Two tragedies, worlds apart

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I got home from work and turned on the BBC News last night, expecting to hear something, anything, about a tragedy I’d been alerted to earlier in the day.

But there was nothing, not a word.                                  

I switched over to RTE News, and it was the same. Nothing. Silence.            

Coalition forces bomb a populated area in Syria

I felt I was living in an Orwellian world, where the people in authority, the elite, the Government, the authorities, call them what you wish, wanted to control what news I heard or saw.

At 7pm, I switched to Channel 4 News, and in fairness, at last, a mainstream channel on these islands dared to report on a horrific tragedy which had happened the day before.

I had read it in the Daily Telegraph, I had seen it on Russian Television, but when I watched both the BBC and RTE I began to disbelieve what I’d seen and heard.

How could such a tragic loss of life be considered so unworthy of attention?

Just a day earlier, an estimated 85 civilians, including almost a dozen children, had lost their lives. Yet there was no condemnation from our leaders, no minute’s silence, no expressions of regret about the loss of so many innocent lives.

The dead were in Syria, killed by air strikes.

US combatants had targeted an area in northern Syria which had been held by Islamic State (IS) or Daesh fighters.

85 lives lost, a death toll which was eerily similar to the 85 lives lost when a terrorist in a truck ploughed through a crowd of revellers celebrating Bastille Day in the French city of Nice.

All across Europe, people were, naturally, in shock at the news of another terrorist atrocity on French soil, coming so soon after the relief of seeing the European Championships football tournament conclude without any major incident.

Malcolm X: his jaundiced views of elements of the media
seem even more appropriate in 2016

France was in mourning again, yet we hardly ever hear news reports about the bombings carried out by the French in Libya or Syria.

After the latest Syrian attack, there were no commemorative walks along the Salthill Promenade or books of condolences opened up in Dublin.

Editors at the BBC and RTE did not even deem the attacks worthy of reportage.

So why is this important?

Well, the ‘terrorists’ who carried out this attack regularly stop to refuel their war planes at my local international airport. Nobody knows what they carry through Shannon, because nobody dares to find out.

On the day after the atrocity in Tokhar, the Irish Government confirmed in the Dail - the Irish parliament - that over 25,000 US troops had passed through Shannon Airport in the first six months of this year.

Gardai won’t search their war planes and those “dissidents” who dare to do so, some of them respected academics, can expect to make a visit to Ennis District Court.

When over 120 civilians are killed in just a few days in Syria and Iraq, we don’t see their faces on the TV (unless we go looking for obscure channels) and we aren’t even told that the French or the Americans killed them on our behalf.

It is believed that eight families were wiped out in the attack on Tokhar on Tuesday, in one of the deadliest bombings by coalition forces since the outbreak of war in Syria.

Two days earlier, a woman, four children, and an elderly man were also killed by coalition forces in an air strike on the Syrian city of Manjib.

The US military says it is investigating the civilian deaths, which is more than can be said for the Irish authorities who haven’t a clue who or what has been flown through Shannon (in ‘neutral’ little Ireland) over the past 13 years.

The loss of any innocent human life, whether in France or Syria, is a tragedy.

But some elements of our media don’t even bother to report some of them and, when they do, they refer to the lives lost as “collateral damage”.

How dehumanising our language has become over the 80 years since George Orwell used to write about Big Brother and the brainwashing of the totalitarian state.

Now “we” use drones to kill people thousands of kilometres away – US President Barack Obama famously sits down every Tuesday with his advisers to decide who should be slaughtered this week.

We rightly condemn the Islamic terrorists who carry out atrocities on European soil, but we ignore or are afraid to condemn the “terrorists” in uniforms who carry out atrocities on our behalf.

We don’t see their victims and the perpetrators view them from the skies, or military bases hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away, as though they were playing video games.

How much easier it is to "dehumanise" a civilian victim in Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan when you kill them by pressing a button far removed from the combat zone.

So over the past week we've had at least two tragedies, which seem to be worlds apart.

We stop to mourn the deaths of innocents in Nice, and rightly so, but our "masters" decide not to even
tell us about a tragic loss of life in a Syrian town.

Why would we mourn them?

We never, or hardly ever, see their anguished relatives on our TV screens.

The monthly protest against US military
use of Shanon Airpor

And then we wonder why people in the Middle East detest the western world?

The attacks on civilians in Syria or Iraq don’t justify the appalling scenes we have seen in France and Belgium over the past couple of years, but they do at least provide some sort of context which is dangerously lacking from elements of our media.

It’s easier to understand why there is so much hatred out there when our politicians and news channels make it clear that some lives don’t really matter.

There is no doubt that ISIS are murderous terrorists, who pose a threat to the entire world.

But the people who bomb cities thousands of miles away don’t always do so with good intentions, as the Chilcot Inquiry found when it investigated Tony Blair’s rush to war in Iraq.

Sometimes the “terrorists” are on our side, too, much as we choose to ignore the uncomfortable truth about what’s really going on in the unreported parts of the world.




You can watch an Al Jazeera report of the tragedy in Syria here:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/led-air-strikes-kill-21-civilians-syria-160719045329897.html

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The less we know, the easier it is to hate ...

The less we know about each other, the easier it is to hate. And did you ever get the impression that, for all our technological advances over the past few decades, we live in increasingly intolerant times?

Last week, it seemed that a third of the people I knew on Facebook turned their profile photos blue, white, and red in sympathy with the victims of the terrible terrorist atrocities in Paris the previous weekend.

Of course they had every right to do so, they were horrified by the images they'd seen on their TV screens.

But why sympathise with victims in one place, and not another? Those who wondered why Sky News don’t broadcast 24/7 from bombed out cities and towns in Syria, Palestine, or Afghanistan were told that people have a right to sympathise with terrorism victims in Paris, simply because they live closer to us.

US troops in Shannon: How many of us ever ask what destruction they cause?

And it’s true. The Irish do have more connections with the French than we do with people in Palestine, Iraq, or Syria. But we do the people in those countries a great disservice by airbrushing them out of our lives, when our own governments in the West play a big part in their troubles.

We let airplanes fly through our airports on their way to bomb them, we sell arms to despotic tyrants who abuse them, we turn a blind eye to human rights abuses, and then we wonder why some of them have an irrational hatred for people in our part of the world.

We didn’t see Sky News outside the Afghan hospital bombed by the US last month, but the channel spent an entire week broadcasting from Paris, interviewing victims, who had gruesome stories to tell about how a night out at a rock concert, a football match, or a restaurant turned into a nightmare in which 130 innocent people lost their lives.

Significant elements of the media make it clear that some lives are more important than others. Whether due to geography, inconvenience, or simple editorial policy, Sky never showed us interviews with the victims of the Beirut terror attacks which claimed 43 lives just 24 hours before the Paris attacks.

A suburban neighbourhood full of ordinary people became a "Hezbollah stronghold".

A few weeks earlier it was “politically inconvenient” to dwell on the bombing, by US forces, of the Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) hospital which claimed 30 lives. It wasn’t an act of terror, it was “human error” we were told. And it doesn’t rest easily with our narrative about who the good and the bad guys are.

So the victims of bombings in Afghanistan or Beirut never make it onto our TV screens and we don’t play their national anthems to honour their dead at our football games.

We say it “could have been us” when we talk about Paris or London, but never consider that ordinary people in far more troubled places are also trying to just get on with their lives.

Perhaps some of the refugees fleeing Syria are ISIS terrorists, hell-bent on causing havoc across Europe. But the vast majority are ordinary people who are escaping horrible lives in war zones. No father or mother puts a toddler into an unsafe boat to cross the Mediterranean Sea unless they are fleeing genuine horror.

Selective viewing renders a joke of objectivity. When 2,200 people were murdered in Gaza last summer, it was hard to find a reporter in the UK or Ireland – apart from Jon Snow on Channel 4 and a few others – who was willing to travel to the enclave and gather heart-breaking stories from the survivors.

So we didn’t get exposed to their grief, in the same way as we’ve been horrified by the loss of so many innocent lives in Paris.

It’s been horrible to go on social media in recent months and to see all the Islamophobic bile being spread about the thousands of refugees who are seeking new lives in Europe as an escape from the war-torn Middle East.

We didn't hear about the French air raids on Syrian towns back in September and few make a connection between European intervention in that strife-torn region and the terrorism on our own doorstep. But how could they not be related?

So the people who set off suicide bombs in Paris are a threat to civilisation, but the people who drop bombs on Syria and Iraq with no risk to their own personal safety are hardly ever highlighted by the media.

They don't strap on suicide vests outside crowded theatres, they press a button well out of reach of their victims.

Since 9/11, Muslims are blamed for the misdeeds of a tiny minority of extremists in a way which would have been absurd if the same criteria were applied to the Irish during the IRA bombings in the UK in the 1970s.

Not all Muslims are terrorists, but you’d never think that if you read through the comments on some social media sites. I’ve seen people call on their Governments to “nuke the bastards” as though wiping out the entire population of some cities or regions would eliminate the threat posed by terrorists, instead of creating a whole new generation of jihadists.

It is in the interests of the extremists on both sides that ignorance should prevail.

And it takes some degree of ignorance and extremism to believe that a place in paradise awaits those who shoot young rock fans in a crowded theatre on a Friday night.

When we go to Egypt, Morocco, Jordon or Tunisia on holidays, we get to enjoy fun times with ordinary, decent Muslims. The interactions work both ways – they get jobs in the tourism industry and to see that not all Westerners are as decadent or arrogant as they’ve been portrayed in their own biased media.

When we stop travelling – which is understandable in the wake of suicide bombings – our Governments can stoke up hatred against the Muslim world and continue to justify the sale of arms to regimes which have no regard for human rights.

We have seen this type of ignorance in Ireland for too long. When Catholics and Protestants attend different schools, play different games, support different sports teams, and even work in different places, it’s too easy to build up an irrational hatred for each other.

But it’s also in the Catholic Church’s own interest to keep children of different faiths apart from the moment they attend school.

Technology has changed our lives so much in recent years. We can now record or watch the news on our mobile phones 24/7. We can be connected no matter where we are, day or night.

But if we continue to put barriers between ourselves and ‘other’ civilisations we continue to be as ignorant about each other as Muslims and Christians were a thousand years ago, during the Crusades.

When our media only highlight terrible loss of life in Paris, New York, or London, rather than atrocities which take place around the world with far more regularity, they add to the false perception that there is some sort of Holy War going on between “us” and “them”.

Protesting against US troops in Shannon

Most people, whether they live in Paris or Beirut, only want peaceful, happy lives. But you’d never think that innocent lives in Beirut matter much if you relied on the likes of Sky News for your information about what’s happening in the world.

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Why are we so selective in our grief?

Unlike many of my Facebook friends, I didn’t change my profile photo this week. I got home after a Saturday afternoon in town to find that a host of people had adopted the blue, white, and red tricolour after being prompted to do so by Facebook itself.

It’s not that I don’t care. France was the first country I visited outside the island of Ireland as a teenager in the 1980s. A summer holiday on the west coast opened up a whole new world of possibilities for a youngster who had never been outside of Ireland until he was 14. 

I like France. My brother is fluent in the language and once lived in Paris. My cousin married a wonderful Frenchwoman. I’ve had fantastic holidays scuba diving off the coast of Hyeres, partied and enjoyed rugby games in Toulouse, and enjoyed city breaks in Lyon, Paris, and Marseille.

The terrorist attacks in Paris were horrific and the reaction completely understandable. 

I have been teaching English part-time as I build up a freelance journalism and content writing business and one of my students missed class on Monday and Tuesday because his mother lived near the scene of one of the attacks. He had been sick with worry all weekend.

But seeing all these flags as I flicked through my timeline made me feel uncomfortable. 

I wondered why so many of my Irish friends were expressing public sympathy with the French victims of terror when so many horrible events happen every week without any reaction on our shores.

I didn’t see any Lebanese flags on my timeline after 43 people in Beirut were blown up by the same horrible ISIS terrorists just 24 hours before the French attacks.

I didn’t see any Russian flags when so many people were blown up over the Sinai desert the previous weekend.

I’m probably unusual for an Irish person in that I’ve been to the Sinai at least a dozen times, thanks to my love of scuba diving. I’ve become good friends with Egyptians, Bedouins, and British people thanks to all my travels, which proves that travel broadens the mind.

People I know are hurting right now because people are afraid to visit Egypt, understandably, any more. Their businesses are suffering and they could yet close down if people from Europe stop flying to the Muslim world.

Understandably, the tourism industry in Tunisia disintegrated after the shocking gun attack on tourists on a beach a few months ago. People want to relax on holidays, not to be in fear for their lives.  

But this separation of the world into "us" and "them" is part of the problem.

If people don’t travel, we don’t get to meet ordinary Muslims. We don’t break down barriers. And they lose their jobs in countries which don’t have any social welfare systems, playing into the hands of the extremists who want them to hate the decadent western world.

It’s easier to hate people when you never meet them, as I found out during a gap year in Nicaragua in 2010 when I was astounded by the amount of American expats who had an irrational hatred of Muslims.

43 people were blown up in Beirut on Thursday and nobody mentions it on Facebook. It got a five minute mention on BBC or Sky News.

A sad dog in Paris, considered more newsworthy than a dead child in Palestine 

A MSF hospital was bombed by the U.S. three weeks ago and we didn’t see interviews with the survivors on our news.

Almost 130 people were killed in Paris on Friday night. They were ordinary, innocent people enjoying a night out, at a rock concert, a restaurant, or a football match. Yes, it's horrible. But suddenly BBC and Sky News were broadcasting for 48 hours non-stop from the crime scenes and people changed their profile photos.

If Kay Burley and Sky News broadcast 48 hours non-stop from Gaza last summer maybe they might have influenced public opinion and stopped the murder of 2,100 people, including 550 children.

But that’s the problem. Sky News don’t focus on all the hardship the people of Gaza, effectively trapped in an open air prison, have had to endure over the years. 

Kay Burley brought journalism to a new low this week when she tweeted a photo of a dog looking sad in Paris. She was rightly ridiculed.

The Daily Mail used the Paris attacks for their own right-wing agenda, likening migrants fleeing the war in Syria to rats just as the same paper demonised the Jews fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

News channels spend a full week broadcasting 24/7 from Paris so we are bound to have more sympathy with the victims. They treat a bombing in Beirut as a ‘non-story’ and move on as though nothing has occurred. We don’t care because we don’t see the victims on our TV screens.

If the wide world could witness the huge injustice being suffered by the people of Palestine, perhaps their lives could change for the better and they would feel less of a grievance against those of us lucky enough to be born in Western Europe.

We didn't see their families or the survivors being interviewed constantly over a 24 hour period on Sky or BBC last year. It’s easy to label them as “terrorists” when we never see them, even though 1.8 million people – many refugees from what is now Israel – have been living in deplorable conditions for years.

ISIS are depraved fundamentalists, but they are not fools. They see that killing people in France generates ten times more publicity than a bomb in Beirut.

Meeting ordinary people in the Middle East challenged my own preconceptions built up through the Western media.

By being so selective in our grief we play into the hands of the extremists and the cynical people in the West who sell them arms.

Wasn’t it George Orwell who wrote that some lives were more important than others? Well, the media in Europe and America make that abundantly clear every day.

The ignorance about Muslims in America and now Europe is alarming. The more we divide up the world into important (Paris, New York, London) and unimportant (Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq) victims, the worse the division becomes.

ISIS are scum and that doesn't mean I disrespect the grief French people have been going through over the past week.

By all means mourn the terrible loss of life in Paris.

But let's not be so selective about our grief. The loss of any innocent life is a tragedy, whether it's in Paris, Beirut, Gaza, Sharm, or London.

We are all human. It might be easier to relate to a tragedy in Paris, simply because we’ve been there, but that should not prevent us from learning about gross injustices in other parts of the world.