We are all flawed beings; nowhere more so than in our propensity to blind ourselves to the suffering of others to fit with our tribe or group. The alternative, constantly questioning to ensure we adhere to a true narrative, always risks isolation and exclusion from those we have identified with or love. This is where being true to ourselves becomes really hard. If we genuinely believe in the individual sovereignty and the equality of all, however, we have no choice but to recognise the members of other groups as our equals, and children in particular as free of guilt.
Recent wars and the hatred they promote have driven some of the people I have grown to respect greatly over the past few years to forget the basic truths they courageously upheld. After standing at considerable cost for truth, bodily autonomy and the rights of children over medical exploitation through Covid vaccine mandates, they are now dividing humans, including children, into those more worthy and those less so. After disputing the classification of occupations into essential and non-essential in 2020, they now seem to apply these very terms to humanity itself in social media posts worded to promote many of the same prejudices they supposedly abhorred.
Perhaps they had never fully understood why they were standing, or what they were standing against. Or perhaps we are all just prone to failure. Suddenly country, religious dogma, ethnic group or colour becomes a more important definition of human worth than humanity itself. God becomes a deity of a certain historical narrative rather than a God over all; a reaper commissioning the enlightened to sort the wheat from the chaff, rather than a Father gathering his children around him. Perhaps we regularly need to stop, examine our own hearts and see who owns them now.
Here is a hard example. I saw a video a few days ago of young girls dead, one with her head blown open. They had been sisters (and still were), but were no longer part of our collective humanity here on earth. This happened because some other people had made hard choices which they knew would condemn them, or someone like them, to death. Men were carrying their limp bodies, and someone was filming it because they wanted other people to see what people do.
It does not matter here, truthfully, who they were, who those who condemned them were, or why this tragic choice was made. They had been two sovereign, beautiful and alive children, like children everywhere. What happened to them has happened to children throughout history, from the sack of ancient cities to the pogroms of the medieval world, to the ethnic cleansings of the Americas and central Africa, to the concentration camps of Europe, to wars and tragedies of Asia and the Middle East. This is about how we respond to them.
The very worst we can do is find excuses to minimise the tragedy. I have watched a baby dying of tetanus, in a place where there was no pain relief, no drugs to paralyse and intubate, nothing that could be done to dull the agony of an infant wracked with horrific spasms. It is, I think, the worst thing I have seen; I have not witnessed such pain before or since. It was the result of what the parents did, which was the result of a cultural practice that was misguided and highly dangerous, but that is completely irrelevant to the child. To minimise this tragedy due to the parents’ fault or mistake would be callous. I think the people carrying those girls’ bodies were trying to get this message across.
At present, we are witnessing a lot of callousness. We are seeing children dying in wars and unrest. Social media is replete with posts minimising this because this group had previously done something to that group, or vice versa. Several of those I admired and supported through the Covid period are now prominent in doing the same, reposting statements that whole ethnic groups are “filthy vermin” or that a photo of a child carrying a toy gun proves he is a terrorist or child of terrorists, and therefore fair game as an enemy combatant. Somehow, a prior wrong means that the agony and pain inflicted on a child is less of a tragedy. Somehow, a child is held guilty for the perceived crimes of others and, because of the actions of others, is considered of intrinsically less worth. This child is worth this much, while that other child is valued differently.
Each child in Darfur, Yemen, the villages of central Africa, Gaza or Israel is a child of us all, and it is illogical, unless we are not all equal, to consider one child as more or less innocent than another. Our duty as adults is to understand that. It is also, sometimes, to carry out actions that result in these tragedies in an attempt to avoid worse tragedies. These are not games of numbers, but must be actions based on values of compassion and truth.
We will not stop the violent deaths of children; they have been part of humanity for 100,000 years. But we can reduce the pain and minimise the corruption that our failures cause. We can start to do this when we care enough about humanity to stop categorising children on a scale of worth. Put away this cold emptiness that is poisoning so many, and look into each bloodied face and see and understand their pain.
Dr. David Bell is a clinical and public health physician with a PhD in population health and background in internal medicine, modelling and epidemiology of infectious disease. Previously, he was Programme Head for Malaria and Acute Febrile Disease at FIND in Geneva and coordinating malaria diagnostics strategy with the World Health Organisation. He is a Senior Scholar at the Brownstone Institute.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Ok fair enough, and your point is?
Save the Muslim Jihad appears to be the point. Muslims sacred. Infidels – who cares.
I wonder where the author is on the 1 million white girls raped by the Muslim Jihad in the UK? No need for ‘bodily autonomy’ in that case is there?
It is good that The Daily Sceptic published this, because, with its almost unequivocal support of Israel’s assaults on the Palestinian people and consequent killing of tens of thousands of innocent children and adults, it must be precisely what Dr Bell had in mind:
‘Suddenly country, religious dogma, ethnic group or colour becomes a more important definition of human worth than humanity itself.’
‘We are seeing children dying in wars and unrest. Social media is replete with posts minimising this because this group had previously done something to that group, or vice versa. Several of those I admired and supported through the Covid period are now prominent in doing the same.’
Israel feels no compunction in killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and reducing their homes to ground zero in revenge for the 1200 Israelis killed on 7 October. It’s as in the days before the Flood, when Lamech boasted:
“You wives of Lamech, listen to what I say:
I have killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for striking me.
If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold,
then Lamech’s is seventy-sevenfold.”
Like Netanyahu himself, Will Jones and others thought that this was all OK.
Still blaming the Israelis.
Only the jewish ones
That all depends on when exactly your history starts…
Most idiots think history some how started on the 7th Oct 23….
“We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”
Golda Meir
Says the Zionist who dreams of a greater Israel and whatever means it takes… Ahem, Genocide.
I mean… The irony…
Good post,
There wasn’t 1200 killed, fake news from ZAKA, there were 750ish, with at least 2 dozen killed by Israeli forces.
‘Each child in Darfur, Yemen, the villages of central Africa, Gaza or Israel is a child of us all’
And also in Ukraine.
‘A children’s hospital in Kyiv has been hit after Russia launched a wave of missile strikes against cities across Ukraine.
Two people died when the Ohmatdyt Children’s Hospital – Ukraine’s biggest paediatrics facility – sustained major damage during the blast.
Thirty-six people were killed and 140 people were injured in the strikes, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said on Monday.
Russia denied targeting the hospital, saying it had been hit by fragments of a Ukrainian air defence missile, while Ukraine said it had found remnants of a Russian cruise missile.’
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cl4y1pjk2dzo.amp
There you go again believing Zelensky, his minions and the BBC.
So Russia didn’t invade Ukraine and Russia hasn’t been shelling Ukrainian houses, hospitals and anything that makes a civil society function?
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/russian-general-troops-killed-civilians-ukraine/
…Witnesses and survivors in Bucha, as well as Ozera, Babyntsi and Zdvyzhivka — all areas under Chaiko’s command — told the AP and FRONTLINE that Russian soldiers tortured and killed people on the slightest suspicion they might be helping the Ukrainian military. Sweeps intensified after Russian positions were hit with precision, interviews and video show, and soldiers, in intercepted phone calls obtained by the AP, told their loved ones that they’d been ordered to take a no-mercy approach to suspected informants.
Soldiers told their mothers, wives and friends back in Russia that they had killed people simply for being out on the street when “real” civilians would have been in the basement, calls the Ukrainian government intercepted near Kyiv show.
On March 21, a soldier named Vadim called his mother: “We have the order to take phones from everyone and those who resist — in short — to hell with the f——.”
“We have the order: It does not matter whether they’re civilians or not. Kill everyone.”
Your government and their presstitutes in the main stream media will be pleased you have believed all their lies, propaganda and omissions of the truth.
Bucha was committed by Ukraine to blame it on Russia.
From an interview with Frenchman Adrian Bocquet, who was in Bucha, to the publication “Voice of Truth”:
https://golos.eu/adrian-boke-francziya-ya-svidetel-voennyh-prestuplenij-kievskogo-rezhima/
“I was in Bucha (directly in the city itself), I witnessed this staging with corpses; and saw how they placed several corpses in one place to make them believe that there were a lot of dead. I have seen it with my own eyes and have even been in numerous trials about it. Do you want to know the truth [first hand]? Discuss these issues with the population of Bucha – they explain to you that this was done by the “Azov” and the SBU officers, who took the lives of civilians, in order to then blame the Russian military for these crimes … In fact, they killed their own Ukrainian brothers even for the fact that they gave water to the Russian military… The purpose of all this is to attract the attention and sympathy of the West and the United States, to demonize the Russians in order to show them as ruthless devils, and the Ukrainians as unfortunate victims. That is, the point was to distribute the roles on stage: this is bad, and this is good … Another proof that Bucha is a staging: France and some other countries sent special forensic police [to Ukraine] to carry out an investigation and find out who killed these civilians. As a result, forensic experts around the world found no evidence that the Russians were involved in the killings of these civilians.”
‘Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree granting Russian citizenship to French journalist Adrien Bocquet.’
Tass (!) 24 Feb 2023
‘An analysis conducted by Bellingcat using social media footage as well as a 3D model of the missile, all point to the munition being a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile. The analysis is in line with the view of experts, including Fabian Hoffman, a doctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo who specialises in missile technology.
Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear weapons and missile expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California, similarly concluded in an email to Bellingcat that a Kh-101 missile could be seen in footage of the attack posted to social media sites.
A Reuters photo from the scene captures the same pattern of damage that can be seen in the Gazeta.ua image that shows the same missile remnants as those posted by the SBU.
The full Gazeta.ua image can be geolocated just a few metres west of the damaged hospital building (50.450632, 30.481437) thanks to other images and videos from the scene captured by Reuters.
Bellingcat also tested an alternative theory floated online that the missile was a US-made AIM-120, but found no evidence for this.’
Laughable.
Bellendcat?????
Really?????
Defense and security analyst Richard Galustian states that the group’s founder, Eliot Higgins, cannot be taken seriously as he heavily relies on unverifiable and “manipulated” social media sources. Higgins has been repeatedly praised by Western media as a bulwark against sinister Russian disinformation and is affiliated with the Atlantic Council, a pro-NATO think tank.
“[He] is a complete fraudster. An unemployed internet addict who for ridiculous reasons ‘sells’ himself as an expert … [Higgins] is part of a new generation of cyber armchair sleuths who use open source social media to gather ‘intelligence’ from on the ground,” Galustian said.
(Richard Galustian is a business and security analyst who has lived in Libya since 2011.)
https://www.rt.com/news/438524-bellingcat-skripal-russia-passports/
Despite promoting itself as an “independent” and open-source investigation site, Bellingcat has received a significant portion of its funding from Google, which is also one of the most powerful U.S. military contractors and whose rise to prominence was directly aided by the CIA.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/omidyars-intercept-teams-up-with-war-propaganda-firm-bellingcat/250477/
Bellingcat: The website behind the Skripal revelation.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45665380
Bellingcat outed by the Independent.
https://off-guardian.org/2018/10/11/bellingcat-outed-by-the-independent/
Mary Dejevsky: not known as a Kremlin stooge or Putin troll. Yet here she is, in today’s Independent, asking in all sincerity and with admirable bluntness just WTF is Bellingcat?
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/skripals-bellingcat-gru-novichok-anatoly-chepiga-alexander-mishkin-putin-russia-a8577161.html
Bellendcat?????
Really?????
Defense and security analyst Richard Galustian states that the group’s founder, Eliot Higgins, cannot be taken seriously as he heavily relies on unverifiable and “manipulated” social media sources. Higgins has been repeatedly praised by Western media as a bulwark against sinister Russian disinformation and is affiliated with the Atlantic Council, a pro-NATO think tank.
“[He] is a complete fraudster. An unemployed internet addict who for ridiculous reasons ‘sells’ himself as an expert … [Higgins] is part of a new generation of cyber armchair sleuths who use open source social media to gather ‘intelligence’ from on the ground,” Galustian said.
(Richard Galustian is a business and security analyst who has lived in Libya since 2011.)
(The Daily Sceptic deleted my previous reply).
Despite promoting itself as an “independent” and open-source investigation site, Bellingcat has received a significant portion of its funding from Google, which is also one of the most powerful U.S. military contractors and whose rise to prominence was directly aided by the CIA.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/omidyars-intercept-teams-up-with-war-propaganda-firm-bellingcat/250477/
Bellingcat outed by the Independent.
https://off-guardian.org/2018/10/11/bellingcat-outed-by-the-independent/
Mary Dejevsky: not known as a Kremlin stooge or Putin troll. Yet here she is, in today’s Independent, asking in all sincerity and with admirable bluntness just WTF is Bellingcat?
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/skripals-bellingcat-gru-novichok-anatoly-chepiga-alexander-mishkin-putin-russia-a8577161.html
It’s a geolocated image.
Have you met Richard Galustian? He’s a MENA ‘businessman’. That’s it.
Mintpress reposts stuff from the St Petersburg ‘Internet Research Agency’.
Mary Dejevsky’s writings have not aged well:
‘Likewise, does the tracking of Navalny by Russia’s security service imply orders to kill? Bellingcat’s own headlines give that impression, but surveillance and hit squads are rather different things.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bme6iimkCOU
At last The Daily Sceptic has actually posted an article condemning the Israeli killing of thousands of innocent Palestinian children.
A pointless article, or is virtue signalling the point?
The point is not to criticse the Muslim Jihad and its consequences. Blame the Infidel (and rape their women etc etc as Mein Koran states on every page).
We can’t solve all the world’s problems and it’s about time we stopped trying to do it.
After all, they keep telling us they don’t want any “white saviours.”
Eh?
I don’t think it is altogether true. It is true that many opposed the agenda back then for selfish or political reasons but plenty of those who were against the Covid agenda are against cruelty to others. You can never expect anything better than about twenty percent to be motivated by moral concerns. You won’t be able to persuade the other eighty percent by any means. Even if they were to suffer great pain and misfortune or to were to witness a loved one in agony they still would not be moved. Suffering ennobles some characters but usually it just leads to debasement. You just have to focus on the good and expect that the numbers will always be disappointing.
Whom is the author addressing? Is he speaking to DS in particular, to the editors or the readers (who judging by the likes and downticks have a variety of opinions).
I’m not sure of the equivalence; most of us strongly held out for bodily autonomy and we would entirely respect the same for both Israelis and Palestinians, and anyone else for that matter.
The fact that the parties keep trying to kill each other seems to be unrelated. I would treat a Palestinian with dignity and respect just as much as any other person (I have a strong hunch that one of my customers is of that heritage). If two of my neighbours are deadly enemies, what am I supposed to do? Is this all about arms sales and the campaign to stop them?
I don’t particularly favour one group over the other (until they start screaming for jihad in which case they can **** off) but I’d like them to stop attacking each other, and each others’ children.