The Path to Beslan School Number One
The Path to Beslan School Number One
When is a child expendable for the sake of a political statement? Line up ten toddlers and the world will disagree. Some people will say none should be targeted. Others will point to one and say a bullet in her head is not terrorism.
In the ruins of a school in Beslan, Russia finds an inconsolable pain. Millions recoil in sympathy from the images of bloody children running naked from their burning school, and then from small shrouded bodies lying on the grass.
President Putin said in a national address: “This crime of the terrorists, inhuman, unprecedented in terms of its cruelty…is an attack on our country.” The “unprecedented” targeting of little ones is not a far leap from the daily deluge of terrorist cruelty toward civilians globally. The line that would have prevented these children’s carnage has been crossed years ago.
Mr. Putin noted the path to the tragedy at Beslan School Number One began when Russia “failed to recognize the complexity and dangerous nature of the processes taking place in our own country and the world in general. In any case, we have failed to respond to them appropriately. We showed weakness, and the weak are trampled upon.”
Kofi Annan said he was “appalled” by the “criminal act.” The Security Council condemned “the heinous terrorist act.” The instrument of global peace that laments small Russian victims does not find all the world’s children equal or deserving of its protection. The path to Beslan begins here.
The UN is unable reach a consensus on the definition of terrorism. It has yet to issue a global and unequivocal condemnation of all violence targeting civilians. Some members believe that “freedom fighters” have a right to use any tactic against a superior force. It is acceptable for “legitimate resistance movements” to shoot children, explode them into pieces, or burn them alive, they believe.
Palestinian terrorists, for example, are lauded, funded, and encouraged around the globe. The Imam Al-Sudayyis of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, said to potential Palestinian shahids via Saudi TV: “You have revived the hopes of this nation through your blessed Jihad. By Allah, be patient until, with Allah’s help, one of two good things will be awarded you: either victory or martyrdom. Our hearts are with you; our prayers are dedicated to you. The Islamic nation will not spare money or effort in support of your cause, which is the supreme Muslim cause…”
The years of overt legitimization of Palestinian and other terrorism has eroded the civilian status of every human. The road from the celebration of the point blank shooting of a pregnant Israeli and her crying children in the name of occupied Palestine leads to the bombing of homes in Riyadh when some Salafists find the Saudi regime not in compliance with their version of Islam.
The seizure of a school full of children was not a far step down from the gleeful immolation of four contract workers in Iraq. Jihadiis define all Americans as legitimate targets and do not lament any Iraqi children within the bomb radius. In England, Sheikh Yousef Al-Qardhawi, head of the International Council of Muslim Clerics published a new fatwa declaring that “it is an obligation incumbent on the Muslims to kill American citizens in Iraq…it is forbidden however to desecrate their corpses.”
The path to School Number One runs through Spain and the Philippines and the appeasement of terrorists. It runs through the Sudan where hundreds of thousands of children are dying in an accommodation to the sovereignty of a brutal Islamic republic. It runs through Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and India, in smaller but no less reprehensible acts of jihad.
The beheadings in Iraq are another way station along the way to Beslan. The ideological embrace of the Iraqi “resistance” and the horrific bombing of civilians in Iraq have devalued all humanity. The 89 Iraqi pilgrims murdered in the al-Shura massacre by Zarqawi’s jihad are comrades to the murdered Russian children. Daniel Pearl, Paul Johnson, Fabrizio Quattrocchi and Kim Sun-il are their bigger brothers.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said: “No argument can justify taking children hostage and threatening to kill them.” French spokesman, Cecile Pozzo di Borgo, “strongly condemned” the hostage-taking, saying “no cause could justify” it. What cause can justify the targeted murder of their older siblings or their grandparents? Until the UN demands immunity for Israeli children and provides it to Iraqi children, every child on earth is in attendance at Beslan School Number One.
Works Cited
Kofi Annan, Security Council statements: http://en.ce.cn/World/Europe/200409/02/t20040902_1658188.shtml
Borgo, Fischer statements: http://www.thedailystar.net/2004/09/03/d40903011313.htm
Putin Speech: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3627878.stm
Abd Al-Rahman Al-Sudayyis, MEMRI: http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SR3204
