Joy & Greif in Israel and Lebanon

The latest news from Israel-Lebanon of a prisoner exchange has dominated the headlines as far as news from the Middle East is concerned. I have recently read various reports from the BBC speaking of the “joy” & “grief” which has greeted this latest prisoner swap. According to the BBC the bodies of two dead Israeli soldiers merits grief, while the over 200 dead Lebanese in which Israel has exchanged remain nameless. Al Jazeera ran a report before the prisoner swap of the families of just a handful of the dead, many of them Palestinians. Just like the families of both Israeli soldiers, which Hezbollah held for many years these Palestinian and Lebanese mothers, brother, sisters and fathers also displayed the obvious signs of pain and grief. Yet the proportion of dead; 2 Israeli and 200 Arabs does not register in the BBC’s conscience. Apparently the families of the over 200 dead Lebanese and Palestinians will not grieve at their funerals.

Of course the release of Samir Quntar who was jailed in 1979 for the killing of a four year old Israeli girl and her father is bound to cause controversy, and I do not believe that the killing of innocents is a legitimate way to resist aggression and occupation. However the evidence, which was used to convict Quntar was provided by the IDF who have in countless cases fabricated events in order to clear their own men of wrongdoing. Such fabrications often occur when the IDF murder Palestinian children. Quntar claims that it was Israeli fire, which killed his hostages; the IDF claim is was Quntar. Whatever the truth may be the BBC have made it appear that while Israel is welcoming home it’s brave soldiers who died at the hands of “terrorists”, the Lebanese are welcoming home “murderers” further ‘proving’ the ‘inhumanity’ and ‘subhuman’ nature of the Arabs. It does not occur to people that these two soldiers are part of a wider more brutal military regime, which has over the years killed thousands upon thousands of Arab men, women and children. Only recently the IDF butchered over 1000 Lebanese civilians, while Hezbollah killed 43 Israeli civilians and up to 130 IDF soldiers. In addition to the destruction inflicted upon the Lebanese people 30% of those killed were children under the age of 13 and entire civilian districts were flattened. The US, UK, Germany Australia and Canada asserted “Israel’s right to self defence”, while the United States even provided Israel with more bombs in which to massacre entire families in their homes.

In order to understand world support for Israeli war crimes we must look at the context in which these casualties are seen. Human Rights Watch in their report on the war reported that because Hezbollah used unguided missiles against Israel it was by far more accountable for its war crimes. However the fact that Hezbollah killed mostly soldiers with their “crude” missiles while Israel butchered over 1000 civilians with their state of the art precision guided missiles again does not register with the so called International Community. I may also take time to mention that Israel’s use of cluster bombs (illegal under International law) is until today maiming and killing many Lebanese civilians.

I will not go into too much detail regarding the 2006 war against the Lebanese as I will cover this in great detail in a later article; however what I am pointing out is the way in which western Governments and media organisations value Israeli and Arab blood, how the latter are incapable of suffering on the level of the former. The 2006 war in Lebanon and all the wars fought prior to it tell us so much in the way of western sentiment and empathy toward the Israeli way of life in comparison to attitudes towards that of the Arabs. As a Palestinian and as an Arab I cannot help but feel anger and resentment at what I see as the utter neglect and indifference toward Arab suffering and concerns. And as this recent prisoner swap shows us, we Arabs are not capable of mourning our loved ones or feeling pain even though it is Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners who are held in their thousands in Israeli dungeons, often without charge or trial. And if these two Israeli soldiers who were “kidnapped” on the Lebanese borders deserve recognition by name as every media outlet publishes, what of the literally thousands of Palestinians including many children who are kidnapped by Israeli forces while they sleep in their homes in foreign Palestinian territory? And what of Palestinian leaders who are murdered in so called targeted assassinations? They will never gain the recognition and sympathy of the west because they are labelled as “militants” or “terrorists” while an Israeli soldier like the one who emptied his magazine into thirteen year old Iman al-Hams little body will still remain a “soldier” and the IDF will still remain an “army” in every single news reference to each of them respectively. And while Israeli society & Government alike condemns the Lebanese people for welcoming “terrorists” home as heroes, they do not even consider the fact that Imans murderer has never been charged with any wrongdoing like so many of the IDF’s terrorist soldiers.