Amira Hass The Gazan toddler with cancer and the humanitarian trap | Opinion
haaretz.com
The heart-wrenching photograph of little Louay Al Khoudari, not yet three years old and sick with cancer, worked: Last Thursday, hours after it was reported that Louay’s mother, Hanan, had not been permitted to accompany him to Nablus for medical treatment, she received a call informing her that she could leave Gaza immediately and travel to her son.
The report on Louay’s plight exposed the height
of the absurdity: As Israel negotiated, albeit indirectly, with Hamas
officials, it simultaneously imposed the punitive criterion according to
which any “relative of a Hamas member” cannot leave the Strip – thereby
forcing a toddler to undergo chemotherapy treatment alone, without his
mother’s soothing words and embrace. Publicizing this cruelty and
coldheartedness apparently elicited a feeling of shame from someone,
somewhere.
Here we have a
journalistic and humanistic success story for Haaretz, but it’s not as
much of a success at it appears to be. The bureaucratic ability to
change the original order and let Hanan Al Khoudari join her son relies
upon the Israeli pretense that this is an extraordinary case, and that
the coldheartedness of the bureaucrats who are our neighbors or brothers
or childhood friends was a one-time mishap. In other words, this
particular journalistic achievement is directly tied to our ability to
ignore the basic fact, to ignore the big picture: We Israelis are the
heartless jailers of the two million residents of the Gaza Strip.
For every cruel and
absurd case that is publicized about someone being prevented from
leaving Gaza, I learn of hundreds more cases every year that are not
publicized. For the most part, these are cases handled by Palestinian
and Israeli human rights organizations through persistent correspondence
with the authorities and by taking legal measures, sometimes going as
far as to petition the High Court. For each known case, there are
hundreds more we don’t know about that fall under the category of
“humanitarian cases.” Even if we did know of all of them, it would be
impossible to report on them all, whether for lack of space in the
newspaper, or because there are so many other matters that need
attention, or even because, admittedly, after a while they cease to be a
professional challenge.
The
capacity of consumers of information to be shocked (and hence to
influence decision-makers) depends on the rarity of the report. The more
the same story is repeated, the more the readers’ sensitivity becomes
dulled. Who is appalled anymore about yet another story of a kid getting
shot by a soldier at close range, or about olive trees in a Palestinian
village being uprooted by settlers, or by another illegal outpost
receiving generous state funding and military protection in order to
expand and drive Palestinian farmers and shepherds off their lands?
This
is the journalistic trap: A story that keeps recurring is ostensibly
indicative of a policy. But this is just where it loses its ability to
hold people’s attention – because the policy that enables the cruel
behavior of bureaucrats and military officers is perceived as the
accepted standard.
Even if we could
report on each and every “humanitarian” case, it would be a journalistic
trap of collaborating with a perverse set of rules set by ministers and
prime ministers: For example, dying Palestinians and their first-degree
relatives are to be given transit permits, but not second-degree
relatives or students from Gaza who want to study in Bethlehem, or poets
and writers from Gaza who want to participate in the book fair in
Ramallah.
We
have a “story” if Israel didn’t grant a permit to a person who meets
the restrictive criteria for a permit determined by the Coordinator of
Government Activity in the Territories. There’s no “story” if there is
no such criterion on the list – say, the right of friends who live 70
kilometers away from each other to get together. So when we report on
humanitarian cases, we’re inherently accepting the dehumanization of
Palestinians, inherent in the Israeli closure policy, which has turned a
basic human need like freedom of movement into a rare act reserved for
exceptional cases.
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