The New Nation - Internet Edition

Aijaz Zaka Syed

WE FACE this battle in the newsroom almost on a daily basis. Every time there's a slaughter of the Palestinians - which is almost every day - we in the news business face this predicament: To publish or not to publish?

I agree with many of my colleagues that these gory pictures of the carnage, this mindless bloodletting with bodies of children, youths in their prime and desperate men and women carrying their loved ones in their arms are not most pleasant to look at. In fact, given a choice that's the last thing most of us would want to see when we pick up the newspaper in the morning. We want to begin our day on a positive note, don't we? While we breakfast with our families and see our lovely children prepare for the school, we are not really looking forward to such disturbing pictures of other people's dead children.

Many of my journalist colleagues and most media networks around the world are sick and tired of going on and on about the 'Palestine problem'. They are suffering from what you would call 'coverage fatigue.'

How long can you go on publishing the same kind of annoying pictures and irritatingly familiar stories? As a colleague said the other day: "What's new about the Palestinians getting killed? They've been dying for the past sixty years, my friend!"

One of my bosses chided me for running the report about 14 Palestinians - four of them children - getting killed in an Israeli raid last week on front page. "Instead we should have positive local stories on Page 1," he emphasized. I couldn't argue with him because, as they say, the boss is always right - even when he isn't. I couldn't tell him that there is not a more LOCAL story than this one. This is our own story, whoever we are and wherever we live. This is the story of the good versus evil and the truth versus falsehood. This is our own struggle for justice, freedom and dignity. After all, what is it that the Palestinians are fighting for? They are fighting for basics like liberty and right to live a life of dignity in their own country, in the land that they inherited from their ancestors.

These are basic things that we all have and take them for granted. We take them for granted because we haven't had to struggle for basics. We inherited these rights thanks to our good fortune of being born in a free country.

And why are the Palestinians dying? They are dying because they want to live in dignity. They refuse to submit themselves to tyranny and the disgrace of occupation. Like you and me, the Palestinians too want to live in peace and security - in the comfort of their homes, with their loved ones. Like us, they too want their children to get the best of education and grow up to enjoy a life better than theirs.

But do the Palestinians have a choice? They have no choice but suffer under the most ruthless and vile occupation regimes the world has ever known while the world looks the other way. The so-called international community that the editorial pundits and diplomats keep telling us about is too bored to act.

What can the international community do anyway when the United Nations has dispensed with the pretence of passing regulation resolutions urging Israel as well as the Palestinians to "exercise restraint?" Excuse me? You are telling both the oppressor and the oppressed to exercise restraint? How are the oppressed supposed to exercise restraint? By not being a victim? But does it really matter? In any case, what have the UN and the INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY done so far to stop the world's longest-running ethnic cleansing campaign? Ban Ki-Moon, the current UN head, acts as if he's in the pay of the United States, not the UN. And what's the point of crying over the Western and US indifference. Has it made any difference? None, as far as I know.

And do we in the media have a choice? If this conflict has gone on for nearly 70 years now and the Palestinians continue to die like flies, should we stop reporting about it? Should the media stop doing its job of telling the truth as it is for the fear of offending the sensibilities of our sensitive readers? If we do not speak out against this ceaseless genocidal campaign against a helpless and defenceless people, who will? Especially if the Middle East media doesn't take a stand on the issue, who will? Just look at the series of attacks on Gaza this week. Sixty Palestinians were killed on March 1, scores of them children and many of them less than a year old. The day before that, on February 29, 18 people were killed, four of them children; one of them was a six-month old baby. And the day before that…it goes on. In fact, this week, news agencies dispassionately inform us, has been the deadliest for the Palestinians since 2002. That's it. Just another statistic. That's what the Palestinians have become, a mere statistic.

The world has grown inexorably weary of this endless bloodletting and killing of innocents and women and children. Children too young to know why they are dying.

But the killing machine called Israel never stops. It continues to kill - kill and killtuntil the Palestinians give up their land or become a minority in their own land. The six-month old Mohammed Bourai is yet another young Palestinian who would never know what his crime was. He sleeps in peace as his young, silently-mourning father cradles him in his arms. What father can bear such a sight? And what kind of people are they who do this to children as young as this?

Is there no one who can stop these child killers? Where is the international community when we need it so badly? Whatever has happened to the world's conscience? Why is it silent? And how long will it maintain its silence? Silence is crime. Silence is complicity. As the Prophet warned, those who see evil and do nothing about it also share the responsibility.

(Aijaz Zaka Syed is a senior editor and columnist of Khaleej Times.)