She was only ten years of age. A girl. A daughter. Innocent. Tala Abu Ajwa was roller skating in early September when Israeli government missiles took her life, along with several other civilians. The image of Tala’s pink roller skates still attached to her young body should haunt us. Remind us that war is evil. But she died weeks ago, the cycle has moved on. Many more have died, she is less relevant to outsiders than Katty Perry’s backpack kid. Apparently for many, less relevant as well.
Earlier this year we heard a small girl weep, “I miss bread.” Another had her little body pulled from a building, bits of her falling to the ground. Other children sniped from afar, the trained government shooters blowing their brains out. During the war on the people of Yemen, the image of a little boy covered in the remnant flesh of his family, sitting alone in fear and shock while his image is frozen in time to be mostly forgotten. Just like the children a decade ago face down while the Mediterranean waves washed over them, in that moment Syrian refugees were more than just ‘fighting age males.’ But moments online for those with the privilege to bear witness through a screen.
Except these are real people. Not memes to be digested in a moment, disregarded to the feed and forgotten. They are human beings locked inside a purgatory that is not of their own creation. To the cynical lovers of government she was collateral damage in the most kindest of their terminologies or to the extremists, she deserved to die. ‘They started it!’ ‘They voted in Hamas!’
Apparently those elections all those years ago, that occurred when most of the population in Palestine were not even born or were too young at the time to even vote, are validation to murder. A pariah government ruling them means that they are forfeit. Then does this mean everyone who is born beneath a democratic, or any government deserve to suffer because of the policies and actions of that said government? It’s a question constantly asked by those of us who despise war and collectivism. But those who seem to love both, want it both ways in their favour. Death and injustice for them, complicated nuance for ‘us’.
Soon that may not matter, no room for nuance. The civilised perfection of warfare has developed weapons so destructive that theories arose to ensure their existence but not use. Mutually Assured Destruction was meant to reason nation states away from nuclear war. The early Cold War of the twentieth century went through frightening periods of brinkmanship, adverted through diplomacy, compromise and communication. Other near misses when individuals defied doctrine and standard operating procedures prevented mass death by breaking the rules.
Brinkmanship has returned, except the communication between the belligerents are not there to be had. Liberal democracies now use war and nuclear death to strengthen domestic respect. The population so drunk on inept reporting and the mainstream narrative that we are not even sleepwalking close to war, but Naruto running into it. To even discuss peace or consider others perspectives is barely viable. Stupidity and binary thinking in a supposedly non-binary world has turned everything into automated idiocy.
One can not like a foreign government without wanting to obliterate the entire population. The total war lovers look fondly at World War Two, Korean War, Vietnam and the war on Terror with an assurance that mass murdering civilians is acceptable. Mass bombings and starvation of millions of human beings is taught and understood to be the right thing to do. The greater good. The inevitability of such acceptance that some nations can mass murder so many innocent people has led to a point of such momentous hubris that nuclear war is not even frightening to the public any more.
The fictions of the twentieth century delved into dystopian and post war settings, where cautionary tales were told about the dangers of technologies so powerful that all life was the enemy to be exterminated. Societies so addicted to war that they remained permanently in a state of conflict, even if the war was focused inwards and victory only existed so long as the State remained all powerful. These were not meant to be prophecies or blue prints, in an era of literacy this was to frighten us all. But now we don’t read. We don’t seem to care much at all. Not about Tala or any other child over there, let alone the very real dangers of nuclear powers expressing such animosity without diplomatic dialogue.
War is horrible. Don’t let those who lust for it tell you otherwise. Wars require lies to begin them, they need fear of the other and a sense of glory to feed them. The wars are never over by Christmas, and when it is on such a grand scale it’s devastating. The Russian-Ukranian war has a death toll deep into the hundreds of thousands, the legacy of that war will harm future generations. It is the first major peer versus peer war since Iran-Iraq fought through much of the 1980s and that was a horrible and dirty war, modern technology merged with World War One trench and gas warfare.
The next peer versus peer war will not be won by wonder weapons and high technology, it will be lost by everyone.
The tragedy is that Tala, just wanted to play on her roller skates despite the pangs of hunger and the miserable world around her. A government hated her so much, it’s paid professionals held that much disdain for her that they murdered her. She did nothing wrong, her crime according to her killers, was that she was born at all. The real estate that she skated on is drenched in the blood and tears of too many children and someday, it may be developed into skyscrapers by the conquerors. But so long as ideology intoxicates, national pride invigorates and the religion of the State inspires, millions of little kids like Tala will die. It is the sacrifice of the innocent. And should the next big war occur, then maybe everyone else will die too.
