By Jay Janson
There is a universal principle of humanity that transcends religious and sociopolitical boundaries, emphasising the protection and care of children as a fundamental responsibility shared by all of humanity. This principle is rooted in the recognition of children’s vulnerability and their inherent right to safety, security, and the opportunity to grow and thrive.
Universal Empathy: The instinct to protect children is deeply embedded in human empathy. People across the world, regardless of their background, tend to respond with concern and a desire to help when they see children in danger or distress.
Israelis have become too numb and dumb in the thralls of their great power to kill to realise they are killing thousands of what amounts to their own children.
Israelis Have Forgotten that Children, by Universally Held Humanitarian Principles, Are Considered to Be Under the Protection of All of Us – That is, of Entire Humanity.
Israelis have as their leader a criminally insane unrepentant serial genocider of women and children
Israelis have come to believe their own propaganda about the Palestinian ‘Terrorists’ and October 7, 2023?
Of course, by the same reasoning, On October 7, 2023, Hamas invading freedom fighter guerrillas must also have been guilty of killing at least a few of what would amount to be their own children.
But for eleven months Israel has rained death. maiming and terror down upon a more than a million of God’s children in Gaza. As of mid-August 2024, UN reported that over 12,300 Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza,
Moral and Ethical Responsibility: Across various cultures and ethical systems, there is a common moral imperative to protect children. This responsibility is often seen as inherent to our humanity — a duty to safeguard those who cannot protect themselves. The well-being of children is often considered a reflection of the moral health of a society.
The principle of protecting children is often highlighted in discussions about the laws of war, where there are specific prohibitions against targeting or involving children in hostilities.
However, Israelis have heard rabbis point out be better to kill the Arab children before they become adult warriors.
Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, the head of the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar, for one, co-authored a book titled “Torat HaMelech” (The King’s Torah) in 2009. In this book, he and Rabbi Yosef Elitzur argue that it is permissible under certain circumstances to kill non-Jews, including children, if they pose a threat to Israel or Jews. The book suggests that even innocent children of the enemy may be killed to prevent them from growing up to become threats in the future.
The book and its ideas were met with significant controversy and condemnation, both within Israel and internationally, as many saw it as incitement to violence and a justification for acts that would constitute war crimes. Rabbi Shapira’s views are considered extreme, and they do not represent mainstream Jewish thought or the opinions of most rabbis…
…however, the influence of the Torah, often referred to as the Law of Moses, as the foundational text of Judaism cannot be denied, especially on attitudes regarding the daily death toll of children from the bombing of civilian structures throughout Gaza.
… and the Holy Hebrew Torah (first five books of the Bible) SEEMS TO BE IN DIRECT CONTRADICTION TO The BASIC PRINCIPAL OF THE SANCTITY OF THE LIVES OF CHILDREN
but let the reader judge for his/herself
Firstly, in the Book of Genesis, specifically in Genesis 15:18-21, God describes the boundaries of the land He is giving to the descendants of Abraham. This land is often referred to as the Promised Land and as being the land of other peoples at the time. Here is the passage:
“On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.’”
The boundaries mentioned here are generally understood to extend from the Nile River (referred to as the “river of Egypt”) to the Euphrates River. This region encompasses a vast area that includes parts of modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq.
Secondly,The fourth book of the Torah or Bible, Deuteronomy 20:16–18 reads:
“Only in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. But you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the Lord your God has commanded you –15 “And Moses said to them, 17 “Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. 18 “But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves.”
So one wonders about worshipers and children in church shaking tambourines and singing “Joshua ‘Fit the Battle of Jericho!” It is hard to imagine those singing so joyously the words “and the wall(s) come a’ tumblen’ down,” know what happened after the wall was down (shudder), as described in chapter six of the Book of Joshua 6:20-21
” … and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city,
every man straight before him, and they took the city.
6:21 And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.”
The Book of Joshua continues with:
“11:11. They struck every person who was in it with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them; there was no one left who breathed… 12 Joshua captured all the cities of these kings, and all their kings, and he struck them with the edge of the sword, and utterly destroyed them; just as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded. 14 … They left no one who breathed. 15 Just as the Lord had commanded Moses his servant, so Moses commanded Joshua, and so Joshua did;” [from the New Standard American Bible]
Whew! but wait, this is only one of many quotes from the Old Testament or Jewish Bible that call for the slaying of ‘everything that breathes.’ The First Book of Samuel reads:
“Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.” 3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”
As to scripture concerning human behaviour during a century B.C., barbarous behaviour and the terrorist execution of whole populations as a military tactic was common to that age. What is striking is that such inhumanity be worshipped as having been ordered and justly ordained by God.
Excepting the one above cited biblical contradiction, whether one works it out politically, religiously or anthropologically, ethically, it comes out the same. Children are most precious and belong to all of us.
Even zoologically, for in most species of animals, a stray offspring will be cared for by whichever adult is aware of a young one in need.
If you are dropping a bomb on someone’s residence aware of the presence of children, you are guilty of a crime against humanity.
Israeli ‘Defence Forces’ airmen, who release bombs to fall on children’s homes, schools and playgrounds, are they not dolts without brains enough to know what they are doing. In what kind of perverted society were they brought up? Taught not an “eye for an eye” but a ‘thousand or ten thousand eyes for an eye?’
This criticism applies to citizens of the United States of America, whose government knowingly, willingly and even proudly provides the bombs, missiles, artillery shells and war planes the Israelis use to kill, to maim and to terrify the million plus children of Gaza. The American military did the same to the children of Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq and other countries. Albert Einstein cautioned that
“The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.” “The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”
“October 7, 2023!” cries hegemonic Western media over and over and over again, as justification for what has been called genocide! Genocide of an illegally militarily captive population no less! – 70% of which be children.
How many worse atrocities can the militarily occupied and bombed Palestinians recall of Israeli massacres of Arabs over the years. Already back In 1948, Albert Einstein condemned the horrific and terror producing massacre at Deir Yassin village by the terrorist gang Irgun and warned of the fascism of its leader President to be of Israel, Menachem Begin in a letter to the New York Times.
Will Americans ever be aware and ashamed that it’s government forced a ridiculous partition resolution through a fledgling United Nations, as a stratagem whose sole purpose and expectation was to torch British Mandate Palestine into a civil war the Jewish armed groups were well prepared for and with U.S. help would win. A single democratic state was blocked by the U.S.
What is the truth of Israel, which presently, with American and European complicity, currently slaughters at will defenceless captive Palestinian citizens and their children while refusing to even consider freeing Palestine?
Popular Former Israeli Minister of Defence Moshe Dayan Spoke the Truth at the Funeral of Roi Rotberg, April 19, 1956!
“Let us not today cast blame on the murderers. What can we say against their terrible hatred of us? For eight years, they have been sitting in the refugee camps of Gaza, and before their eyes, we have been turning the land and villages where they and their forefathers once lived into our own inheritance.”
Why Is Dayan’s Truthful and Compassionate Description of the Situation Not Accepted and Promoted in Israel and Beyond.
Instead, Israelis seem to freakily bask in the genocidal terrorism the U.S.A. has wreaked upon Israel’s Arab neighbours with wars in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Somalia, Yemen and Libya, as if these wars have brought apartheid Israel security. The harm or death of each child and the desperation of its families and friends, brings about whole nations mourning the loss of and harm to their children.
This writer mourns any child murdered anywhere, by any means, as his own precious child and seeks in his mind’s eye to imagine how each child appeared when alive, while lamenting the suffering of the child’s family and friends.
Post Script:
In the previous war in Gaza of 2014, more than 500 Palestinian children were killed and one Israeli child.
As with the ongoing scale of destruction: that previous conflict caused extensive damage to Gaza’s infrastructure, with thousands of homes, schools, and hospitals destroyed or severely damaged. The United Nations reported that over 100,000 Palestinians were displaced as a result of the fighting. The present genocidal and obliterating cataclysm is already more than ten times as great and growing.
The 2023-2024 cataclysm by comparison is an intensive extermination of Palestinians especially their children.
Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India, in Germany & Sweden Einartysken,and in the US by Greanville Post, Dissident Voice; Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents; Minority Perspective, UK,and others; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong’s Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily, 1989. Is coordinator of the Howard Zinn co-founded King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign, and website historian of the Ramsey Clark co-founded Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign, https://prosecuteuscrimesagainsthumanitynow.blogspot.com/which contains a history of US crimes in 19 nations from 1945 thru 2012.
2 September 2024
Source: countercurrents.org