Gaza conflict: Who is a civilian?

The Interior Ministry was hit in the first strike targeting a government building

The bloodied children are clearly civilians; men killed as they launch rockets are undisputedly not. But what about the 40 or so young Hamas police recruits on parade who died in the first wave of Israel's bombing campaign in Gaza?

And weapons caches are clearly military sites – but what about the interior ministry, hit in a strike that killed two medical workers; or the money changer's office, destroyed last week injuring a boy living on the floor above?

As the death toll mounts in Gaza, the thorny question is arising of who and what can be considered a legitimate military target in a territory effectively governed by a group that many in the international community consider a terrorist organisation.

This is also the group that won the Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006 and a year later consolidated its control by force.
So while it was behind a campaign of suicide attacks in Israel and fires rockets indiscriminately over the border, it is also in charge of schools, hospitals, sewage works and power plants in Gaza.

 . .more . .

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Looking at the bigger picture

'A text out of context is merely a pretext'.

We all do it. We extract a single core element of truth, (the text) and ignoring every other argument that surrounds it, (the context), build a thesis upon it.

Politicians do it all the time. Mutter mutter 'weapons of mass destruction'; mutter mutter 'terrorism/security/terrorism'. etc. Journalists do it by focusing on the sensational at the expense of the background. Religious scholars who are past masters at it, having done it for 2,000 years, have made it an art form and earned the title 'fundamentalist.' But whatever name it goes by it distorts a truth by ignoring the bigger picture that surrounds it.

But what about us, the little people. Your every day man or woman in the street, are we exempt from this practice in our mundane daily lives?

I don't think we are, I think we do it with our memories: our selective recollection of whatever.

For example, something traumatic happens, a redundancy perhaps, or the death of a loved one, and instinctively we focus on the loss we have experienced, the smaller picture, the text. We defend ourselves and allocate blame, we become angry or perhaps, unable to face the enormity of the situation, so we pretend we're coping OK, but are often just in denial.

These are all perfectly normal responses which hopefully, help us move on,  eventually, to a state of healthy acceptance. But often many of us never get over 'it' because we never talk it through, debate it or look at the wider context instead of just the text.

Let me explain. Recently I began a Progoff Intensive Journalling Exercise called 'The now period'. The rules are simple:

1/ Describe the 'Now' period of your life: an open ended period that has a beginning but no ending. Example be, 'It began 4 years ago when I was made redundant . . . '
2/ Record your feelings, thoughts, memories - what ever presents itself. Complete the phrase , "It's a time when . . . .; record images and describe the period.
3. Describe more details about this period: people,projects, activities, your health, attitudes,events, dreams, images, people who inspired you and choices or decisions you had to make.
4/ Read back what you have written and record how you feel about what you have written.

What I found when I did this was that many of the older episodes in my story had been well worked through, and I was completely comfortable with them: grateful for them. But in the more recent period there were stories (episodes) which were too fresh. Too many things I'd simply skimmed across the surface of and hadn't yet examined as part of the wider picture. In terms of my own analogy, I'd latched onto the single text (my own pain) and ignored the context. To that extent I only had a partial understanding of the truth.

This lead me to repeating the exercise again, slowly - and oft times, painfully, till my immediate memory drew me not to the pain of my loss, but to the richness that experience has bought to my life. For example, to be able to celebrate the gift my late daughters life was to me, and others, rather than resenting her premature death. 

It's not always an easy journey, but it's a worthwhile one -  and proves to me yet again the wisdom of the old saying that the truth will set you free.

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