamas would be ignored by the rest of the world if they didn't have Palestinian civilians being killed on a daily basis. It's part of their plan. Also, in the real world, waiting for the civilians to be cleared out would only allow the militants to escape and live to fire rockets into Israeli cities another day. That would be stupid and suicidal.

They key difference is that Hamas INTENTIONALLY targets Israeli civilians and INTENTIONALLY places their own civilians out as cannon fodder. Israel, on the other hand, goes out of their way to minimize civilian casualties. They've scrubbed dozens of air strikes for this reason. Hamas would never show such restraint because it is the goal of Hamas to kill as many civilians as possible.

[baqad]

I am sure that fact that all the borders were closed Israel for the last 18 months are known to you!

[chaos4700]

"Part of their plan" to see their own children die? I'm so, so sick and tired of the way you people dehumanize Arabs. You realize this is the same sort of sick rhetoric that was turned against Jews back in the day -- that they are subverting "our" European culture, they are manipulating the financial system, that they eat children, etc etc. Not only is your statement blatantly racist, it's patently nonsensical. The Palestinians aren't some nihilistic species of lemming bent at throwing themselves at Israel until there are none of them left -- they just want their homes back!

And Israel is intentionally bombing civilian targets. More than that, they are bombing UN humanitarian missions! Twice now! And there is no evidence, none at all, that any sort of militant attack originated from those schools. The UN schools were one of the last refuges from the Israeli onslaught -- the one place in the open air prison that is Gaza that an Israeli bomb is never supposed to touch, under any circumstances -- and Israel /deliberately/ bombed them. They aren't even saying it was an accident!

Maybe the US continues to shelter Israel, but the rest of the world is now fully aware of what lengths the Israelis are willing to go. Israel does not want to take on the whole UN. The US cannot shield them anymore, not from the General Assembly, and certainly not with an overstretched military and debt-saddled failing economy.

[Kautamiestates]

The World is definitely getting fed up with BOTH the Israeli's and Palestinians......

[chaos4700]

Perhaps, but as the bigger bully, Israel is going to have to bear the brunt of the criticism.

I think we should be pressuring both sides to adopt the Arab peace plan that's been sitting tabled by Israel's refusal to negotiate in good faith since 2002.
http://www.al-bab.com/arab/docs/league/peace02.htm

[MsAttitude]

You seem like a reasonable person. Here is a link to an article written based on UN documents and other legit sources. Please give me your take on this.

http://www.meforum.org/article/263

[piul05]

Good article. Thank you.

[gmancubfan]

What is happening in the Gaza strip is an atrocity. There is no justification for the killing of innocent children. No, there is NONE. The firing of 1,000 rockets into Isreal by Hamas does not justify the killing of one child. NO IT DOES NOT. The people of the world are tired of the hatred, the callous indifference to human suffering inflicted by others. For Isreal to behave this way is an astonishing blow to all that is decent. How does Isreal as the chosen people of God justify such horrendous conduct? HOW? As a Christian, whose faith has its roots in the judeaic creed, I was brought up to believe in the basic goodness of all people; that God created us in His image and likeness. ALL OF US, INCLUDING THE CHILDREN OF PALESTINE. It is very disturbing that the leaders of the nation of Isreal have let down all of mankind with their barbaric response to Hamas by the killing of the innocent, the children, the Palestinian people, and YES, they too were created in the image and likeness of God.

[jrb35]

Did you voice similar outrage when Hamas sent dozens of suicide bombers into Israel with the intention of causing mass CIVILIAN casualties (including children)? Did you find it disturbing when Hamas broke the cease fire and fired hundreds of rockets into civilian areas - including one that just struck and destroyed a kindergarten (thankfully evacuated)?