After Two Years of War, Israelis Are Numb to Suffering Other Than Their Own - Opinion - Haaretz.com
Two Palestinian children were killed on Saturday in an Israeli attack on Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip. The two brothers, Fadi and Juma Abu Assi, 10 and 12, were killed by a drone. The two, around the same ages as my own, were shot while gathering wood for heating to help their disabled father, according to their uncle.
In a photo accompanying an article on the incident, the two are standing side by side at their house's entrance, smiling for the camera, which was viewing them from above. The photo's angle emphasizes how small they were. The younger boy was barefoot and held markers for drawing pictures in his right hand. The two looked alike. Their beautiful faces radiated innocence. And why should that be surprising? They're children.
The IDF's Spokesperson's Unit said soldiers from the Kfir Brigade identified two suspects who had crossed the Yellow Line into the Israeli-controlled part of Gaza, "engaged in suspicious actions on the ground, and approached the troops in a way that posed an immediate threat to them." Afterward, it added, "the air force, directed by the forces on the ground, liquidated the suspects to remove the threat."
The gap between the two descriptions above is shocking. Children morphed into "suspects" and "a threat" while gathering wood for healing became "suspicious actions on the ground" and "approaching the troops in a way that posed an immediate threat to them." Those two children with shining faces, radiating innocence, are now dead. But this inconceivable tragedy was erased with the words "liquidated the suspects to remove the threat."
Displaced Palestinian children play in the wreckage of a car in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, in the southern part of Gaza City, on Saturday.Credit: AFP/OMAR AL-QATTAA
Though the IDF Spokesperson's response is shocking in its obtuseness, it isn't surprising after over 20,000 children have been killed in Gaza. Almost no Jewish Israelis will be offended by this wording. Not even those who demand an investigation.
Since the cease-fire in Gaza began, on average, two minors a day have been killed there. The army, as is evident from well-documented incidents in both Gaza and the West Bank, is demonstrating further contempt for the rules of engagement. "Purity of arms" looks like a term that has gone out of date.
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But what can you expect in a place where executing Palestinians who came out with their hands up is rewarded by promotion? Or where minors and special-needs teens are held for months, even years in administrative detention?
Military language is meant to erase distinctions and obscure nuances. It solves problems by force. It reflects a crude view of reality. And that view is necessary on a battlefield comprised only of soldiers and enemies. It involves suspects, threats and liquidations. It is cold, metallic, distant.
But in Israel, everything is intermingled. Our battlefields are full of civilians, full of children. And Israeli society, as sociologist Baruch Kimmerling said, even before we had descended to this depth, is a society mired in civic militarism. And thus, military language and military thinking are what dominate our civic conversation and our civic culture.
A Palestinian boy walks in the rain carrying a plastic jerrycan of water in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City, in November.Credit: Jehad Alshrafi,AP
The thousands of online comments about the killing of these two children show that military thinking, even in its cruelest version, has been completely absorbed into civilian thinking. The latter also no longer sees the children behind the "suspects who pose a threat."
Some of the responses were vengeful, full of schadenfreude. After all, if a Palestinian child isn't a terrorist now, he's a future terrorist. Other responses blamed the children's parents for sending them into a dangerous area. And who knows? Maybe the two were plotting to lay bombs and attack the soldiers. Certainly, nobody is challenging their feeling of being threatened.
Military thinking is characterized by viewing the enemy as evil from birth, someone who understands nothing but force. It has no place for humanity. And in today's Israel, there's no longer any difference between military and civilian thinking. The process has been completed. We have no more feelings.