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Recent Opinion Pieces

Innocent “Womenandchildren”

“Collateral Damage” in the Israeli War on Gaza
When the Bosnian Serb Army attacked in Srebrenica in 1995, they murdered all the men and older boys but not the women and children. The Army claimed that because they had not murdered innocent women and children, they were in compliance with international standards. Today, journalists who show any sympathy to the Palestinian cause tend to feature the awful casualty toll among “innocent women and children,” while the Israelis, defending their bombing, blame Hamas for women’s and children’s deaths. Political scientist Cynthia Enloe has referred to this common equation of “innocence” with women and children by coining the term “womenandchildren” as a single merged concept. This line of thinking and writing has been repeated over and over in reporting on the Israeli Gaza war. It is as if the greatest wrong done by the Israelis has been the “collateral damage” among womenandchildren.