Remember the humanity of the victims of all the 9/11s

The official commemoration of 9/11 asks us to remember and at the same time to forget. We are shown the humanity and the small, moving, personal details of many of the innocent New York victims of terrorism. We are asked to forget the humanity of the more numerous victims of US Empire, even those murdered in their thousands by the West's allies on another Tuesday 9/11.

We are asked to praise Israel in its 2008/9 butchery of Palestinians in Operation Cast Lead and massacres since 1948.

If we are to stand for one minute for the victims of New York 9/11, we might stand for over two minutes for the Palestinian dead since only 2000, twelve minutes to accord equal dignity to the Chilean 9/11 victims. We should have to stand for more than half an hour to commemorate pro-rata the Iraqi dead since the US-led invasion of 2003 and almost 16 hours, for example, to accord the same humanity to the Indo-Chinese victims of the American invasion and chemical bombing of Vietnam until 1975.

Consistent opposition to terrorism means opposing ALL terrorism – the mass killing of innocent civilians – but especially when it is carried out by our own governments or their allies. If we commemorate the victims of terrorism selectively, if we exclude those murdered by our own governments, we align ourselves with Bush and Blair and Cameron and Netanyahu. We also inflict further pain on the ignored victims of empire.

Mick Napier
Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Peace & Justice Centre
Princes Street
Edinburgh EH2 4BJ
chair@scottishpsc.org.uk
00 44 (0)131 620 0052 / 00 44 (0)795 800 2591

{youtubejw width="200" height="220"}cbC5f2z6PmI{/youtubejw} Ken Loach's 11-minute film on 9/11s, 2000 and 1973