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Heaven On Earth
What Does It Matter Who Killed the Child?
Here’s a translation (thanks to LB) of an op-ed piece by Arad Nir (head of the foreign affairs desk at Channel 2) in Yediot Aharonot (Israel’s largest circulation newspaper). It illustrates how strong the “it doesn’t matter who shot him, the death of a child is tragic” trope is in Israeli opinion-forming circles. For those who might not be familiar with Israeli progressive “moral” thinking, this is as good as any introduction.
All the Children are like Yours
Arad Nir
October 3, 2007What difference does it make which side is guilty in the death of Muhammad al Durah? There is no justice in the death of a child?
Had he not wandered with his father into a miserable gunfight between Israeli forces and Palestinians in which his life was cut short, Muhammad al-Dura would have marked his 19th birthday this year. Had Muhammad and his father stayed at home that day, or chosen to go elsewhere, al-Dura would today be roaming the streets of Gaza and helping in his family’s livelihood. Maybe he would be a student, an activist in Fatah, or even a Hamas member in a Qassam-launching squad. But, in his death that was documented by the camera of the television network France2, little Muhammad changed into the flag-bearer of the intifada. With his choosing it, he became a symbol for his countrymen who will forever remain 12 years old.
Not only is Arad sure that the boy got killed on film, but he has accepted the narrative surrounding the footage he has yet to examine carefully. The evidence of the rushes — which Arad has apparenty not viewed (does he want to?) — formally contradicts the story that the father and son “wandered into a miserable gunfight between Israeli forces and Palestinians…” The AP and Reuter’s footage suggest he was behind the barrel with his father before the “gunfight” started.
Since the photographs were broadcast almost seven years ago, a series of experts and organizations took it upon themselves to prove that the death of al-Dura was not caused as a result of Israeli fire. Courts in France and Israel have been involved with this episode for years (and in the meantime support the network’s position) and now we receive news that even the Director of the Government Press Office, Daniel Seaman, gave an opinion and determined that “the employees of the France2 television network did not uphold (in their report) basic journalistic principles.” He accuses the cameraman Talal Abu-Rahma of “intentional staging and the creation of a libel against the State of Israel.”
I am certain that the head of the Government Press Office of the State of Israel is not accusing the cameraman and the television network of staging the death of al-Dura. Otherwise, surely he would not have deliberated whether to revoke the credentials of the journalists from the network, rather would have immediately lodged a complaint with the police. Instead, the head of the GPO accuses the journalists of a systematic (or intentional) report that implicates the israeli forces.
Sarcasm aside, this is one of Enderlin’s favorite lines. If the Israelis even suspected that he or Talal had done something wrong, they’d have taken away their press credentials. It’s a facetious argument, but a brilliant bluff. Both of them are protected by public opinion, and short of a court decision, the Israeli government would not move. The whole ploy plays brilliantly on the difference between a profoundly timid, intimidated Israeli government (they act like dhimmis to the MSM) and the perception of the Israelis as “no-nonsense” tough guys.
In response, the bereaved father, Jamal, declared that he was not able to shield his son, that he is ready for them to open the grave in order to check from which rifles the bullets were fired that brought about his son’s death and made his life eternally miserable.
What? This is nonsense. Doesn’t Arad know that digging up the body won’t show which rifles shot the bullets that killed his son? Are there supposed to be bullets in the grave? Did the Palestinian doctors leave them inside the body? Is that why no one has ever seen the bullets that allegedly struck the boy and the father a dozen times? Why would a seven year old corpse show any useful signs of where and what bullets hit it? Does it matter that the “bullet” claim is all bluff and that Esther Schapira caught Talal in the bluff? Or does Arad Nir know all this and doesn’t care?
Philippe Karsenty does a great imitation of trying to show MSM folks the evidence. “There are no bullets.” “Et alors? [so what?].” There’s no blood. Et alors? In the final scene he lifts up his head and looks around. Et alors? They shout the boy is dead the boy is dead before he’s even “hit.” Et alors? And so on…
And I ask — why does it matter?
Muhammad a-Dura was caught with his father in an impossible position without anyone having intended it. Muhammad and his father left home together. Muhammad did not return. He was killed in a gun battle without him holding a rifle. Without him choosing this bullet or another. Abu Rahma’s camera was there and thus turned this casualty into a symbol.
Does it even matter to Arad that this may be all wrong? Does he care whether there were people who intended for him to be in the “impossible position”? Does it matter that he may not have died, and if he did, it wasn’t in a gun battle? Does he care that the the only identifiable bullets hitting the wall or leaving marks on it came from a Palestinian position? Does it matter that in order for those bullets not to be he product of Palestinian sharpshooter’s aiming at the wall over the al Durahs’ heads, these same riflemen would have had to have missed their mark by 80 degrees? Does he care whether abu Rahmah’s camera — and his alone out of the dozens that were there that day — was not there by accident. Does it matter that the symbol Talal’s tape and narrative turned this “event” into was a devastating blood libel that has poisoned the globe and the century?
Or is the narrative just too appealing to let go of, even for one of its victims?
Muhammad, like the many other victims- both Israeli and Palestinian- before and after him, will no longer be able to choose what to do in his life. His parents will not be able to see him mature and fulfill their dreams or compromise on his own. Muhammad is a victim of this protracted war regardless of who fired the particular bullet that caused his death.
I’m sorry. These sentiments baffle me. What on earth does this mean? Is this moral equivalence? Somehow that there’s no difference between the arsonist and the firefighter? Does it matter that the Palestinians started the gunfight (even Charles Enderlin admits that)?
Does Arad think he’s being morally grand here? “The death of a child is, in and of itself so terrible that blame is irrelevant.”
But the Palestinians do nothing but blame. They feed their hatreds, poison their children, dream of genocide, and justify their addiction to violence with their blaming. They stage blood libels in order to blame Israel and turn her into an international pariah. And the Israelis say, “it doesn’t matter”?!?
Muhammad will always remain a symbol because, as opposed to thousands of other victims, he was killed in front of the television cameras.
Now doesn’t that tell you something? Don’t you realize that Muhammad al Durah is not the symbol you think he is — the tragedy of children killed in war — but a symbol of Israel’s Nazi-like beastiality? Or, as Osama bin Laden put it:
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It is as if Israel – and those backing it in America – have killed all the children in the world.
Does any of this matter? Do you care about the terrible consequences of being merciful to the cruel? That many more children will die because the men with the murderous agenda meet moral idiots who think they show their big hearts in letting them run roughshod over us, manipulating our sensibilities and churning out their child-sacrifices? I don’t believe for a minute that Arad Nir is as promiscuously exculpatory when it’s a matter of Israeli behavior: who killed the people at Beit Hanoun? What does it matter?
From the two sides the muzzles of the rifles ejected bursts of cursed bullets. It does not matter if the fatal bullet was fired from the rifle of an Israeli soldier or from the weapon of a Palestinian fighter — there is no justification for the death of a child!
Bad poetry is no excuse for moral idiocy.
Would that the energies invested in the argument over the angles of the fire and the source of the bullets be directed to other places that will enable a better future for this life.
All the Marshall Plans in the world won’t solve this until we get clear on where the source of the never-ending belligerency comes from. Only when we learn to identify the myriad ways in which Arab “strong” men eagerly sacrifice their own people in pursuit of their chimerical vendetta against modernity, can we begin to enable a better future for this life. I’d say measuring those angles and following the trail of deception are excellent ways to begin to understand and respond effectively to the toxins that right now blind our vision and roil the hearts of violent men the world over.
Which is why I already said I washed my hands of israel’s elite. To the extent that israelis don’t find a way to get rid of these failures they are doomed and there is nothing that can be done, particularly now that everybody gangs up on them and the us is gradually dumping them.
looks like the pals want to be there more than the israelis, and if so so they deserve to win.
fp
http://fallofknowledgeandreason.blogspot.com/
Arad Nir looks something like one of the actors who played Superman. But he always gave me more the feeling that he was a follower of Uriah Heep. His argument here is: Let’s look to the future, let’s forget about the past. Let’s build a better future for everyone. Blah blah.
Well, the Arabs don’t do that, nor do their Western friends and protectors do that. The Arabs prefer to think of revenge, even after decades or generations. On the other hand, Israelis –particularly the “Left” and self-styled “liberals” here– do that regularly and have been doing it for many years. It has become a moronic mantra among these ignoramuses who are ignorant of history, especially Israel’s history, Arab history, Western history in regard to both Jews and Arabs, etc. Nor do they understand the political implications of historical interpretations, nor the blood libel phenomenon, nor Western media policy. They are worthless ignoramuses.
All of Nir’s pathos –Tis so poetic & he must be so proud of it– is false since his factual premises are false. The death of the child at that time and place, which he assumes, is dubious. I can only feel contempt for this Uriah Heep creature.
fp, your conclusion is wrong. These creeps [uriah heeps] must be fought. And it seems that the resurgence of the al-Durah affair has upset them. That’s good. Now is the time to keep up the pressure.
it’s been a long time since i read David Copperfield (and hated it all three times they made me read it in High School and College), but as i remember, Uriah Heep was an unctuous hypocrite (I remember looking up unctuous). i don’t think Arad Nir is a hypocrite (unctuous maybe). on the contrary, he’s very sincere… but as someone wrote about in a different context: “Sincerity is the cheapest of the virtues, and a sincerity that naive is almost enough to forfeit one’s status as a rational agent.”
also note my comment on the Elihu Stone thread, which I think is relevant to this post too.
eliyahu,
as a political scientist i learned about the concept of instrumental and expressive behavior. the former means acting to achieve goals. the latter means acting to express oneself — the act is not a means to a goal, it IS the goal.
the question is whether fighting the Heeps will be effective in resolving the problems of the conflict, or is it just symbolic action just so we don’t accept to give up.
i claim both israel and the west have reached a point where fighting to save them is increasingly starting to feel like expressive rather than instrumental action.
one reason is the fall of knowledge and reason: the west and israel are so desperate for the problems to go away that they systematically do everything possible to ensure they will become worse. no matter how much evidence they get for they failure, they blind themselves to it — the alternative is too scary to contemplate. the lazar berman piece and the following review of barry rubin’s book by lee harris:
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/10163891.html
another reason is the inherent dilemma of the distinction between individual and collective action, elegantly formalized in mancur olson’s
http://www.amazon.com/Logic-Collective-Action-printing-appendix/dp/0674537513
since the latter is known and understood in the west as much as the arab/muslim culture, in a sense the whole thing is due to the fall of knowledge and reason.
i am not convinced fighting will achieve much at this point.
i’m beginning to get used to your determined pessimism. i agree the situation is dire. but i think you describe yourself rather than (say) me, with your expressive vs. instrumental. while i agree that western education has serious problems and academics even more (esp when it comes to middle eastern studies), i don’t agree that the west is terminally stupid. indeed i think the blogosphere represents precisely the place where sharp independent thinking can not only take place but flourish. which is why i have a blog, and am delighted that intelligent, well read, thoughtful people (like yourself) read and comment on my stuff, bringing further material to the conversation. given how often you’ve made your point about how we’re all going to hell in a handbasket, maybe you could spend more time on the substantive contributions you want to make, rather than repeating the same “we’re all dead in the water” mantra.
Formidably muddled thinking, primarily on a moral plane, by Arad; such is a feel-good “progressivism” that measures itself in large part by what it is not (not “conservative,” not anything that doesn’t feel good) and therein forgoes the challenge and self-discipline of defining itself in more positive and more concrete and more responsible terms. “Formidable” because it reflects a great deal of popular opinion and presents a redoubt characterized by obduracy, tergiversation and – it’s all too true – moral idiocy.
Well, such forms part of the challenge. Wow.
Wow is right. when i first read it in hebrew i thought, “no, i must have this wrong.” alas, no.
Phillips, as always, is informative in this general vein as well, commenting on Hizb ut-Tahrir (modest sized pdf) in Britain – and Hebron, and related matters. Baran, author of the monograph on Hizb ut-Tahrir, is wonderful; sharp, thoughtful, knowledgeable, sensible, very sound and even-handed but pulls no punches when they’re needed; very well informed, always impressive when I’ve read or viewed her.
These people really don’t get it. Are these “elites” really that stupid or very disingenuous?
Joanne, i think they really believe they’re right, and morally vastly superior to (and highly impatient with) their fellow countrymen who can be so crude and provocative as to care about whether Muhammad al Durah was killed by Israelis or Palestinians or not at all.
My guess is that Nir thinks he’s got the moral high ground. Does that make him disingenuous? I guess so. Stupid? As Wanda says to Otto in Fish Called Wanda: “I have skirts with higher IQs.”
“The death of a child is, in and of itself so terrible that blame is irrelevant.”
No. For most of human history and in all cultures, the truth has been that the death of a child is, in and of itself so terrible that those who are responsible for it are discovered, held in moral contempt, and punished severely. That way, Arad Nir, we hope to deter others from killing children also. Hiding behind the pseudo-logic of “in and of itself” does not change that universal truth.
How does this pseudo-logic translate to other scenarios? Is murder in and of itself so terrible that it is futile to punish murderers? Is rape in and of itself so terrible that it seems pointless to capture and convict the rapist? Does the futility of blame apply equally to the Holocaust? The more terrible the act, the greater the obligation to tell the truth about it.
The question Arad Nir needs to answer is this: when Israel was universally held to be responsible for the deliberate death of this child, and admitted responsibility for it, did Arad Nir spin a pseudo-poetic opinion piece claiming then that it didn’t matter who was to blame? Or is blame only irrelevant now that it looks as though the other side may have fired those shots?
This isn’t about side-taking. If Israeli soldiers saw an unarmed child cowering behind his father and spent 45 minutes trying to murder him, they deserve the severest punishment. If Israeli soldiers killed the boy because he and his father were half concealed figures close to a position from which Palestinians were firing, then Palestinian gunmen are morally responsible for the death, because they began the gunfight in an area full of non-combatants. If the Palestinians contrived a snuff film, or even a fake snuff film, they deserve the contempt and blame of history for all the blood that has been spilled in revenge.
This immature response, to sit agonising poetically over how awful the death of a child is, is to add nothing, to accomplish nothing, to wash your hands of the responsibility of moral judgement and response. It is the luxury of childishness. Arad Nir would have us think he is seeing this on a higher plane than we do; but in reality he is poeticizing a lack of moral seriousness, hiding cowardice behind emotive posturing. So Nir and yet so far.
RL, I only read David copperfield once. That was enough, but dickens did create some memorable characters. Uriah Heep as I remember him, was not so much hypocritical as he was obsequious, but insincerely so. Nir always gave me that impression in the too many times that I saw him on TV. Your comments above about the sinister Israeli “leftist” chattering class are true enough. But I would add that these people, although mostly secularist [secular would be too mild a term, since these people are imbued with an ideology of secularism], have an exalted sense of their own morality, even when they know that they are lying, since they lie in the good cause of Progress, Reason, and Science. Hence, even if they are not empirically correct, they are Truthful, because they symbolize a Higher Truth at all times, even though that Truth may change from time to time.
Shmuel [Samuel] Katz, author of the important Jabotinsky biography, Jabo, reports that the woman translating the book for him from English into Hebrew [although Katz does know Hebrew well] remonstrated with him for reporting facts in his book that her sources, “leftist” fanatics fed on lies and happy that way, rejected and “refuted.” So on many occasions he had to produce the documents that he was using, which shut her up, after all she was working for him or his publisher, but left her unsatisfied, since her intellectual, lower middle brow demigods denounced Katz’s views as false. The poor girl truly suffered from cognitive dissonance.
In a way, these “leftist” fanatics suffer a form of denialism, like Holocaust denial [negationnisme]. An accepted, conventional historical narrative has been laid down which they cannot easily reject because of their emotional commitment to it and the persons who expound it and the values that it supposedly embodies. And of course they do, as you say, RL, consider themselves superior to everybody else in the country, especially if he lives south of Tel Aviv or east of Giv`atayim or in Netanyah and north [certain enlightened enclaves excepted].
It is unfortunate that many of these mad mandarins are also deniers about Jewish legal rights to Judea-Samaria-Gaza under international law. Here too it is not a matter of having done historical and legal research on their part but of wanting to be part of an international consensus and their hatred for their domestic opponents. Do you recall that a major motivation for many of the Vichyites in France before and during WW2 was hatred for their domestic political opponents??
I like the way Michael N broke the alternatives out in his penultimate paragraph. I was taken aback by the charge of childishness at first, but on reflection, yes it is a form of childishness to mistake emotional rationalization for a higher moral resolution. Also ‘ego inflation’ and ‘narcissism’ come to mind. For some reason I keep flashing on Jimmi Carter shouting at the guard in Dafur last week.
“What difference does it make which side is guilty in the death of Muhammad al Durah? There is no justice in the death of a child?”
Thank heavens this gormless numbskull isn’t sitting on a bench weighing judgment in trials. And if this is what passes for the man’s reasoning, he shouldn’t be writing opinion pieces.
rl,
depends on how you defend stupid. by my definition — collapsed knowledge and reason — the west is horribly stupid. the stupidity is palpable.
i describe the objective reality based on overwhelming empirical evidence, which is quite dire indeed. and i provide theoretical reasons that prompt little expectation that much can be done at the individual level to change it.
you seem to recognize the direness, but for reasons which escape me, you think that reality can be changed. yet the amount of evidence relative to the counter one i provide is almost nil. neither do you provide theoretical reasons to counter my expectations.
i think the difference between us is that I go where the evidence and theory leads me, no matter how psychologically difficult it is to accept it. in that I am quite different than most people, whose psychology is to stay as much as possible away from accepting dire reality and to feel helpless. that is as much a form of wishful thinking as that of the israeli left.
that’s why i disagree with you as to the value of my contributions here: i see a lot of wishful thinking (e.g. let’s not use “palestinian people” here) that must be addressed not less than that of israeli and western appeasers. the problems are systemic and culture-wide and individuals can do little to effect them. as an historian i’m sure you know that.
but we both seem to have the same problem: you can’t convince the ignorant, appeasers and cowed, i cannot convince the knowledgeable unjustified optimists.
check out the following and tell me the west is not just stupid, but terminally so:
The Dutch gates of Vienna
http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1673
The British gates of Vienna
http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1674
The looming new Islamist front
http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1672
Conference, meeting, vstretch
http://www.nysun.com/article/64310
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