The following article by Dianne Kirby was first published in Unity, the weekly paper of the Irish Communist Party.
AS August ended, Israeli news, radio and TV broadcasts were dominated by a new 'security threat' emanating from Gaza, children's kites. Carried by the wind into surrounding areas of Israeli kibbutzim, IDF assurances that such 'incursions' were unaccompanied by explosive or incendiary materials and were clearly non-threatening, did not prevent Netanyahu and his defence minister issuing stern orders to the military to 'act massively'. Without a trace of irony given Israel's blatant non-compliance, Hamas was given three days to put an end to this 'breach' of the ceasefire. The military was ordered to target and eliminate the kite flyers, children, with depopulation threatened to the entire area from which the offending materials derived. The resultant strikes killed at least three Palestinians, including a four-year-old child.
The United Nations condemned as outrageous Israel's threat to expel Palestinians from areas of the besieged Gaza Strip where children's kites were flown. The 'Board of Peace' urged Israel to limit its targeted attacks to 'imminent dangers' to Israel or its forces, equally insisting that Hamas, which adheres to the 'ceasefire', strictly refrain from any military activity. Given Israel's penchant for murdering Palestinians without requiring justification, Gaza's popular committees, coordinating with Hamas authorities, urged parents to stop children flying kites.
A wise precaution with looming elections in which extremist policies against Palestinians, children included, appear the key to electoral success.
Jonathan Kuttab, co-founder of the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq and co-founder of Nonviolence International, warns that the kite-flying fiasco is more than just an excuse to slaughter more Palestinians and normalize genocide. For Kuttab, it is symptomatic of a deep sickness within Israeli society. Kuttab discerns a serious lack of psychological and emotional security fuelled by the widespread conviction that Israel's dispossession and destruction of Palestinian society is so monumental that Israelis believe they can never be safe while Palestine and Palestinians exist.
Israeli insecurity and fear are pathological and cannot be assuaged by the ever-increasing, inordinate possession of military hardware nor Israel's supreme destructive capacity.
Threats are everywhere: Palestinian monuments, art, education, raising a Palestinian flag, international support. Anything and everything arouse fear and anxiety, triggering disproportionate reactions intended to crush and eliminate.
The Gazan genocide is extended to the West Bank. Entire villages are erased in South Lebanon and the Lebanese Beqaa valley, as well as entire city blocks in Beirut. Acceptable to Israelis, however marginal the threat reduction, when their security is all that matters. The impact on others matters not, meaning Israel's perception of required 'security' measures should not be the arbiter for what its allies tolerate and in which they too often partner.
Kuttab further argues that the kite-flying response exposes Israel's self-absorption and narcissism that prevent understanding any perspective other than its own. Most certainly not that of Palestinians. More traits facilitated by Israel's allies who ensure protection from international law and global antipathy, even persecuting and prosecuting domestic dissenters who challenge Israeli narratives and conduct. Kuttab also notes Israelis' marked lack of empathy and compassion for others, daily evident in the racist and Jewish-supremacist language common in public Hebrew discussions and election campaigns. Also, in Israel's unconcern about its devastating regional impact. Arab losses and lives are thought inconsequential.
When Israelis ignore the needs and rights of Gaza's civilian population and present children's kites as an existential threat, there is manifestly a deep-rooted malaise. It menaces Israeli society. It endangers enabler allies whose own leaders are also guilty of 'othering' for political agendas reliant, like that of Zionism, on cultivating fear and division. Throughout Europe, Israeli barbarism is still normalized by media and mainstream parties that embrace Israeli framing that legitimizes Israeli conduct.
The same process operates with home front far-right views and behaviour, with consequences today apparent in moral panics blaming migrants for problems not of their making.
The quests to 'other,' to legitimize wrong-doing, be it genocide, apartheid and ethnic cleansing in Israel or the justification of racism, pogroms and denial of safe refuge in Britain, erodes empathy, corrodes humanity.
All should heed and learn from Israel's descent into the morass of immorality and inhumanity.