Suffering written in disappearing ink
It was just over a month ago that Hamas terrorists broke through the Gaza border with Israel and massacred 1,200 Israeli citizens, the vast majority of them civilians. The news, like lava flowing from a volcano, consumes dead bodies; it consumes mass graves; it consumes whole cities that lie in ruins after months of constant bombardment. The inexorable movement of the news is forever away from the volcano of what has happened.
Since Oct. 7, the news has moved on from the villages, kibbutzim and military outposts in Israel where all those people were killed, some of them burned beyond recognition. Others were children murdered in front of their parents; some were parents murdered in full view of their children, before they, too, were murdered or taken hostage.
Now the news gives us daily totals of the civilian casualties within Gaza. The total number of casualties stands today at 11,000, including just over 4,000 children. The burning viscous flow of the news will cover that number one day soon, just as it has covered the number of civilians dead and dying in Ukraine, which as of September of this year, 18 months since the start of Russia’s invasion, is 9,614, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Other outlets put the number much higher. Ukraine’s leading war crimes prosecutor, Yuriy Belousov, told The Independent earlier this year, “There could be 100,000 civilians killed across Ukraine, whose bodies will have to be found and identified once occupied territory is liberated.”
The civilian body count will go up. It’s the only thing you can count on in war – the tragic deaths of people who did not start the war but are only trying to live through it. The blood of innocents has been flowing on battlefields since before Alexander’s time, and it will be flowing in Ukraine long after Israel has completed its mission to rid itself of Hamas in Gaza. The Geneva Academy reports that “more than 45 armed conflicts are currently taking place throughout the Middle East and North Africa.”
Forty-five wars.
It’s no wonder the lava flow of the news does not stop. There is too much tragedy and death to cover. Wars, large and small, righteous or unjustifiable, keep being written not the disappearing ink of the news, but in blood.
This is my bi-weekly column in Salon, now published every other Tuesday. To read the rest of this column, please follow the link below:
Thank you for helping to keep the plight of the Ukrainians back into our minds. While we wring our hands over trying to decide if Israel has overreached, we’ve almost forgotten the Russian brutality.
I just saw an IDF captain posing by Hamas weapons inside a room of a hospital. This video was intended to justify the destruction of Gaza's hospitals on the basis of them housing Hamas fighters and weapons. Outside that hospital dozens of shrouded Palestinian bodies were lined up.
Having fought in Vietnam, and having found numerous VC weapons caches,
I know that that IDF captain was posing by the weapons of about four (4) enemy fighters. On my Army Advisory Team in Vietnam that would have been reported and forgotten. This is the best the IDF can show us. Does that really justify this killing and destruction? Not in my mind.