The beauty, the power, and even the danger of pictures is that they do indeed speak a thousand words, even to those who do not want to hear. For the US, pictures are bringing the horror of war crimes to the American people in a way that verbal complaints of abuse never could. Forced to see the pictures, the US government must now answer for the crimes of their soldiers.
For the Israeli government, one can only hope that our own shameful pictures can do the same. Last week, a beautiful young mother, her four daughters and her unborn son were murdered. The pictures of a happy family torn apart are heart-wrenching. There they are on vacation, smiling for the camera, and there is the bullet-ridden car, blood-stained and abandoned. There are the funeral pictures and the deep anguish in the faces of those whose lives have been destroyed.
David Hatuel was interviewed on the radio. He begged the army and the government to do something so that no other family suffers as his family has. The interviewer ended the conversation with the traditional words said to a mourner, "May you know no more sorrow," and I wondered what sorrows this man could possibly know beyond those inflicted on him last week. A lesser man would have raged at the accidental insensitivity of those words. David Hatuel thanked the interviewer graciously.
A few short hours later, driving home from a late appointment, I heard the televised evening news broadcast over the radio. It is interesting to hear a broadcast that was really designed for visual delivery.
On a good day, the listener will often hear several minutes of broadcast in another language (Arabic, Russian, English, etc.) and know that the television audience is probably reading the Hebrew subtitles and no simultaneous translation will be offered.
On a bad day, this leads to increased tension, because you know that the images are graphic and the broadcaster is relying on the pictures to speak those thousand words. I hear the gunshots, but cannot see if anyone has been hit. I hear the explosions, but do not know if they are from our army, attempting to protect, or from Palestinians, attempting to murder innocent women and children. Either way, the sounds without pictures bring fear and dread.
At the site where Tali and her girls were murdered, hundreds of mourners were holding a memorial ceremony. The army had given permission for this event. Hours later, my first chance to catch some news, I listened in tense horror to gunfire and screams. Robbed of the pictures and the words, I could only listen to the sounds until finally the reporter, having finished the dramatic video clip, announced that miraculously no one had been injured during the 30 minutes it took the army to bring the situation under control.
When I returned home, I waited until the late evening news on television, determined to take back the pictures I'd been denied. I watched in silence, knowing the outcome, but no less horrified. Pictures speak a thousand words, and I hope the army and the government will look at the faces of the shocked and terrorized citizens who'd put their lives in the hands of the army. All they asked for was a few moments to mourn a young mother, four little girls, a father left alone. In a greater sense, they ended up mourning for a government who has lost sight of its most precious responsibility, securing the safety of its citizens against the evil of murderers and terrorists. As I watched the pictures, my fear and dread turned to anger.
I watched as a father cradled his baby and ran to safety, shielding the child with his own body. At any moment, as gunshots rang out in the background, I feared seeing the image of him falling or being shot. I watched a woman run with another child and saw the dread on her face, as I am sure she too anticipated feeling a bullet tear through her, or worse, through the child she struggled to protect.
Why must a mother and a father protect their child against enemy fire? Isn't that why we have an army? I saw the way the men rose up to protect and guard their wives and their children, their neighbors and friends, and I felt anger and fury at an army and a government that would allow this scene to play itself out.
Ariel Sharon does not understand the most basic, simplest principle of all. They hate us. They do not want us there in Gaza or Maaleh Adumim? or here in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Afula or Netanya. It does not matter where "there" is, nor does it matter where "here" is. All that matters is that if either of those places is in their Middle East, they will hound us and hunt us until the end of time, or until they finally learn that they cannot defeat us.
Surrender Gaza, allow women and children to come under fire and you shame yourself. The army should feel shame, and every officer should be forced to watch those pictures over and over again until the truth comes through. It was their job to protect and that day, they failed. That no one was injured rests with a Higher Authority and is not to the credit of the army.
For all the talk of cycles of violence and two sides to a conflict, the basic fact is that an enemy that can shoot at unarmed women and children at a memorial service for a pregnant woman and her small children, an enemy that can take the lives of infants without a second thought and celebrate in the streets later, such an enemy is not one with whom we can negotiate, and is unlikely to see Sharon's concept that a single-party solution is anything but a surrender.
The mentality of those who would shoot at the mourners yesterday, those who murdered Tali and her children, those who lynched Yosef and Vadim, and stoned Kobi and Yosef, and gunned down Shalhevet and Tsvi and Shaked, is one that is foreign to what we know and believe. Israel acts according to the law and judges itself by its own standards. We have nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing that requires us to apologize to the world or to the Palestinians. We do not need to surrender our security chasing after a dream that they do not even want.
Had the Palestinians negotiated with Ehud Barak, they would have had their state by now. Had they been willing to talk and compromise, two nations could well have existed between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. The message we must send the Palestinians is that if only one nation is to call this land home, it will be our land and our people. If two peoples are to live here, it will be accomplished only when both sides do not shoot at innocent women, target infants and send their teens to commit murder.
What we have learned, what Sharon must force himself to accept and Peres be made to understand, is that those who exploded themselves in order to kill Malki and Alan and Tamar and Elsa and Zvi and Roi and Anna and Boris and Anatoly and Aharon and Dina and hundreds of others whose names we cannot forget, whose smiles we must remember, is that they make it clear each day that they will not share this land with us and will not rest until they have it all.
For those many who accept this basic truth, the next step in the chain of logic is that you do not weaken your position needlessly. I once stood meters away from Ariel Sharon as he stood on the first row of mountains to the east of the Mediterranean. He pointed to the heartland of Israel laid out below us and said, "You do not surrender the heights." Not in battle, not in morality, and not when your women and children are under fire.
For the Israeli government, one can only hope that our own shameful pictures can do the same. Last week, a beautiful young mother, her four daughters and her unborn son were murdered. The pictures of a happy family torn apart are heart-wrenching. There they are on vacation, smiling for the camera, and there is the bullet-ridden car, blood-stained and abandoned. There are the funeral pictures and the deep anguish in the faces of those whose lives have been destroyed.
David Hatuel was interviewed on the radio. He begged the army and the government to do something so that no other family suffers as his family has. The interviewer ended the conversation with the traditional words said to a mourner, "May you know no more sorrow," and I wondered what sorrows this man could possibly know beyond those inflicted on him last week. A lesser man would have raged at the accidental insensitivity of those words. David Hatuel thanked the interviewer graciously.
A few short hours later, driving home from a late appointment, I heard the televised evening news broadcast over the radio. It is interesting to hear a broadcast that was really designed for visual delivery.
On a good day, the listener will often hear several minutes of broadcast in another language (Arabic, Russian, English, etc.) and know that the television audience is probably reading the Hebrew subtitles and no simultaneous translation will be offered.
On a bad day, this leads to increased tension, because you know that the images are graphic and the broadcaster is relying on the pictures to speak those thousand words. I hear the gunshots, but cannot see if anyone has been hit. I hear the explosions, but do not know if they are from our army, attempting to protect, or from Palestinians, attempting to murder innocent women and children. Either way, the sounds without pictures bring fear and dread.
At the site where Tali and her girls were murdered, hundreds of mourners were holding a memorial ceremony. The army had given permission for this event. Hours later, my first chance to catch some news, I listened in tense horror to gunfire and screams. Robbed of the pictures and the words, I could only listen to the sounds until finally the reporter, having finished the dramatic video clip, announced that miraculously no one had been injured during the 30 minutes it took the army to bring the situation under control.
When I returned home, I waited until the late evening news on television, determined to take back the pictures I'd been denied. I watched in silence, knowing the outcome, but no less horrified. Pictures speak a thousand words, and I hope the army and the government will look at the faces of the shocked and terrorized citizens who'd put their lives in the hands of the army. All they asked for was a few moments to mourn a young mother, four little girls, a father left alone. In a greater sense, they ended up mourning for a government who has lost sight of its most precious responsibility, securing the safety of its citizens against the evil of murderers and terrorists. As I watched the pictures, my fear and dread turned to anger.
I watched as a father cradled his baby and ran to safety, shielding the child with his own body. At any moment, as gunshots rang out in the background, I feared seeing the image of him falling or being shot. I watched a woman run with another child and saw the dread on her face, as I am sure she too anticipated feeling a bullet tear through her, or worse, through the child she struggled to protect.
Why must a mother and a father protect their child against enemy fire? Isn't that why we have an army? I saw the way the men rose up to protect and guard their wives and their children, their neighbors and friends, and I felt anger and fury at an army and a government that would allow this scene to play itself out.
Ariel Sharon does not understand the most basic, simplest principle of all. They hate us. They do not want us there in Gaza or Maaleh Adumim? or here in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Afula or Netanya. It does not matter where "there" is, nor does it matter where "here" is. All that matters is that if either of those places is in their Middle East, they will hound us and hunt us until the end of time, or until they finally learn that they cannot defeat us.
Surrender Gaza, allow women and children to come under fire and you shame yourself. The army should feel shame, and every officer should be forced to watch those pictures over and over again until the truth comes through. It was their job to protect and that day, they failed. That no one was injured rests with a Higher Authority and is not to the credit of the army.
For all the talk of cycles of violence and two sides to a conflict, the basic fact is that an enemy that can shoot at unarmed women and children at a memorial service for a pregnant woman and her small children, an enemy that can take the lives of infants without a second thought and celebrate in the streets later, such an enemy is not one with whom we can negotiate, and is unlikely to see Sharon's concept that a single-party solution is anything but a surrender.
The mentality of those who would shoot at the mourners yesterday, those who murdered Tali and her children, those who lynched Yosef and Vadim, and stoned Kobi and Yosef, and gunned down Shalhevet and Tsvi and Shaked, is one that is foreign to what we know and believe. Israel acts according to the law and judges itself by its own standards. We have nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing that requires us to apologize to the world or to the Palestinians. We do not need to surrender our security chasing after a dream that they do not even want.
Had the Palestinians negotiated with Ehud Barak, they would have had their state by now. Had they been willing to talk and compromise, two nations could well have existed between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. The message we must send the Palestinians is that if only one nation is to call this land home, it will be our land and our people. If two peoples are to live here, it will be accomplished only when both sides do not shoot at innocent women, target infants and send their teens to commit murder.
What we have learned, what Sharon must force himself to accept and Peres be made to understand, is that those who exploded themselves in order to kill Malki and Alan and Tamar and Elsa and Zvi and Roi and Anna and Boris and Anatoly and Aharon and Dina and hundreds of others whose names we cannot forget, whose smiles we must remember, is that they make it clear each day that they will not share this land with us and will not rest until they have it all.
For those many who accept this basic truth, the next step in the chain of logic is that you do not weaken your position needlessly. I once stood meters away from Ariel Sharon as he stood on the first row of mountains to the east of the Mediterranean. He pointed to the heartland of Israel laid out below us and said, "You do not surrender the heights." Not in battle, not in morality, and not when your women and children are under fire.