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Thursday, March 04, 2004 |
We rarely care about what is going on unless we are directly touched by it, whether that be a car accident, a death, sending a loved one off to war, a life-threatening illness, civil liberties being taken away, the loss of certain health benefits, etc. The other night, one of my friends made the comment that we had only lost 500 or so soldiers in this war so there was no way one can compare it to Vietnam. Try to tell that to those 500 or so families who have lost their soldier(s) to a war we were misled into. Likewise, tell that to the families of over 10,000 Iraqis who lost their lives in the battle and in the months since the war has ended.
When the Twin Towers were felled that clear September morning, the whole world took notice and mourned with us. When the tragic explosions rocked the Khadamiya mosque in Baghdad this week, killing over 200 (the numbers have not been official yet), our news services have been more interested in the results of Super Tuesday, Bush's first re-election advert, the boxoffice results of 'The Passion,' and Martha Stewarts trial, among other trivial things. Earlier this week, Josh Micah Marshall put this into perspective for me when he calculated that this explosion for Iraqis was as significant to them as 9/11 was for us, in proportion to the size of their population and the number of deaths.
With this in mind, I was deeply moved by the New York Times article "Cleansing Iraqi Bomb Victims Takes Its Own Toll" by Neela Banerjee about the men and women who wash the dead in Iraq to prepare them for burial. Stories such as this help us understand the plight of the Iraqis during this transition period. It helps us step outside of our box.
Consider the opening paragraph's of this incredibly well-written piece:
In a large white room where the air was damp from open water faucets and the stunned grief of a few women, Khalila Sharif washed away the bitter past from the body of a 20-year-old schoolteacher from Baghdad.
The young woman's name was Aida Jabber. When suicide bombers detonated their explosives at the Khadamiya mosque in Baghdad on Tuesday, they took with them, among so many people, this woman who was described by her friends and relatives as gentle and devout.
Ms. Sharif had to cope with what was left of her, scrubbing the remains of its map of blood, masking with cotton wadding and two shrouds the evidence of trauma, so that the body would be pure enough for a proper Muslim burial.
Ms. Sharif sang softly of mothers and daughters as she worked, verses that are recited when one loses the other. Protected by a shin-length apron of plastic sheeting, she dipped a red bucket into a large tank that overflowed with water, sprinkled camphor into it and splashed the body that lay before her on a concrete platform.
Ms. Jabber was the second woman brought on Wednesday from Baghdad, where some 70 people died. More would come, Ms. Sharif knew, not only from the capital but also Karbala, where at least 110 people had been killed, and she, like the other independent Muslim body washers here, would have to soothe and clean their remains.
"This is typical for me," Ms. Sharif said, squaring her shoulders and offering a pained smile as she explained what the years in this room had done to her, "because like the Arabic saying goes, I have a dead heart."
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"I certainly am not going to comment [on The Passion of the Christ] based on circumstantial evidence from what I've been hearing and feeling in the last seven or eight days," Steven Spielberg said at a news conference today.
"I think it's much too important, and I'm really too smart to answer a question like that. When I do see the film, the first person who will hear from me will be Mel Gibson and no one else," he added.
Surrounded by LA youth, Holocaust survivors, and the stars from Schindler's List (Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, Embeth Davidtz and Caroline Goodall), Spielberg highlighted the DVD release of his Oscar-winning Holocaust epic and the 10th anniversary of the Shoah Foundation, which is dedicated to archiving the testimonies of Holocaust survivors.
[H]e hoped "Schindler's List" would prove to Holocaust deniers that the murder of 6 million Jews did occur and that it would help educate children to prevent history from repeating itself.
The DVD will include an 11-minute clip explaining the work of Spielberg's Shoah Foundation...and a 77-minute documentary, "Voices From the List," which presents never-before-seen commentaries from Schindler survivors.
"There are Holocaust deniers who are so stuck in their hatred for Jews that neither 'Schindler's List' nor the Shoah Foundation will be able to convince them that 6 million murders actually occurred, but still we must try to convince them," Spielberg said.
Spielberg said he delayed the release of the DVD in order to celebrate the 10th anniversary of both the film and the foundation, which has collected more than 52,000 Holocaust survivor testimonies in 56 countries. Half of that footage has been digitally indexed so that it can be accessed and seen worldwide.
Spielberg escorted several Holocaust survivors and some of the stars and filmmakers involved in the making of "Schindler's List" on a tour of the Shoah Foundation's offices. Among them was survivor Leon Leyson, who told Spielberg there was no doubt in his mind that the director revived the history of the Holocaust just as it was headed into "oblivion."
Survivor Helen Jonas-Rosenzweig told the director, "Schindler saved us, but you gave us our second life."
Spielberg said that in the decade since the release of "Schindler's List," the world has become a "very sad place again," which shows that people "don't really learn that much from history, and they need to."
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