Is the color of Palestinian youths different? Those that are killed by missiles and bombs and artillery fire – and sieges that starve people and checkpoints that prevent or delay access to medical care resulting in deaths --- all these are as dead as the innocent Israeli teenagers kidnapped and killed. I could not help noticing that the bodies of the three Israeli teenagers were neatly laid out in a row, with their coffins draped in Israeli flags. Thousands gathered to mourn. Some cried. Many chanted. The parents of the teens were devastated The Prime Minister of the country, Benjamin Netanyahu was there to speak. So was the President Shimon Peres. The media coverage was long, extensive and worldwide. As against this, Palestinian youths who are murdered –and there are hundreds of them -- do not get their bodies laid out in neat rows. Instead, their bodies are wrapped hurriedly in white shrouds, placed in cardboard boxes, carried on shoulders by near and dear ones who rush the bodies to the cemetery. There they are unceremoniously buried and soon forgotten by the world, even those who took notice in the first place. There is no ceremony. No one comes to speak. Not the Prime Minister. Certainly not the President. And there are no condemnations from the outside world. No condolences are offered to the grieving parents by anybody other than their families, friends and neighbors. Obama and other world leaders seem blissfully unaware of the tragedy. Putting that aside for a moment, I concentrated on the thousands who had come for the funeral of the three teens. Their grief seemed to be genuine. It offered proof that there beats a heart in these people. How wonderful it would be if it grieved also for the Palestinian youths that are murdered. How wonderful it would be if they also empathized with the grieving families of the murdered Palestinians. But that does not happen. Why? Is the blood of the Palestinians of a different color. Are they children of a lesser God? If only those who cry for “revenge” against the murderers of the three teens were to become equally enraged at the murder of Palestinians and demand that their government stop these massacres approaching genocidal levels. Samah Sabawi, a Palestinian activist living in Melbourne, Australia recently wrote, “So tired of the idiotic phrase Israel will pay and the more idiotic phrase Hamas will pay...maybe if we all try saying the truth: children will pay, mothers will pay, families will pay, that would be a positive step forward. Lets remember that most victims of conflicts today are women and children...…when human life is shed...some Israeli teens get killed, many countless nameless Palestinian teens get killed...lets stop for just one minute. Let us not try to prove that they deserve to die. Our children deserve to live...on both sides of the divide. Lets work on making life possible for them. Lets end Israels tyranny over Palestinians, lets educate ourselves on the value of life and let us have hope and let hope spread. Let us not be stripped of our humanity by a system of occupation that treats us as less than human. Easier said than done I know, but we need to say it and we need to aspire to it.” As I read that passage by Samah, there echoed in my ears the words of a poem I had learnt when I was a teenaged student in St.Xavier’sHigh School in Bombay (now Mumbai). Written by John Donne and titled No Man Is An Island, it read: “No man is an island, Entire of itself, Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thy friends Or of thine own were: Any mans death diminishes me, Because I am involved in mankind, And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee”. That about says it all.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 07:06:47 +0000
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