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podcast friday
May. 3rd, 2024 07:19 am It's all doom and gloom again, I'm afraid. I will highlight the two It Could Happen Here episodes about PK Gaza, "We Are Not Numbers, We Are People: A Conversation With Gaza Parkour." (Part 1, Part 2)
I am frustrated with so many things, but among them are the intertwined problems with how the North American media covers the victims of the war between Israel and Palestine. You know, it's the usual: 1139 is a tragedy, 34,596 is a statistic. Israeli children are children and babies and young people and get murdered; Palestinian children are "minors" and "under 18" and encounter bullets that haven't been fired by anyone, or die, mysteriously, of a humanitarian crisis and famine. The Canadian-Israeli citizens who died get spotlights in the paper; the Canadian aid worker with World Central Kitchen does not. The Gaza Health Ministry, which reports the same death toll used in the Israeli press, is always "Hamas-run." But another, related problem is that while occasionally it's mentioned that most of the Palestinian victims are women and children, that assumes that only their tragedies matter. Obviously, I am more deeply affected by the murder of children than the murder of adults, because I'm not a fucking monster, but the young men of Gaza who just want to live their lives are assumed to somehow be complicit in Oct. 7, and thus deserving of slaughter.
So what I think is important about Gaza Parkour, and the discussion with Ahmed and Abdullah (both of whom have now left Gaza, a story which was chronicled in an earlier series of episodes) is the reminder that in fact every civilian victim in Gaza is a human being, with family that loved them and with a desire to live a normal life. Some of these faceless non-women, non-children are young parkour athletes who rushed out to try to free people trapped under the rubble and got bombed doing so. These episodes take a deep focus on personal, individual tragedies in a way that I rarely see granted to non-white victims of war, and it's affecting and enraging and very important.
I am frustrated with so many things, but among them are the intertwined problems with how the North American media covers the victims of the war between Israel and Palestine. You know, it's the usual: 1139 is a tragedy, 34,596 is a statistic. Israeli children are children and babies and young people and get murdered; Palestinian children are "minors" and "under 18" and encounter bullets that haven't been fired by anyone, or die, mysteriously, of a humanitarian crisis and famine. The Canadian-Israeli citizens who died get spotlights in the paper; the Canadian aid worker with World Central Kitchen does not. The Gaza Health Ministry, which reports the same death toll used in the Israeli press, is always "Hamas-run." But another, related problem is that while occasionally it's mentioned that most of the Palestinian victims are women and children, that assumes that only their tragedies matter. Obviously, I am more deeply affected by the murder of children than the murder of adults, because I'm not a fucking monster, but the young men of Gaza who just want to live their lives are assumed to somehow be complicit in Oct. 7, and thus deserving of slaughter.
So what I think is important about Gaza Parkour, and the discussion with Ahmed and Abdullah (both of whom have now left Gaza, a story which was chronicled in an earlier series of episodes) is the reminder that in fact every civilian victim in Gaza is a human being, with family that loved them and with a desire to live a normal life. Some of these faceless non-women, non-children are young parkour athletes who rushed out to try to free people trapped under the rubble and got bombed doing so. These episodes take a deep focus on personal, individual tragedies in a way that I rarely see granted to non-white victims of war, and it's affecting and enraging and very important.
