Dead Children In School Uniforms In Gaza City: A Nagging Thought About 'Collateral Damage'

So Israel chose a non-military target in Gaza City because Hamas had placed its missile-launchers there. Very interesting, if true. Half a world away, reading media that casts every Israeli action as a reaction, I have no idea what's true. All I know is that, as I read the first news report in the New York Times, I kept returning to the paragraphs about the surprise of the Palestinians: police cadets at a graduation ceremony, women in the marketplace, kids finishing their school day.

One sentence obsessed me: "The dead included civilians, including several construction workers and at least two children in school uniforms."

As it happened, Harold Pinter died over the weekend, so I got to read a number of memorial pieces that quoted the playwright's astringent political views. And, it turned out, he too was obsessed with the deaths of children in war. Here's Pinter, talking about the Bosnian conflict of the 1990s:

There's a little story, I must just tell you. It isn't really much of a story, but in the bombing of Serbia two years ago, there was an ordinary marketplace in a country village. And I'm actually reporting an eyewitness to this event who was in the marketplace at the time. She saw a woman sitting with her five-year-old daughter on a bench in the marketplace having a sandwich. And out of the blue American bombs fell. The marketplace was chaos. About forty or fifty people were killed immediately. And this woman looked for her daughter, who'd been blown out of her arms, and saw the daughter's head in the gutter. Now that head of that little girl was never and would be never recognized by Prime Minister Blair or President Clinton. The death, and the cutting off of the head of the little girl would be totally irrelevant to those people.

I know: Pinter never missed an opportunity to attack the West. But when I read this, I connected his story to a piece of his biography: When he married Antonia Fraser, he became stepfather to six children.

Having kids around -- it changes you. I was paddling around the indoor swimming pool of a suburban hotel with our water-crazed first-grader when the bombs started dropping on Gaza City. All the next day, as we played the pool games she loves to make up, I thought about our spectacular good luck. We don't live in a war zone. The best doctors are blocks away. Food is plentiful. And I don't think our daughter can even spell "hate."

Mine is a sentimental, girly-man question: By what roll of the dice is my family under this sky and not that one? In the media I've read and watched, no one else seems caught on that. The commentators and newscasters have kids, I'm sure, but they've moved on, to Serious Questions of policy and strategy. In the slow news week between Christmas and New Year's, this war nicely replaces Rod Blagojevich.

I wish I could parse the politics and figure out where I stand on this shiny new conflict, but I'm stuck on its opening act -- and on an idea I first encountered in War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges.

What Hedges argues: Modern war is directed more against civilians than against armies.

I'll catch up to everyone else soon; I'll be able to hold my own when the talk turns to the Israeli elections, the duplicity of Hamas, the terrible conditions in Gaza. But I hope I don't lose sight of what I fear is the terrible truth of this conflict. Those kids who died in Gaza City? To others, they're collateral damage. To me, they're the point.

Comments

[ThomasPage]

You aren't a girly-man, you just watch too much TV and too many movies. In the movies, when the hero has to choose between letting the villain kill a hostage and giving the villain the super-death-ray (or whatever) that will allow the villain to enslave/destroy the world (including the hero and the hostage), the hero gives the villain the super-death-ray. Then things work out all right in the end anyway.

In the real world, it doesn't work like that. In the real world, the good-guys sometimes have to choose between taking an action that will kill innocent people and inaction that will result in many more deaths.

[ThomasPage]

Your premise is wrong. You said "Israel chose a non-military target in Gaza City because Hamas had placed its missile-launchers there."

A missile-launching site is a military target regardless of what else is there. The Geneva conventions make it clear that the presence of civilians does not render a military target immune from attack and that the placement of military targets within or near densely populated areas is a war crime.

The deaths of civilians is a horrible thing, but the blame lies squarely on Hamas for using them as human shields.

Put it like this, if someone shot at you and your wife and children, hiding behind his own wife and children while shooting at yours, you could not retreat, and he refused to stop firing, would you shoot back? What if you knew for a fact that you couldn't stop him without also killing at least one of his kids?

If you did kill one of his kids while shooting back, would that be your fault for defending yourself, or his fault for hiding behind them?

Israel has a choice, it can shoot back at the murderers attacking its civilians, knowing that some enemy civilians will die because the cowardly Palestinian fighters hide behind them, or it can let the Palestinians murder Israelis without retaliating.

[mark vf]

(cont'd)

Now, I'm not giving Israel some sort of exemption here. They've done plenty of things on their own side that make me cringe. And I certainly feel that Palestinians haven't been given a fair shake since 1947, losing virtually all but small sections of the region. Nonetheless, all parties involved are to blame for these senseless deaths. Some parties moreso than others. But until these people look beyond their differences and realize their own mutual interest and the value of life above regional control, we will never see peace and we will continue to have one senseless act of violence after another.

[mark vf]

I'm torn over this current conflict. While the death and wounded toll during the invasion of Gaza is definitely disproportionate to the damage of the rockets being fired by Hamas, we cannot hold Israel completely at fault here and leave Hamas as simply some sort of misunderstood organization of disgruntled Arabs. Both sides have blame here. Hamas intentionally fires from places with heavy amounts of civilians in order to provoke these kinds of responses. Now, Israel shouldn't take the bait because it doesn't really get rid of Hamas and may end up bolstering their political position when there is the kind of civilian death tolls as we are seeing. But we cannot just say that Israel is the evil power here.

Hamas is the reason why the last cease-fire ended (and many others). The Palestinian people need to reject Hamas and hold them accountable for their actions. Until they do so, they are a politically divided group and no lasting peace agreements will be possible. Even if a new peace agreement is reached tomorrow and troops withdraw, that agreement will be between the more moderate forces within Palestine, and Hamas will work to undermine the process because they do not want a compromise. They are ideologues who care little for the price that either side of this conflict pays in order to achieve their agenda.

[rabiddog6708]

Unfortunately, most Americans only care if the dead are American children. They have no empathy for Palestinian children or else they couldn't post some of the things they do on these threads.

[FirstShirt]

I have an idea. Lets start with a truism that to kill a child, through abortion or a bomb, is an atrocity.

Then lets look at the grownups who kill children and what motivates them. Warning, this may require some self analysis. Killing children, by definition, requires a certain lack of emotion.

Then lets look at how many innocent children are killed by abortion and how many are killed by bombs.

[JohnDewey]

Nice try, but your premise is flawed. "Zygote or Fetus = A child" is a patently false assertion. You may not like that science & the law disagree with your assertion, but you don't make yourself more correct by repeating the falsehood.

Perhaps most distressing is your overall attempt to mitigate the deaths of actual, specific children by making false comparisons. I'm thankful I don't have to live under your system of ethics.

[yorkville7]

how can americans watch their media awkwardly scramble to find ways to defend heinous acts of those who own them

[yorkville7]

it amazes me that an entire race has no concious and seeks nothing more than to avoid being judged for their actions that they have set up organizations to stifle criticism and bought all media in a country so their deeds can go uncriticized no matter how heinous

[abdallac]

So well said. I can't manage to watch these events - I have been watching for 42 years and all I feel is enraged.

[dencook4]

The Charter of Hamas is in effect the Constitution of the Palestinian people. It defines the National Purpose of Palestinians.

Do you know the definitionof that purpose ? If you don't know, try and guess?

[brokenarrow]

Thank you for this. Had I been the mother in either situation, I simply would not go on. We must find a way to end all wars.

Just refuse to wear the costume, and play the role, people. It could be your child's head rolling the gutter five years from now.

The horror.

[mattheweste]

As flawed as it is, this is the way to end wars:
http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/preamble.shtml

See this report for example:
http://www.humansecurityreport.info/HSR2005_PDF/Overview.pdf

"The number of armed conflicts around the world has declined by more than 40% since the early 1990s"

"The average number of battle-deaths per conflict per year—the best measure of the deadliness of warfare—has been falling dramatically but unevenly since the 1950s. In 1950, for example, the average armed conflict killed 38,000 people; in 2002 the figure was 600, a 98% decline."

The report concludes the UN was part of the reason:

"With the Security Council no longer paralysed by Cold War politics, the UN spearheaded a veritable explosion of conflict prevention, peacemaking and post-conflict peacebuilding activities in the early 1990s. Part V of this report describes the extent of this unprecedented surge in activism, which included:

* A sixfold increase in the number of preventive diplomacy missions (those that seek to stop wars from starting) mounted by the UN between 1990 and 2002.

* etc etc

[biabouman41]

I get it. I have 3 grandchildren, and for leaders of the USA and Israel to dismiss this carnage as acceptable, collateral, irrelevant sticks deep in my craw. This excessive, barbaric Israeli response can not be accepted by civilized people.Not like this is the first time that Israel is trying this massively unbalanced "response". They have honed a fine art, so all Westerners rush to the side of the Israelis, no matter how disgraceful the carnage. Were it the first time they try you would think "OK, give them some space, maybe this will work" but we know the response of the Palestinians and other Muslims. Repeating the same act and expecting different results...; they are all crazy, both side and our "leaders"
For me it is particularly disappointing that Obama has inserted himself into this when he was not required. And, of course Olmert used Obama like an old rag. We need to do something differnt in this ongoing conflict.
May I suggest that all countries with an axe togrind in the area be required to submit a comprehnsive list of what they (1) want and expect to accomplish, and (2) what are they willing to surrender to get to where they want. This idea of taking a little part of the problem and trying to fix will not work, and I think it is what explains this massive over-reaction. Any agreement needs to be coprehensive, including Israel's security, nuclear weapons, including Israel's, Palestinian soverign rights.

[zjr909]

To say it's terrible that children are killed in these kinds of raids; but to draw the line at condemning those who carried out the raids...is to say nothing. The two things cancel each other out. I'm sorry, but a million pictures of decapitated kids is not worth one word of condemnation. Because without the condemnation, the killing will continue forever. It does no good to look for that "silver lining" because it doesn't exist. A "just" cause does not justify an unjust act. Period.

[Silentdances]

This is a most excellent piece. I would say.. that when said children.. their passing becomes old hat.. you've lost a little bit of your soul..

[LadyXoc]

When Hamas fired on Israeli (civilian) targets, surely this degree of retaliation was understood to be a risk. Hamas did not care, and perhaps now is even celebrating a propaganda victory.
Each child is precious, but what have you, gentle reader, done to save Iraqi children from our shock and awe, Afghan children from blinding by blind religious fanatics, Israeli children from Hamas rockets and suicide bombers?

[CharlesWarner]

Yes, the kids are the point. This is a beautifully written piece that emphasizes the horror of war on children. It's pure hate mongering to suggest that Jesse Kornbluth, a Jew, is anti-semitic.

[WADIIAH]

Israel are bullies just like the US. They can easily diffuse Mideast tensions but their war on Islam prevents them from doing so.