August 1, 1914: as seen from one hundred years.
This is in diplomatic terms how Germany declared war on Russia, one century ago on the 1st of August [1]. A few days later, the war will have gone viral already and break loose the means of modern industrial societies to bring war at a new level of destruction altogether with the first abyssal, almost genocidal, figures of casualties, sending ripples through history.
This is extremely depressing when one considers the state of the world today, for the anniversary of what shaped our contemporary society, and the maddening amount of occasions it had, and more often than not, honored, to bring itself into chaos and mayhem again, actually going there on a world scale again only decades later.
We are, on this very day, at the verge of another massive, worldwide, explosion and contamination of violence, which is sure to carry on the tradition of breaking all records of atrocities and innovation in human rights abuse, torture, new types of annihilation deployed at always much larger extent. The situation is indeed very much like it was in 1914, where the world was riddled with diplomatic tensions, small-scale incidents, itchy political moves or intent, contained but varied and sprinkled conflicts, generalized defiance when not outright hate from the people towards both their immediate and remote neighbors, until it just condensed and turned into the first world war (interestingly the triggering event was, like most of what sparks fire today, a rather moot, backpage historical accident when put in the perspective of what it set in motion: an assassination).
A century after that, the world is at the peak of one of the Middle-East eruption with daily reports of children killed, usually in dreadful conditions, sharp tensions between USA, Europe, Israel and Russia, Iran, many a South-America's countries, ongoing crises following war recently finished, such as in Libya, and others still at their climax, such as in Syria. Even long time officially settled still produce unbelievable and intolerable, but nevertheless still generally ignored, wars amount of casualties. And this is just a survey of what regularly makes the cover page of newspapers. A more detailed list would show how much more deeply deteriorated is the situation today than it was a century ago.
The most shocking ongoing conflict that crystallizes the spleen of our every-day made of continuous and fantastic technological progresses at the same time as political and societal regresses, is the Israeli-Palestinian one. I do not want to address its problematic here, since this is too touchy an issue and is out of the scope of this perspective on where we are an hundred year after civilization gave way to barbarism while still retaining technology. But as part of this perspective, it cannot but be stated clearly, firmly and openly that in the distribution of blames, Israel has the bigger share, and with each day passing, is getting more of it, having by now gathered almost all of it. To summarize it in one sentence only: regardless of whether, and/or to which extent, they are criminals those who are attacked, or retaliated against, a civilized society cannot also turn itself criminal in the process. Even if Hamas would be using human shields, which there are no report they actually do, but even though, this would indeed make it impossible for Israel to nuke them, because it would—and indeed it does—turn them into criminals of the same—or even, given their superior equipment, of a worst—nature. The depressing fact is that Israel, an hundred years after France and Germany turned into beasts, shows the little progress advanced societies made by doing pretty much the same thing, certainly even worst. Against an actual other beast or not. I would like to elaborate on the guilt of their opposite party but not to obscure the discussion, let us assume a worst case scenario and keep this level of imbalance where the Gaza strip is riddled with terrorists and criminals. This does not atone for Israel's responsibility a bit.
Without recoursing to violent images, this conflict maybe is best illustrated by the photo below [2], twitted by Johan-Matthias Sommarström on 31 July (2014):
- Young boy in #Gaza pretending to be a journalist with his home made flak jacket, had to lend him my helmet. pic.twitter.com/CnlUShdixI
The child is playing... he's not even playing to be a soldier, which would be innocent and natural enough, he's playing to be a journalist. And to shield himself in the games of his fantasy world, he is wearing this useless piece of rubbish bag which symbolism is made absolute by the contrasting reality of the war theater. He is playing with toys on the same grounds as the actual journalists who wear really protective outfits. This image has no blood, no broken bones, no bowels exposed, no crushed skulls but it is equally powerful and telling than the scores of those which do and that surface everyday, on the barbarism of this conflict. This child has no responsibility in it. He is pure innocence. Those who have killed others like him are war criminals, of the worst caliber.