You remember this, right?
“perhaps the parents were not wise when they encouraged their children to doodle on the tank shells. They were letting off a little steam after being cooped up — afraid, angry and isolated — for days. Sometimes people do silly things when they are under emotional stress. Especially when they fail to understand how their childish, empty gesture might be interpreted.”
It might even be interpreted correctly.
As you’ll have read from the link Xeni Jardin posted in the comments on my original post, it was the parents of these children who originally wrote messages on the shells. Then they encouraged their children to do it as well, showing off for the photographers.
Both mainstream media and the blogosphere have lept to the conclusion that the media was responsible.
Israelis say that’s not so. Check the comments here on Cold Desert, where an Israeli says that it’s “It’s sort of a traditional joke in Israel. We all do that.” Even if the photographers hadn’t been there, they’d have done the same thing. Apparently, this is quite de rigeur in these situations, so assume it’s still going on.
And the articles themselves say that’s not so; they say the parents were responsible. The parents wrote the messages, the parents told the kids to add to them. So, what this appeared to be, children in intimate contact with artillery and encouraged to write anti-Lebanese thoughts on the shells, was exactly what it was.
I wish it had been otherwise. I still cannot understand why the media is blaming the media when it is clearly not the media’s fault. Self-hatred doesn’t cover it. The general public believes what the media reports over what the government reports, so it can’t be pandering. Might it be our cultural filter, that just doesn’t want to believe there are people raising their children that way?
I wonder, if the children had been Lebanese, how this all might have played out quite differently.
raincoaster 
The thing I find fascinating about Shai’s comment at Cold Desert was the ingrained, integrated mindset it displays (I don’t mean to offend, if you happen to be here Shai). I read his initial comment and realized that no matter how I try there are some cultural gulfs I cannot cross.
I wore a uniform, and I worked with the artillery at times. But I think that the guys I served with, though not excessively deep thinkers for the most part, would not have allowed their kids to do this. Too close to the action, maybe? The fracturing of an innocence we value perhaps too highly?
But I couldn’t find a constructive way to express that sentiment in the face of the comment that it was “sort of a joke”.
Shai’s comment brought home to me what a thing it is to grow up in that poisonous, fear-laden atmosphere, and while I still find Israel’s actions unconscionable, to say the least, I am perhaps a little closer to understanding their backing motivation.
Which doesn’t make me any less angry about it all.
I share your feelings, Metro.
That there exists a culture in which the juxtaposition of children and artillery shells is NOT considered horrifying or even inappropriate is itself profoundly shocking.
I grew up on bases. I used to play on decommissioned tanks that were scattered around the park. One day an old soldier walked over and lectured us on how climbing on the tanks was “Desecration, because people gave their lives in those tanks.” It was enough of a paradigm shift for me to ask the base park officers if it was true and we shouldn’t play on the tanks.
They said that those particular tanks had not seen any deaths and if they had they would not have been put there. Then one officer told me that it did him good to see us playing on those tanks, because for us they were only playthings; they did not exist as weapons of war at all.
And he hoped that kids everywhere would have the freedom to feel the same.
My god, even Britney Spears is reading Songs of Innocence and Experience! She knows something a lot of people don’t…yet.
What would Lebanese parents do, if Hezbollah fighters gave the children of south Lebanon a chance to doodle on their rockets befores firing them? What would the children write?
That is a very good question.
I think Shai’s comment, that it’s a sort of joke and nothing out of the ordinary, is revealing. In Canada our military has been known to do stuff like this, but they’ve never involved the children; when it comes to light it is considered distasteful, even if the only participants are volunteer military personnel.
I am not about to award brownie points to Lebanon for NOT doing this, because this is something no nation should do. It relates to Chris Rock’s routine, Niggas versus Black People. He says “Niggas always say things like “I don’t beat my woman, I look after my kids,” like they expect some kinda gold star. Black people know you aint SUPPOSED to beat your woman, you are SUPPOSED to look after your kids.”
So I’m not going to give Lebanon any awards for not doing this. You’re not SUPPOSED to do this.
I am, however, perfectly comfortable in awarding Israel lowered status in my eyes for doing this. It is obscene.
I think that interpreting this event as a symbol of the bloodthirsty way that these children are raised is a mistake.
No doubt that this shows bad taste, but as far the the children and their parents were concerned, it’s a way of getting back at Nasrallah, certainly not a desire to murder innocent civilians.
It may be their belief that the shells can distinguish between Hezbollah and civilian targets, but the fact is that they cannot, and the vast majority of the casualties on the Lebanese side are civilians. I, personally, give these people, who are living near Lebanon and who cannot be ignorant of the effect of shells, more credit for knowing what’s actually going on. The messages may be aimed at Nasrallah, but the shells are aimed at the Lebanese people, as the parents in question well know.
I have not said that the Israeli people, or even these specific ones, are bloodthirsty. I do not think they love death. But I do believe this shows a disregard for human life; that’s what it is, a complete disregard for human life. And that is, in itself, obscene.