“Down this road on a summer day in 1944, the soldiers came. Nobody lives here now. They stayed only a few hours. When they had gone, a community, which had lived for a thousand years, was dead. This is Oradour-sur-Glane, in France. The day the soldiers came, the people were gathered together. The men were taken to garages and barns, the women and children were led down this road, and they were driven into this church. Here, they heard the firing as their men were shot. Then they were killed too. A few weeks later, many of those who had done the killing were themselves dead, in battle. They never rebuilt Oradour. Its ruins are a memorial. Its martyrdom stands for thousands upon thousands of other martyrdoms in Poland, in Russia, in Burma, China, in a world at war.”
I was a child when I heard the opening narration to the Thames Television documentary series, The World At War. Narrated by Lawrence Olivier, the series is a well researched compilation of then, never seen footage, graphics and interviews with survivors of the war. The common civilian, soldier up to politicians and military commanders, provided additional commentary, offering perspectives of civility from a period of anything other. As Olivier introduces us to the coming series, he speaks with heavy regard for the subject matter, the humanity of the content. The dead, women, children, men are all individuals, not mere statistics. In 1973, when the first episode aired it was done as a chilling reminder of war’s brutal indifference to the individual, to love and fear. War is the destroyer of families and life.
The above image is of Rafah, it existed for over three thousand years and now it is reduced to rubble. The soldiers came, few live there now. The soldiers with artillery, drones, missiles and bullets killed and destroyed families and life. Refugees passed through, nowhere else to go. Among the debris, people hide and raise tents. Sometimes the bombs or missiles don’t find them. Other times they are not so lucky.
After this current genocide, when the people who once lived there are all dead or placed in camps, unlike Oradour, it will be rebuilt. It’s unlikely the conquerors will leave remnants to remember. The shame will be pushed beneath concrete and lay underneath hebel and veneers. Civilisation is the gentrification of truth. The ugly blandness of modernity plastered over the past and differences. Architecture for profit, a slab raised above nature, towers of investment and malls of shops for new families to forget the past. It’s progress, or inevitable. It’s rationalised by people in expensive clothes, important titles and access to equity. To rebuild above unmarked graves is policy, investment, a job program. Manifest destiny. The right of Gods children. Whatever the killers believe.
Perhaps it’s an indictment on Western values, a calculation of murder-capitalism. It’s not free markets, perhaps a version of liberalism, at least the colonialism is, but good or dignified it is not. It is easy to call it inhuman, but real humans have done and continue to do. Normal people, who do extraordinary and obscene things. Many believe they are righteous, others are profiteers. Their victims are dehumanised, reduced to the lesser. It’s an ancient deception, to remove the humanity from one’s victim or enemy. It helps a person sleep better at night.
“I just want a better world for MY children,” has been a comment I have seen thrown around a lot lately. People who boast to love a God, or adhere to theological doctrines. Or those who claimed principles, whether libertarian, liberal or any other variant of government. Disregard such things, look past the evil being done, the coercion and death.
My Children.
Therein is a calculation, a rationale that one must do bad things, take, or even kill so that MY children may live in a place that is better for them. This can mean other peoples children must suffer, or die. It’s the decline of principles. The rejection of morality when panic sets in, or moments of unreason take hold.
If Robert Fisk was still alive, his type writer would be chattering endlessly while he attempted to keep up with atrocity after atrocity. It would be his voice over the footage of misery, as it did in his three part series, From Beirut to Bosnia, in 1993. It was injustice then, terrorism, checkpoints, bulldozers and hate. Incremental dispossession of the Palestinian people, and a resistance of terror groups along with the thousands of innocent humans trapped among the politics and imperialism. The documentary was censored by the Discovery Channel because lobbying groups did not like the content and how it depicted Israeli policies in the region at the time. The Rafah, which Fisk had walked through, no longer exists. The many peace efforts and international government funded back patting exercises have all culminated into a blatant genocide. A city no more, just rubble.
“And I think, in the end, that is the best definition of journalism I have heard; to challenge authority – all authority – especially so when governments and politicians take us to war, when they have decided that they will kill and others will die.” Robert Fisk instructed. His words carry particular value now that we face an age where the liberal West, censors those who would dare speak or type words. The past celebration of “Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but names shall never hurt me.” Has been replaced with, we will break your bones if you speak the wrong words. Or read them.
The depression into cowardice and complacent obedience ensures a culture of no principles, no dignity. Just dependence and fear of difference in thought or opinion. It is the manure for authoritarianism and where good people, those who see themselves as good, look the other way when violence and injustice weeps through their screens or even wafts past their noses.
The lie told was that a ‘Chinese owned’ social media platform such as Tik Tok would be dangerous for the freedom of American, and Western users. It turns out, once it was taken into American and Israeli ownership, it has become a censorship and surveillance platform. A flickering example, along with ‘hate speech’ laws, revealing a future ahead of what can and can not be said, or seen. The nudging of feeds, and burying of information, to the banning of key words. In conjunction of arresting activists, doctors who visit war zones, whistleblowers and journalists. All measures required to make sure the world is blind to the death, the misery of genocide.
“What we went through will be difficult to understand, even for our contemporaries, and much more even for the generations who already have no personal experience from those days,” Dov Paisikowic, a survivor of the holocaust said in episode twenty ‘Genocide’, of The World At War.
‘The old will die and the young will forget,’ words reputedly spoken by Israel’s founding prime minister David Ben-Gurion.
“We were sitting in peace when we suddenly heard the explosion… The flames were huge… We had to recover dismembered limbs and dead children.” Layan al-Fayoum, survivor of Rafah refugee camp bombings.
“There’s no safe place here. Not even the dead who are buried underground are safe…Destruction, corpses, and killings. This is our life.” Mohammad Abo Sebah, another survivor of Rafah.
Should it matter who the killers are? Is it only evil if they are Nazi Germans? The victims Jewish, Gypsie or communist? Are we allowed to weep for the Armenians and Greeks murdered by the soldiers of the Ottoman empire, the regime of the Young Turks? Is it valid if the dead are burned by napalm or atomic fireballs of the United States? Or, if the killers are the Israeli government and their victims Palestinian? What innocent are we allowed to mourn, and scream out for? And what killers must we hate, must we love?
Will the masters stand up and tell us, what we must think as we see the debris and bones of Rafah?
We should champion the innocent. The individual innocent. Rafah was a home to thousands, for thousands of years. It was a historical and cultural city, a place of rich life. Now, it’s rubble. The demolition site of civilised planners, innocent blood darkens the dirt, architects draft up designs for how it shall be. Investment. Development. Jobs. A better world for My Children. Theirs are dead. Dying.
“At the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, the day the soldiers came, they killed more than six hundred men, women … and children. Remember. “
At the city of Rafah, the days the soldiers came, they killed thousands, men, women…and children. Remember.
