THE WAR ON CHILDREN AND THE PRETENDERS – LEST WE FALL PREY TO HATE
Let the wheat and the tares grow until the time of harvest. How we treat the sick, the infirm and our children is the test of a society’s humanity and civilization. Wars that have been taking place during the last two decades have been especially difficult for children which include the ongoing wars in Gaza, the DRC, Sudan and the frozen war in Yemen. With every new conflict, the war on children worsens. The brutality, wanton destruction and gratuitous violence is alarming. We see the rape of not just men and women, but also of the elderly, children and babies. Children are shot down in cold blood, sometimes bulldozed. They are denied food, water and medicine, left to the elements in winter without shelter or warm clothing. They are mutilated by bombs while waiting in line for water. They are drugged and used as child soldiers. They are held captive, kidnapped and imprisoned without charge, tortured and labelled as criminals unable to see their families. They are left orphans, maimed, often to fend for themselves and traumatized for life. Their future is further threatened with the destruction of ecosystems, mining of waterways, more pollution and earthquakes perhaps exacerbated by the weapons like bunker busting bombs, adding more crises to a climate already in dire crisis, all “too much for the earth to digest.”
The war in Gaza currently being waged by Israel is no doubt one of the worst, if not the worst in many ways, for children that the world has seen in the last 75 years. This war has in record time seen the deaths of more than thirteen thousand children and counting with thousands more unaccounted for missing under the rubble that was once Gaza. Israel, with the fourth most powerful army in the world, armed by the United States, the most powerful country in the world, has used starvation as a weapon against a population that in the best of times has had to rely on UNRWA, other UN organizations and charity organizations for most of its basic needs. Known as the largest open-air prison in the world, as is so accurately depicted in Joe Sacco’s 2001 graphic novel, Palestine, a collection of his nine-issue comics by the same name of daily life in Gaza, it has now undoubtedly become the largest graveyard for children. In Gaza, not even babies in hospitals are spared, many left to die and rot on hospital beds covered in debris of bulldozer-induced collapsed ceilings and walls, shattered glass, spent shells and shrapnel courtesy of the so-called “civilized’ army of the State of Israel. Parroting tiresome transparent lies, excuses and reasons, this army often invades hospitals, shoots and bulldozes the sick, the infirm, women and children, the living and the dead and kidnap and torture courageous, unselfish medical personnel who take care of patients while enduring denial of food, water, medicine and fuel. Weaponizing historical suffering and victimhood, nothing and no one is off limits for the State of Israel’s slaughter machine in the slaughterhouse that Gaza has become. There is no observation of any rules of war. Even the dead is killed over and over again. If this is what the most civilized army in the world does, what would a barbarian army do? The honest answer is nothing worse, more than likely much better. The only act left is to have a mass killing of every living thing in Gaza including the grass and all the animals all at once. That is yet to come, perhaps sooner than we think, for the orders were already given by the Prime Minister as he sent his army to annihilate the Amalekites and everything they owned. As a matter of fact, Mr. Netanyahu’s army has taken it steps further, for even the grass they have razed and killed the dead over and over again.
The war on Gaza and its children has exposed beyond the shadow of a doubt the Pretenders to the Throne of Virtue, America, the UK, most of the countries of the EU, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. These governments have appointed themselves as champions of human rights, and along with Israel as Saviours and Guardians of Western Civilization as they either actively help by providing weapons of destruction or stand by implicitly or explicitly cheering on the mighty as it wages war on the defenseless, parroting the tiresome excuse that Israel has a right to defend itself. The leadership in these countries negate their hollow words of saving civilians with this tiresome refrain. We do not need to hear that because it is a given that every sovereign state has a right to defend itself against attacks. However, a defensive war does not excuse or give any nation the copyright to suffering or victimhood or the patent for cruelty, gratuitous violence that is inflicted on non-combatants, especially children. While Israel has the right to defend itself, it does not have nor should it be given the right to target and slaughter, deliberately starve and dehydrate Innocents and children. It does not and should not be allowed to deny non-combatants, especially children medicine, food, water and fuel. These Self-appointed Saviours and Guardians of Western Civilization set themselves to be Paragons of Virtue who stand on a moral high ground. They held up Israel as a beacon of democracy and light surrounded by, according to them, the dictatorships, tyranny and darkness of its neighbours, with the full knowledge that Israel was no different from its neighbours with how it treats other human beings, their Brothers, the Palestinians, in the occupied lands. In the eyes of these Pretenders, the rest of the world that comprises the Global South, mostly peoples of colour, stands below their select moral high ground.
It is said that we should let the wheat and the tares grow until the time of harvest. Indeed, the harvest has arrived. With its arrival, this harvest has also brought the winds of change, to blow away all the smoke that we have been forced to inhale over these decades in front of that mirror of self-reflection. Alas, we can now separate the wheat from the tares. The tiny shrouds of light that are those babies left to die and rot in those hospital beds and the rest of the slaughtered children, orphans and those maimed and suffering from mostly American and German and United Kingdom bombs and other weapons of destruction and American-complicit-Israeli-imposed famine and disease have illuminated that mirror of self-reflection.
In this war on Gaza, the smoke is comprised of lies, mirage and optics, gaslighting, and deceit. Our Brothers gaslight us. We are standing in the rain, and we see the drops of rain falling. We are getting soaked with rain. If we were sugar, indeed, we would melt. Yet, our Brothers want us to believe them when they tell us that it is sunny and there is no rain. Sheer arrogance on their part! We see sheep crossing the street being shot, orchards razed, people waving white flags gunned down, thirsty and dehydrated children standing in line for water mutilated by American bombs and other weapons. We see wanton destruction, gratuitous violence of massacres of women and children, the expulsion of the sick and the dying from hospitals, children maimed, the living and the dead bulldozed together in sadistic and psychopathic orgies; yet we are told that what we are seeing with our “own” eyes is not what we are seeing. Some of these vile acts and trophies (psychopaths always take trophies) are posted on the racist propaganda “Snuff” channel of the Israeli army, Tik Tok and other social media platform. There is still more smoke of politricks and geopolitricks, cynical games of running out the clock, crossing the already-crossed t’s and dotting the already-dotted i’s that have been crossed and dotted more times than we can recall; promised safe passages in reality death traps. We see people told to seek shelter when there is no place to shelter or hide like Miss Thomas Psychopathic Puss playing hide and seek with his victims with no place to hide.
These self-proclaimed Paragons of Pirtue tell us, the little people, that geopolitics with its geopolitricks is too complicated for us to understand. Indeed, they are right, because lies and tricks find many hiding places in complexity, wherein the truth lies in simplicity. There are word games, optics, fake and doctored videos, and a cacophony of spin and hollow words that belie thoughts that actions reveal. Propaganda galore! The smoke in the mirror creates a land of dystopia and the world of Topsy Turvy where left is right, and right is left; up is down and down is up; in is out and out is in. We see the “human animals” sharing their piece of bread with starving monkeys and lions while the self-proclaimed Paragons of Virtue and Guardians of Western Civilization lay siege to the besieged, denying even children, food, water and medicine, visiting famine, disease and death upon them. O death, where is thy sting! O grave, where is thy victory! There is so much smoke in that mirror that we risk choking or suffocating to death.
Now, many who have just awakened to this deceit by these our Brothers, the Self-appointed Saviours and Guardians of Western Civilization feel duped. We feel as if we are in a rudderless ship, a sheep in a flock of sheep without a shepherd. We find that most of whom had put on the robe of virtue, claimed the moral high ground and judged others to be bereft of morals are themselves bereft of morals. They stand naked! Alas, the emperor has lost his clothes. When these our Brothers look in the mirror of self-reflection they will see that Brother whom they judged to be standing on the low ground of their selective moral high ground. Their empathy, their thoughts and prayers and their tears are as selective as their outrage. When these Pretenders to the Throne of Virtue, our Brothers in this Brotherhood of man can callously disregard the horrific murders, the suffering, the homelessness, and the slow agonizing deaths caused by enforced man-made starvation, dehydration, and disease of hundreds of thousands of children and babies, surely the Mantle of Virtue cannot fit on their narrow shoulders and the Crown of Virtue is too heavy for their heads. Alas, these Pretenders are throwing stones whilst living in glass houses.
To whom has been given great power, of him is required even greater responsibility. Great Powers are always either late to or absent from the Table of Justice as they were in South Africa and as is evident now. We are complicit when we have the power to mitigate the suffering of children and do nothing or act as both arsonist and pretend fireman, with a replenished gas can in one hand and an empty water hose disconnected from a hydrant that has never worked in the other. That replenished gas can cause a raging out-of-control fire that threatens to consume us all. Spin and a cacophony of hollow words that belie thoughts that actions reveal and smoke in the mirror cannot fool all the people all of the time, alter reality or absolve these our Brothers of the atrocities that they help to perpetuate. There are the hollow words of saving lives while providing the bombs and bullets to take those lives. There is the mirage of “look at the ones of millions over there to fatten the sacrificial lambs and not at the billions over here to sacrifice the lambs on the altar of the Great Mammon.
Indeed, the greatest of all tests of our humanity and civilization is how we treat children, and the rest of the helpless. Our Brothers have failed miserably even with their repetition of tiresome monotonous lies, excuses and reasons. These Pretenders have not a drop of empathy in their cup for the tens of thousands of children “of the OTHERS and the THEM” who have been slaughtered and not a tear to spare for them as they do rightly and justly so for the tens and the hundreds “of the US”. Once again, when you can have no empathy for babies in incubators, or those left to die and rot on beds with collapsed roofs, shrapnel and spent shells but instead give reasons or excuses why none should be spared because of the big new lie that they are now spinning of human shields and collateral damage like a broken record, where is your conscience? When you can look at children who must have amputations without anaesthesia, hungry starved children who try to recover flour from the dirt or drink water from dirty puddles perhaps filled with sewage and bacteria from rotting corpses and can and callously remark that these things happen in war, surely you have not earned the right to wear the Crown or the Mantle of Virtue to which you lay claim.
Some of these Brothers have repeated the lies so often that they can no longer distinguish the truth from lies and now believe their own lies. Others have billowed the smoke so much that they are blinded by it and cannot see their own reflection in this illuminated mirror. They have become parodies of themselves. Some believe so much in their own moral rectitude and superiority confounding “civilized” and “civilization” with the “greatness” of weapons, technology and material riches that they have become too inebriated to see that they are naked do not care that they are naked.
Still caught up in the bigoted, prejudiced and racist Western colonial mindset that they are better and superior to all the OTHERS and the THEMS, they have not the ability to self-reflect even as their very big thumb is pointing back at them as they wag their index finger at the rest of the non-Western world comprised mostly of coloured peoples which is the majority of the world and on whose backs the West has gained its fortune and glory and upon whose shoulders it now stands beating its chest, bellowing and roaring. They see the world as one in which they are the masters surrounded by slaves and servants, “human animals” or (paternalistically) at best children. And so what most of the world see as “double standard” these Brothers cannot because double standard only applies among and to “equals”. These Brothers are ignorant of the fact that all of us, the entirety of humanity, have contributed to the history and progress of humankind from the gunpowder from China (and the later Muslim formulation of the process to produce bombs with it), the iron technology and human slave labour from West Africa and the myriad of food staples and their cultivars and other knowledge of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas and the Islands in the Pacific Ocean and the the bright light that Islam brought to what was a Europe enveloped in darkness. The bright lights of Islam brought with it the architecture, the great gardens and chess of Persia, the very important zero in mathematics from India and Arabic numerals to replace the cumbersome Roman numerals. Muslim scholars developed and or enhanced much in the scientific fields including the incorporation of surgery and medicine and many of the modern surgical instruments in use today, the technique of innoculation, first introduced to America by the African slave Onesimus, pinhole camera, the field of ophthamology and chemistry with its different procedures and equipment, the crank shaft and the list goes on. The iron technology brought to Jamaica by African slaves and stolen by Henry Cort with the complicity of England transformed England into the lone military and economic superpower for a century.
This lack of self-reflection is a vestige of the supremacist ideology and practices that have driven colonialism, the period of Enlightenment philosophers, the theft of lands and resources and knowledge neither accredited nor compensated, enslavement and countless genocides of Indigenous peoples in the Americas and elsewhere. Unfortunately, this is the history of mankind. It has been Western Europe’s turn for the past 600+ years. Eastern Europe has also had its supremacist iterations, but it is, at this time, the United States, Western Europe and their satellites that have attained the greatness in military and economic might. Supremacist ideology and practices are equal opportunity and all peoples at some point in mankind’s sojourn on this earth have been guilty of this to a lesser or greater extent as this supremacism hides behind one mask or another. What these our Brothers have forgotten is that history teaches us that kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall but they do not always rise again. Every rope has an end and no one and no society that is unjust shall go further than the end of its rope.
Our Brothers, these Self-appointed Saviours and Guardians of Civilization have yet a very long way to go before they can claim to be heirs to that Throne of Virtue. Technological advancement does not equal civilization. Once again, the tiny shrouds of light left to rot on those hospital beds were the light that illuminated the mirror of self-reflection and enabled the final separation of the wheat from the tares. The lack of empathy, tears, remorse and shame shown even for the gut-wrenching soul-searching plight of babies, was the final confirmation that these Self-appointed Saviours and Guardians of Western Civilization were Great Pretenders. In their eyes more than twenty of the children of the “them” are not worth one of the ‘us’. They do not realize that there are no “us” and “them” only the universal “we”. All children belong to all of us. Indeed, let the wheat and the tares grow until the time of harvest. When the winds of change have wafted away all that smoke and the tiny shrouds of light illuminate that mirror, what and who shall our Brothers see in that mirror?
Indeed, the Pretenders give reasons and excuses for the suffering they perpetrate on children and other Innocents. Those, the other Brothers the Pretenders abhor and judge also give reasons and excuses for the suffering they perpetrate on children and other Innocents. The only difference between them is that those the Pretenders abhor never pretend to be heirs to the Throne of Virtue or claim that they have the moral high ground. The perpetration of violence, pain and suffering on or against the Innocents has neither excuse nor reason. Violence is violence, no matter the perpetrator or victim. Once again, there is no copyright to pain and suffering. There is no patent for brutality, cruelty and violence. These Pretenders show that we must never leave the well-being of our soul in the care of others. We must never cede our free will to them. We must not follow them or anyone blindly. Our duty is to our conscience.
As previously mentioned, we must never be selective in our love, empathy, prayers and tears. There is neither reason nor excuse for violence and cruelty meted out on the innocents, especially children and the infirm, once again, irrespective of who the perpetrators or victims are. No matter the masks, Black, Brown or White; Muslim, Christian, or Jew, Hindu, Buddhist or Pagan. Through the eyes of the soul, we are all created equal. The Creator has no chosen people. We are all tenants on this earth, not here to have dominion over anything. We must stop the madness and insanity of waging war on our children whether in the ones, tens or the tens of thousands with nary a dash of empathy, love, remorse and shame. Children should never be prisoners or captives no matter what the spin is. All children held by Hamas and the more than 800 held in Israeli prisons, some for many years, without charge or trial are all captives and hostages. None of them should be thus. It is incumbent on all of us to stop adopting the egregious spin of labelling Palestinian children as prisoners, criminals and “minors” with a criminal connotation. Once again, they are hostages and captives just like the Israeli children who should not have been kidnapped and held hostage by Hamas and other fighters.
War is to be waged between combatants, not on children and other Innocents no matter the spin of collateral damage or human shields. Their refuge should never be defiled and that includes their homes and hospitals, schools and places of worship no matter the reason or excuses. They should never be denied care or medicine, much less water, proper shelter, warm clothing and food. It is our duty to take care of ALL children and to protect them, not harm them. Children are children. No child is different one from the other. All children want and love to play no matter where they are. We can see this when we look at the children in Rafah, flying their kites, running and playing despite the hunger, the disease, the thirst, the pain, death and destruction by American bombs, and the guns from the land, the sea and the air. They never know if and when their kites will be mutilated along with them. Children in Israel should also be free to play without having to shelter from rockets. Once again, all children want and love to play, be they in Israel, Gaza, Sudan, West Bank, Syria, Ukraine, Russia, Yemen or the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The war on Gaza especially, has been so brutal and over the top in its violence and depravity that we would be led to believe that we are watching a parody or the spoof to a bad C Grade movie were the Innocents, especially children, not being slaughtered and having to endure immense indescribable horror, suffering, and slow agonizing deaths. As we look in Gaza and to a lesser extent the West Bank, this wanton destruction, over-the-top sadistic depravity and gratuitous violence is to a degree that is designed not only to destroy and cause fear among the victims, but also to shock the rest of us into numbness, and indifference. When we are fed with such an overwhelming amount of depravity, gratuitous violence, cruelty, wanton destruction and an incredible amount of smoke in the mirror, we become numb, indifferent, and normalize actions that ought not to be normalized. Recruiting children for war, maiming children, slaughtering them in numbers never before recorded should never be normalized. Deliberately starving children, denying them medicine, water, shelter and care should never be normalized. We must never allow barbarity to shock us into apathy and silent acquiescence. NEVER! That is what some of our Brothers want us to do to fulfill their ignoble intents and agendas.
We must never tire of being outraged without distinction, without favour or fear. Outrage must be equal opportunity not just for some, but for all. Our outrage at barbaric savage acts of sadistic depraved gratuitous violence and wanton destruction and cruelty should never be dependent on who the perpetrators or victims are. We must never keep our heads buried in the sand and pretend that it will all go away or that what is happening is not real. We must not believe that Innocents and especially children should be recipients of our need or lust for revenge. There is neither copyright to nor monopoly on pain and suffering. There is no patent for brutality, violence and cruelty. Perpetrators can become victims and victims can become perpetrators. Indeed, Art Spiegelman, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel, Maus is right when he says, “Suffering does not enoble.”
For our brothers who are moved, shocked to anger, let us not fall prey to hate because we feel helpless, lest we risk becoming our Brothers who purvey hate and visit destruction on the Innocents and all our children. We are deafened and sometimes we become voiceless, unable to scream or to cry, only being able to elicit grunts emanating from the depths of our being, causing our hearts to lift in prayer hoping that so much hate will be forced to give way to love because there will never be enough future generations and years to avenge all of this. Hate which is of the darkness and love which is of the light reside in the same place so we can easily slip from one to the other. It is hate that has brought us to this place and what happened in Israel, what we see happening in Gaza, the West Bank, Sudan, DRC and elsewhere. Throughout the history of man’s sojourn on this planet called Earth, it has always been hate that brings us to the abyss. Only love, forgiveness and respect can take us out of this place. Remember that it is easier to love than it is to hate. We must be clear-eyed, strategic and focused in our positive and correct actions. Darkness never tires and light must never tire. There is more light than there is darkness. The arrogance that walks hand-in-hand with darkness never realizes when it has reached the end of its rope or when its clock is about to stop.
Once again, we must remember that it is easier to love than to hate for love has no baggage, so it can go wherever it desires. Hate, on the other hand, has so much baggage that it is always looking for a ride. Hate always hitches a ride on the train of love. It is the shadow always lurking behind, sometimes longer than us. Hate lurks behind the thin curtain waiting for its turn on centre stage to take us to a place not so far away, a blast back from civilization to barbarism. Hate never takes a holiday. It is always looking for the opportunity to hitch a ride on the train of love. Hate inhabits the same house as love, within us.
May the lives of all the children lost in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Syria, Yemen Ukraine and other places of conflict on all sides, not be in vain. May we stop waging war on the Innocents and on all our children.
May we never try to flee our conscience so that we will always do correct actions. May we learn to walk a mile in our Brother’s shoes so that we can see the humanity in each other. May we respect the differences in each other and know that our Creator has no chosen few. May we find comfort in the knowledge that each of us is slated for redemption and none is excluded. May we find solace in the knowledge that it is not a question of if but one of when each of us shall return to our Father. May we know that we are just tenants on this earth and take care of each other, the earth and all the creatures that dwell thereon. May we always adhere to the Divine Principles of The Fatherhood of God and The Brotherhood of Man, doing unto others as we would have them do unto us, LOVE. May we know that which I do unto my Brother I do unto myself for I am my Brother’s Keeper. May the tiny shrouds of light forever illuminate our path through the dark. May peace forever reside within us and between us. ONE DIVINE UNIVERSAL LOVE!
Written by W. Davis January, 2024. Excerpts taken from Broken Record: History on Rewind Copyright © 2024 by Winnifred Davis.