{"id":800,"date":"2014-07-24T20:12:49","date_gmt":"2014-07-24T20:12:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/?p=800"},"modified":"2014-07-24T20:12:49","modified_gmt":"2014-07-24T20:12:49","slug":"selective-rage-in-the-land-of-indiscriminate-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/selective-rage-in-the-land-of-indiscriminate-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Selective rage in the land of indiscriminate violence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Israel has been waging a dishonourable war against Palestinian civilians. \u00a0As the UN high commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay said, \u201cthere seems to be a strong possibility that international law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Horrific images of Gaza\u2019s blown up children are enough to justify calling this a \u201cdirty war\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>A just war is fought with the aim of reaching peace. \u00a0Dishonorable, dirty wars, in which everyone including civilians is a legitimate target, destroy the prospect of making peace.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>In a region ripped apart by violence and abuse, \u00a0the slaughter of large numbers of\u00a0 innocent people in Gaza has only raised a blunted international response so far.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, the ancient Christian community of Mosul in northern Iraq has faced a deadline to submit to Islamic State\u2019s rule and pay a religious tax or leave. While the world\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>In his recent The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2014\/jul\/23\/arab-christians-secular-arabs-isis-middle-east-minorities\" target=\"_blank\">Guardian article<\/a>, historian and writer William Dalrymple\u00a0 says:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf 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 <i>qabila<\/i> \u2013 tribe \u2013 resurface.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In Iraq, close to 6 thousand people have died during the first six months of this year.<\/p>\n<p>In Syria, last week alone, more than 1,700 people were killed. The Syrian civil war has so far claimed 170,000 lives.<\/p>\n<p>Libya and Yemen, too,\u00a0are in turmoil.\u00a0 Afghanistan has near-daily attacks, the latest one killing ten people on Thursday including two Finish women aid workers.<\/p>\n<p>In a tormented region, with an increasing spiral of\u00a0sectarian 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Before unjust wars; dirty conflicts and grotesque, inhuman practices destroy the prospect of peace forever; before we past the point of no return.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Israel has been waging a dishonourable war against Palestinian civilians. \u00a0As the UN high commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay said, \u201cthere seems to be a strong possibility that international law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes&#8221;. Horrific images of Gaza\u2019s blown up children are enough to justify calling [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}