Israel has been waging a dishonourable war against Palestinian civilians. As the UN high commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay said, “there seems to be a strong possibility that international law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes”.
Horrific images of Gaza’s blown up children are enough to justify calling this a “dirty war”.
A just war is fought with the aim of reaching peace. Dishonorable, dirty wars, in which everyone including civilians is a legitimate target, destroy the prospect of making peace.
The ultimate form of a dirty war is terrorism; be it conducted by an armed group or a state. Today, we have far too many dirty wars raging in the Middle East.
In a region ripped apart by violence and abuse, the slaughter of large numbers of innocent people in Gaza has only raised a blunted international response so far.
In the meantime, the ancient Christian community of Mosul in northern Iraq has faced a deadline to submit to Islamic State’s rule and pay a religious tax or leave. While the world’s attention was directed to Israeli cruelty and injustice against Palestinians, people who had lived in Iraq for two millennia had been expelled from their homeland without many people noticing or protesting.
In his recent The Guardian article, historian and writer William Dalrymple says:
“If the Islamic state proclaimed by Isis turns into a permanent, Christian-free zone, it could signal the demise not just of an important part of the Arab Christian realm but also of the secular Arab nationalism Christians helped create. The 20th century after 1918, which saw the creation of the different Arab national states, may well prove to be a blip in Middle Eastern history, as the old primary identifiers of Arab identity, religion and qabila – tribe – resurface.”
In Iraq, close to 6 thousand people have died during the first six months of this year.
In Syria, last week alone, more than 1,700 people were killed. The Syrian civil war has so far claimed 170,000 lives.
Libya and Yemen, too, are in turmoil. Afghanistan has near-daily attacks, the latest one killing ten people on Thursday including two Finish women aid workers.
In a tormented region, with an increasing spiral of sectarian hatred and violence, more and more graphic images of brutality circulated either by the victims or perpetrators on the social media, justifiably cause anger but it also seems to further desensitize people to levels of violence.
What we need is not selective outrage but a principled stand against all kinds of indiscriminate attacks on civilians, violations of international law, physical and verbal violence and discrimination against any religious or ethnic group.
Before unjust wars; dirty conflicts and grotesque, inhuman practices destroy the prospect of peace forever; before we past the point of no return.
This post is also available in: Turkish
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