Yesterday The New York Times Did Something Revolutionary: It Humanized The Palestinian Children Killed By Israel’s Bombs.
We are witnessing a paradigm shift, right before our very eyes.
Lately, the world has been a profoundly polarizing place with people forced to take sides in Israel’s bombing campaign and displacement of Palestinians.
Here on medium, the most incisive article on the subject of Israel’s atrocities came from Tessa Schlesinger, who wrote movingly and powerfully about her background as a second generation holocaust survivor.
Judging by the comments on her page, there were numbers of people, who took exception to her article and disparaged her. These trolls weren’t restricted to the platform, as they were going all out elsewhere. I also did notice something interesting; people went to remove claps from my article as a result of my comments on her post.
Even though we saw images of the bombs raining down on Palestinians and the swift denunciation and condemnation of the state of Israel from the UN and the likes of Turkey, something, it seemed, had changed this time.
What exactly was it?
The political mood. Spurred on by the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent protests, the newspapers, that would have taken a moderate tone, have been unequivocally clear, on their position, this time.
One of such papers, is the New York Times with the powerful headline, captured in my screen shot above, stating that “ they were children”.
We cannot begin to appreciate, how incredibly revolutionary, this is: Humanizing the victims of a bombing campaign, young beautiful Palestinian children, caught up in the violence, of a well armed funded army.
There is also the image that went viral last week (captured below), of a young Palestinian girl, speaking powerfully eloquently in English, on what Israel’s crimes, has done to children of her generation.
But this should not be seen in Isolation at all.
A high number of white house staff have been urging President Joe Biden to change tack and chart a new course, on US and Israel relations.
Now that the genie is out of the bottle, we can no longer go back to the way things were. There has to be a two state solution, which protects the rights and dignity of the weaker party.
Thank you very much for reading.
