Mummy and Martha, 12 years old, are having a conversation.
’Mummy, why are the Israelis killing people in Lebanon and Palestine?
‘Hm?’
‘Why are—’
‘I heard you.’
‘And?’
‘Well, you know, bad things happen.’
‘Not that bad. Not so many people.’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Nasreen started crying in class today. She said they’re killing everybody.’
‘Oh.’
‘So? Why!’
‘hm…’
‘WHY?’
‘Because they’re bad.’
‘But you said that very few people are really bad. You said that Dragan wasn’t really bad; he had just had a bad start.’
Mummy is asking herself why she has to deal with this kind of interrogation. When she was a kid, her parents would simply have told her she was “too young to understand”. She decides she should talk to the children’s teacher and ask what she recommends.
‘I’ll think about your question and reply tomorrow.’
Martha has learnt from her parents, that a wise person thinks matters over rather than making hasty decisions, so she respects her mother’s reply.
***
‘Mummy, have you now decided how to answer my question?’
‘What question?’
‘MUMMY, you’re being evasive!’
‘Now that’s a really nice word you just used. Very good!’
‘And now you’re tergiversating.’
‘Goodness gracious, who taught you that word?’
‘Freddy. He has this book “Difficult words”.’
Mummy is sincerely impressed. And she is indeed “tergiversating” because the children’s teacher had simply told her that what she told the children was that the conflict was complicated, that the Israelis were defending themselves, that bad things happen in wartime.
But Mummy cannot make herself repeat that litany to her smart daughter. Israel is committing genocide and her daughter will sooner or later know she is lying if she does.
‘MUMMY!’
‘Ok. Some people are really, really bad. There aren’t many of them, but those who are really, really bad tend to want to control as many other people as possible. The worst of them even make the people they control think bad thoughts and do bad things.’
‘But aren’t they afraid they’ll be punished?’
‘They are indeed. That’s just it!’
Mummy now sees a way out. She can, without lying, divert the issue to ground that is totally unfamiliar to her daughter:
‘You see, after WWII, the perpetrators of the truly heinous crime of genocide were tried in the so-called “Nürnberg tribunal”. If the Israeli leaders are tried in similar fashion, they will face death penalties and—’
Martha is no longer listening. But she is not defeated.
‘So why are the European leaders and Trump supporting Israel?’
Mummy is nonplussed. These kids, she reasons, know next to nothing about the two World Wars our parents and grandparent had to suffer, but they hear things. She decides to take the easy way out:
‘They are also afraid of another set of Nürnberg trials.’
Martha has been silenced. For now.
But Mummy knows there will never be another Nürnberg trial. She knows that the US is actually encapsulating evil into its very core. With the expected passing of the “Israel NDAA Provision Section 219” by Congress — effectively an act of treason by said Congress — the “really really bad people” will have won, once and for all. She knows what she cannot tell her daughter: There is no such thing as “justice”, at least not in the US of A.
Max Blumenthal and Dennis Kucinich explain section 219: