I hear Diana Moukalled‘s point about Big Media dehumanizing the victims of last week’s Beirut car bombing. Western coverage emphasized the location: Bir Al-Abed, a Hezbollah “stronghold,’ and nothing more.
The foreign press corps in Israel has a similar instinct to dehumanize victims of Palestinian terror when the casualties are settlers.
Moukalled could just as easily be talking about, for example, Evyatar Borovsky (most recent), the Fogel family (most numbing), or Yitzhak and Talya Imes — who, along with two other Beit Haggai residents, were murdered in a roadside ambush. I could go on. It’s an unfortunately long list.
Moukalled writes:
The stories of the dead seemed to be of no value because the bombardment occurred at a moment when feelings of hatred were at their peak. The victims’ souls evaporated, unseen among the flames. This even pushed some to be overtly overjoyed at what was happening, and they even failed to conceal their desire for revenge.
There have been crazy calls for more killings around us. The scenes coming from the streets of Egypt, Iraq and Syria are full of anonymous victims. Now it is Beirut’s turn, and the title this time is Hezbollah, not those whose bodies were torn into pieces by the explosives.
In light of all this death, there is no room, or even a slight desire, to distinguish between targeting innocent civilians and political quarrels. This happens every day, until we all became desensitized and the desire for revenge and anticipation of the death of our opponents have surpassed any other human value.
It doesn’t have to be this way, and I hope some foreign journalists take a long, hard look in the mirror.
Read the whole commentary: Their identities were taken with their lives.
