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 