The Innocence of Children

What is it about Jewish and Arab children that privileges the first and spurns the second in the speeches of President Barack Obama, let alone in the Western media more generally? Are Jewish children smarter, prettier, whiter? Are they deserving of sympathy and solidarity, denied to Arab children, because they are innocent and unsullied by the guilt of their parents, themselves often referred to as "the children of Israel"? Or, is it that Arab children are dangerous, threatening, guilty, even dark and ugly, a situation that can only lead to Arabopaedophobia - the Western fear of Arab children?

Innocence and childhood are common themes in Western political discourse, official and unofficial. While it is a truism to state that since the end of European colonialism the US and Europe have been, at the official and unofficial levels, friendly to and supportive of the Zionist colonial project and hostile to Palestinians and Arabs in their resistance to Zionism, the expectation would be that a West that insists rhetorically on the "universalism" of its values would show at least a rhetorical commitment to the equality of Arab and Jewish children as victims of the violence visited on the region by Zionist colonialism and the resistance to it. Yet, the only Western sympathy manifest is to Jewish children as symbols of Zionist and Israeli innocence. This Western sympathy is deployed primarily to denounce Arab guilt, including the guilt of Arab children.

Indeed, the only time Arab children received any sympathy at all in the West was a few years ago when Israeli and US propaganda outlets, official and unofficial alike, mounted a major propaganda campaign to save these children from their barbaric Arab and Palestinian parents, who allegedly trained them to commit violent acts, or who unlovingly placed them in the middle of danger, sacrificing them for their violent political goals. It was not Israel who was to blame for killing Palestinian children, but the children's own uncaring and cruel parents who placed them in the path of Israeli Jewish bullets, which left Israeli Jews no choice but to kill them.
~ from Are Palestinian Children Less Worthy? by Joseph Massad ~

Almost every religion and philosophy that I know of celebrates the innocence of children. Both Jesus and Lao Tzu suggest that our adult lives would be more fulfilling IF we approached life with the same lack of desire and ego that infants do.

But in a world of global capitalism fueled by fundamentalist religion, only the select children are considered worthy of our attention and concern.

Radical Muslims don't seem to place any importance on the lives of the non-Muslim young any more than the radical Christians who don't seem to value non-evangelical Christian children. Both sides seem more than willing to slaughter innocents to advance their myopic world views.

If we simply focus on the US, we can see how the Christian zealots talk out of both sides of their mouths. On the one hand, they will fight strenuously for the rights of the unborn. On the other hand, if we're talking about black, Latino, American Indian or (heaven forbid!) Muslim children, then the zealots will support all kinds of measure to punish these innocent young.

Children always represent the future...if they live long enough. If we strive to create a world of peace, justice and harmony, then each child -- regardless of who their parents are -- needs to be nurtured and valued. If not, the sins of the parents will become the sins of the next generation.