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We hear a lot about barbarism and backwardness and bloodthirstiness among the nations of the Middle East, where violent religious extremists are praised and supported — and often hold state power. A lot of this is hype and misinformation, of course, but sometimes it’s all too true. From the Guardian:
An Israeli army officer who fired the entire magazine of his automatic rifle into a 13-year-old Palestinian girl and then said he would have done the same even if she had been three years old was acquitted on all charges by a military court yesterday. …
The soldier, who has only been identified as "Captain R", was charged with relatively minor offences for the killing of Iman al-Hams who was shot 17 times as she ventured near an Israeli army post near Rafah refugee camp in Gaza a year ago.
The manner of Iman’s killing, and the revelation of a tape recording in which the captain is warned that she was just a child who was "scared to death", made the shooting one of the most controversial since the Palestinian intifada erupted five years ago even though hundreds of other children have also died.
… The military court cleared the soldier of illegal use of his weapon, conduct unbecoming an officer and perverting the course of justice by asking soldiers under his command to alter their accounts of the incident. …
The army’s official account said that Iman was shot for crossing into a security zone carrying her schoolbag which soldiers feared might contain a bomb. It is still not known why the girl ventured into the area but witnesses described her as at least 100 yards from the military post which was in any case well protected.
A recording of radio exchanges between Capt R and his troops obtained by Israeli television revealed that from the beginning soldiers identified Iman as a child.
In the recording, a soldier in a watchtower radioed a colleague in the army post’s operations room and describes Iman as "a little girl" who was "scared to death". After soldiers first opened fire, she dropped her schoolbag which was then hit by several bullets establishing that it did not contain explosive. At that point she was no longer carrying the bag and, the tape revealed, was heading away from the army post when she was shot. ….Palestinian witnesses said they saw the captain shoot Iman twice in the head, walk away, turn back and fire a stream of bullets into her body.
On the tape, Capt R then "clarifies" to the soldiers under his command why he killed Iman: "This is commander. Anything that’s mobile, that moves in the [security] zone, even if it’s a three-year-old, needs to be killed."
At no point did the Israeli troops come under attack.
Well, at least they didn’t stone her, did they? After all, Israel is a "bastion of Western civilization" in the midst of all those swarthy savages, isn’t it? I mean, can there possibly be a clearer expression of civilization — especially its ultra-modern Western version — than Captain R’s Aristotelian formulation? It bears repeating — nay, memorizing, searing deeply into the brain and heart — for it is clearly the guiding principle of all our glorious terror-fighting democracies today, not only plucky little Israel but also its patron and paymaster, the United States (and the lackey Limeys who trot along at Washington’s heels):
Anything that’s mobile, that moves in the zone, even if it’s a three-year-old, needs to be killed.
Even if it’s a three-year-old.
Even if it — this thing, this object, this Other, this creature, this piece of shit — is a three-year-old.
Kill it. It needs to be killed. Kill it. You need to kill it. A three-year-old? Kill it. It needs to be killed.
Now that, my friends, is civilization.
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UPDATE: Here’s another shining example of modern-day, Anglospherical Western Civilization in action, this time in the great victorious imposition of civilized values on the grubby little darkies in Iraq. From the Guardian:
The British government has ordered an urgent inquiry into the disappearance of an injured Iraqi child who has not been seen since being placed in the care of UK military medics in 2003.
In one of the most bewildering episodes of the Iraq occupation, Memmon Salam al-Maliki, an 11-year-old boy, disappeared within days of being taken to a British base after he was wounded while playing with unexploded munitions. Although his injuries appeared not to be life-threatening, his family have not seen him since.
The British authorities told Memmon’s father that they had sent his son to an American military hospital in Kuwait for further treatment, but have been unable to tell him its location, or provide information about his whereabouts or condition. The US authorities, however, insist they know nothing and say that in the absence of documentation they cannot even be sure he was transferred into their care.
… Memmon’s family, meanwhile, say they are deeply distraught, confused and angry. They say there was no reason to believe the boy’s injuries were life-threatening, and point out that he was still alive more than a week after the explosion. Until they have proof of his death, they say they must hold out hope that he could be alive.
Memmon was injured in April 2003, shortly after the invasion, while playing with abandoned, unexploded munitions near his Basra home. He suffered a serious eye injury and lost his left hand and several fingers from his right. He was picked up by a passing British convoy and taken to a nearby base for first aid. From there he was transferred to a British military field hospital at Shaibah. What happened next remains unclear.
Subsequently, the Ministry of Defence began to regard the family’s appeals as claims for compensation, rather than requests for information about the boy’s whereabouts. In its last communication with the family the MoD expressed its sympathy but denied all liability.
Ah yes, sympathy without liability: that’s the civilized way. In any case, what’s the big deal? It was just an 11-year-old object, wasn’t it? It shouldn’t have been messing with the holy hand grenades left behind by the defenders of Western Civilization when they were launching an illegal war of aggression on false pretenses (exactly as another stout defender of Western Civilization did 71 years ago this week). So it "disappeared." So what? Maybe it wandered into the wrong "zone" somewhere. Maybe it needed to be killed. Or cast aside. Or just plunged through the labyrinthine bowels of the war machine, lost for seven years while its family lives day after day, year after year, in agony.
That’s just the price of civilization, you see. That’s what makes us good and great and godly and benign. Thirteen years old, eleven years old, three years old — they are the food and fuel of empire. It their blood — their extreme, hellish suffering — that makes us so special.