If you Prick us, do We not Bleed? – Shakespeare in Gaza
Mark Karlin 12/21/2023
(Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Is there a scale that can measure the value of 7,000 dead Palestinian children vs. 1200 dead Israelis?
What is to be measured, the weight of their souls? Can such a scale ascribe the worth of one group of the dead as being of greater value than the other group, one soul to a person or child?
One can, ironically, turn back to the plaintive speech of a benighted Shylock, a Jew trapped in an anti-Semitic stereotype, in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice for some guidance to answer this question, replacing the names of religions to reflect the current catastrophe in Gaza:
I am a Palestinian. Hath not a Palestinian eyes?
Hath not a Palestinian hands, organs, dimensions,
senses, affections, passions? Fed with the
same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to
the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer
as a Jew is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
In the original version of Shakespeare’s timeless monologue for Shylock, the word replaced by “Palestinian” above was originally “Jew,” and the word “Jew” was originally “Christian.”
Aljazeera English: “Indiscriminate attacks: Children bear the brunt of Israel’s war on Gaza”
The goal of the Netanyahu government and his right-wing extremists is not just the destruction of Hamas (which is unlikely to occur as the pulverizing of Gaza leads to new recruits for the terrorist organization and Hamas’s 30,000 man fighting force remains resilient, its leaders alive and negotiating with Israel through Qatar), it is the removal of all presence of the Palestinian people to allow for an expanded “Eretz Yisrael,” including the children.
The Holocaust does not bestow impunity for reckless, brutal and merciless acts by the State of Israel (the massive killing of children and their civilian families), even if these acts are conducted in response to execrable and monstrous acts against its citizens.
Can one excuse the relentless murder of children within Gaza as justified retaliation for the horrifying massacre of the Israelis near the Gazan border on October 7, or are they both equally heinous acts?
“If you prick us, do we not bleed?”
The children of Gaza do bleed, die of disease or are crushed to death, their body parts scattered amidst the debris of 2000 pound bombs?
Recently, an Informed Comment article by Charles Hirschkind, was entitled “The Invisible Slaughter of Gazan Children.” Hirschkind wrote:
- According to our most reliable news sources, the children of Gaza are being slaughtered at a horrific rate. No, you will not find the terms “slaughter” or “horrific” in Western media accounts of Israel’s current assault on the Palestinians residents of Gaza (these terms are reserved for Israeli deaths), but nonetheless, there is little disagreement among media professionals that nearly half of the deaths resulting from Israel’s current assault on Gaza are children.
According to the charity Save the Children, “More children have been killed in the Gaza Strip over the last three weeks than in every other armed conflict annually since 2019.”
Yes, we know that the current figure of the dead children in Gaza is probably far more than 7,000 (adding the innumerable more buried in the rubble.) We know that the death toll of these innocents is growing by the day as the Israeli war machine of vengeance continues to pulverize Gaza.
There are no posters with photos plastered on lampposts of the children killed in Gaza. No marches bearing the likenesses of the mangled children. They remain largely invisible and faceless, denied the basic recognition of their individual humanity. This is intentional.
“There was no such thing as Palestinians,” former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once falsely proclaimed.
It’s no surprise then that a December 18th Washington Post article indicated that a clearly identified journalist in Gaza was shot in the leg, likely by an Israeli sniper, after reporting the discovery of decomposing bodies of Palestinian babies, victims of the Israeli pummeling:
The Israel Defense Forces did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Israel-Gaza war has been devastating for journalists, with at least 64 killed and 13 wounded, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The risks are gravest for Palestinian reporters based in Gaza, who must keep themselves safe while also dealing with the loss of their homes, families and colleagues.
The Israeli government and IDF “press liaisons” don’t want journalists to disseminate photographs that would turn Palestinians into sympathetic people, or to allow the West to develop empathy for the dying children.
Horrifyingly, parents of Palestinian children in Gaza, and the children themselves, are writing their names on their arms and legs, so that when a limb is found the child can be identified.
As American poet devorah major (initial lower caps, her preference) haunted by this macabre image was inspired to write,
- “remember?
not wanting to be one of the missing
or one of the unable to be identified killed
the little girl wrote on the inside of her
heart shaped palm between heart
and lifelines in neat Arabic script
“if my hand survived
this is my name” before she was slain.
these children do not have
numbers burned into their arms
but many have written their own
names statements and identification numbers”
Many of these children were too young to formulate their aspirations. Who knows what wonders they could have experienced? They are snuffed out without the chance for their futures to blossom like ripe olive trees, olive trees that are now violently being cut down and destroyed by Israeli West Bank zealots and thugs who want, like most of Netanyahu’s cabinet, a Greater Israel from “the river to the sea.”
Yes, who can weigh the value of a soul? The children in Gaza and the Israeli dead are equalized in their irreversible deaths. Their futures have been cut short by the madness of a vile and intractable hatred from Hamas and Netanyahu’s Israel.
“If you prick us do we not bleed?”