Elie Wiesel's sad, glib justification for the killing of children
By Prof. Rajiva WIJESINGHE
One of the most depressing aspects of the recent killing of Osama bin
Laden is the manner in which it seems to have warped moral judgments.
Reading through the 'Newsweek' account of what had happened, and the
wider dimensions of the incident, I came across the following claim by
Elie Wiesel, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for his part in bringing
those responsible for the Holocaust to justice.
Wiesel notes the celebrations that attended the killing of bin Laden
and that normally he would respond to such scenes with deep
apprehension. The execution of a human being any human being should
never be an event to be celebrated.
But he believes that this death was different. Wiesel claims that bin
Laden's crimes were so many, that By his actions, he gave up any right
to human compassion.
Compassion
I found this worrying. I do not disagree with Wiesel with regard to
there being no need to regret bin Laden's death. But I do not think
compassion is something to which people have a right. I believe
compassion is a duty we owe ourselves, and that we should never cease to
feel compassion for all sentient beings. Such compassion should not take
away from the understanding that the death of one individual or another
may be necessary so as to prevent further suffering. But inflicting
death as a matter of justice or self-defence should never harden us to
the need for compassion for our fellow human beings, and indeed for all
forms of life.
And I fear that Wiesel went further, in justifying other deaths, in a
manner that suggested that a determination to destroy what has harmed us
can have even more dangerous consequences for ourselves. He wrote that
bin Laden was not the only one put at risk by the American operation.
There were others. Among them, children. And children are never guilty.
Still, it was bin Laden himself who placed them in harm's way.
That last sentence was horrifying. In the first place it seems to
justify the killing of children in bin Laden's vicinity, whereas surely
the presence of children should have increased the need for caution. I
do not think one can argue that no collateral damage whatsoever was
acceptable, given the threat that was in theory presented by bin Laden.
If, in the course of eliminating him, someone else who was innocent
and helpless suffered, that does not put the deed beyond the pale. But
the moral problem presented is not something that can be dismissed so
easily, by throwing all the blame upon bin Laden for having children
near him.
Indeed, it seems preposterous to suggest that there was something
unusual or culpable in bin Laden being surrounded by his own family. In
a sense that detail makes one realize more thoroughly the moral problems
raised by the decision to take out someone who had retreated to a
domestic setting. Given that he still ran his network, one accepts the
need to neutralize him, even to eliminate him, but the element of
revenge involved stands out more starkly. And, even if the thirst for
revenge is understandable in this case, given the magnitude of the
destruction he had wrought, the extension of such revenge to children,
even if it is argued that they were not the prime targets, and it was
bin Laden's fault to have them around him, seems to me utterly
reprehensible.
This type of thinking is dangerous. I can only hope that we in Sri
Lanka do not accept such an approach, and glibly dismiss the deaths of
some of the civilians who were taken hostage by the Tigers. In that case
the hostage taking was deliberate, so the culpability of the Tigers was
greater, but I am glad that we did not say it was all Prabhakaran's
fault and assume that we were justified in killing anyone he had placed
in harm's way.
I am the more proud then of the soldiers who did their best to spare
civilians, even when they were being fired upon by Tigers from amidst
civilian shields.
Proud
I am the more proud of the soldiers who found forty children in an
area occupied by Tiger fighters, most of them part of the suicide cadres
known as Black Tigers, as the priest who had taken them to that area
explained. He added, according to a New Yorker article, that
'Prabhakaran was among us, too, but none of us saw him.'
The author of the article, Jon Lee Anderson, obviously did not share
Elie Wiesel's perspective. Far from blaming the priest, or Prabhakaran,
for his ruthless use of civilians as human shields, he tries hard in his
whole presentation to suggest that the Sri Lankan army was bloodthirsty
and brutal.
But even he cannot conceal that soldiers took the children to safety,
while facing continuing danger themselves, inasmuch as, according to the
New Yorker, several insurgents blew themselves up in the midst of
civilian refugees turning themselves in to the Army.
*********
Fifty years ago, I remember a family holiday in Hikkaduwa, at the old
Resthouse, which was torn down some years later to make way for the
tourist hotels that now dot that area of the beach.
It was my parents wedding anniversary, and they had taken us down for
a much anticipated weekend. But early on the first morning, walking on
the beach, I came across a fish out of the water, trying desperately to
breathe, clearly weakening as every moment passed.
I wanted to throw it back in, but my mother said it would serve no
purpose. I think it was then that I realized, for the first time, how
helpless we are in the face of life's tragedies. I could do nothing to
help, my mother whom I had assumed could solve all problems, was equally
helpless.
I think I said something about how unfair it was, and she said that
life was like that. And though I soon realized that the death of a small
fish is not a tragedy, the sense that something was wrong with life
never left me.
Nearly thirty years later, when the second JVP insurrection was at
its height, and I was worrying about the fact that so many youngsters
were being killed, my mother said something I found odd in someone whom
I had never thought of as hard. She said that those who were terrorizing
society and I remembered how frightened she had been, when I once went
to work when the JVP had ordered a hartal had to be eliminated. It was
sad, she said, but there was no alternative.
Less than ten years later, I saw her dying, after an operation, and I
had to leave her to go and tell my father and bring him to hospital, in
time to be with her before the end.
I thought at the time of the fish whose death we had both watched so
many years previously and, though I realized it was an absurd memory to
have carried over the years, I found it strangely comforting.
There are certain things one has to accept, sometimes there are hard
decisions that have to be made, but one must never lose one's sense of
compassion, one must never cease to think of what those who suffer are
going through.
Whether one feels they deserve it, or whether one feels they are
innocent, the glib attribution of all agency to others, the denial of
compassion, is a betrayal of one's own humanity.
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