The world has devel­oped a severe case of empa­thy schiz­o­phre­nia.  This week’s egre­gious symp­tom  is the aid and sym­pa­thy pour­ing forth for earth­quake vic­tims in Venezuela, and the absence of either for civil­ians in Gaza and south­ern Lebanon.

All three are afflict­ed by forces beyond their con­trol,  which with­out warn­ing or clear aim, brought ter­ror, death, injury, mis­ery and destruc­tion in the space of an instant.
Venezue­lans were suck­er punched by an act of Nature, which is often referred to as an “act of God”.
Gazan  and Lebanese civil­ians are hap­less vic­tims of acts of ter­ri­fy­ing and equal­ly unpre­dictable, sud­den and appalling vio­lence of air strikes, drones, mis­siles, rock­ets and ran­dom shelling, brought on and wreaked by pro­tag­o­nists who insist what­ev­er they do is sanc­tioned by God.
In an irony that would be hilar­i­ous if it weren’t so trag­ic the Deity in ques­tion is com­mon to the faith and wor­ship of the Israelis, Hezbol­lah and Hamas.
But back to the empa­thy conundrum.
With­in hours of the twin quakes in Venezuela, the U.S. State Depart­ment promised $150 mil­lion to aid groups in Venezuela, includ­ing the Unit­ed Nations Office for the Coor­di­na­tion of Human­i­tar­i­an Affairs, as well as search and res­cue help.
If Gaza is any­thing to go by, Venezue­lans left with rub­ble best not hold their breath while they wait.
Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s “Board of Peace” was pledged some sev­en bil­lion dol­lars for Gaza recon­struc­tion, along with anoth­er $10 bil­lion in U.S. assistance.
More than 80 per­cent of Gaza’s build­ings have been seri­ous­ly dam­aged or destroyed.
So far, no  work of any sub­stance has been done on the ini­tial step of clear­ing 70 bil­lion tonnes of rub­ble and unex­plod­ed ord­nance,  and the bal­ance of the World Bank fund estab­lished for the project is hold­ing steady at zero.
The after­shocks in Venezuela had bare­ly stopped jud­der­ing  before the U.S. mil­i­tary said it is “surg­ing” forces in the area on a mis­sion to Venezuela that will include dam­age assess­ment, locat­ing sur­vivors and deliv­er­ing aid.
In con­trast, the U.S. surge of human­i­tar­i­an aid to Gaza con­sist­ed of a $320-mil­lion dol­lar float­ing pier to being aid into Gaza, nine months after the war there start­ed, oper­at­ed inter­mit­tent­ly for bare­ly two months.
It was even­tu­al­ly replaced by a cou­ple of aid dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ters, run not by expe­ri­enced, non-gov­ern­men­tal aid pro­fes­sion­als, but armed U.S. pri­vate con­trac­tors. Israeli troops con­trolled access routes. Between them, Israeli sol­diers and U.S. con­trac­tors wound­ed and killed scores of des­per­ate Gazan civil­ians scram­bling and strug­gling for mea­ger aid they had walked miles to reach.

               ISRAEL ONCE HAD EMPATHY

Arriv­ing to report on a major earth­quake in Turkey some years ago, the first, and most effec­tive for­eign help I saw were Israeli dis­as­ter spe­cial­ists, sleeves rolled up, scrab­bling over and into the rub­ble, search­ing for and res­cu­ing survivors.
But that was in the days when Israel was look­ing  and had enough vision to recog­nise that they are not the only vic­tims  in the world.
Their “vison” now  ought to cre­ate empa­thy and con­comi­tant action on a scale at least approach­ing earth­quake relief lev­el for Gazans and peo­ple of south­ern Lebanon.
A new­ly-released report by the UN Children’s Agency (UNICEF) claimed that on aver­age one Pales­tin­ian child has been killed every day since the start of the lat­est ceasefire.
As UNICEF spokesman James Elder sum­marised it: “They were killed in their homes, in their schools, play­ing foot­ball, fish­ing. They were shot, bombed and hit by airstrikes.”
The report also con­clud­ed that the high num­ber of boys tar­get­ed “reflects a pol­i­cy of tar­get­ing boys due to their per­ceived threat as ter­ror­ists and ‘future terrorists.’”
As for the oth­er war front, accord­ing to a report in the lead­ing Israeli news­pa­per  Haaretz, Israeli Defence Min­is­ter Israel Katz vowed that the 200,000 Lebanese res­i­dents dis­placed from Israel’s self-declared “secu­ri­ty zone” in south­ern Lebanon “will not return.”
He didn’t both­er to add that his forces have been using explo­sives and bull­doz­ers to make the destruc­tion caused  by the Venezue­lan quakes look minor in comparison.
It also makes if clear why Israel blocks jour­nal­ists from enter­ing Gaza unless they are embed­ded with its mil­i­tary under high­ly con­trolled circumstances.
What the Israelis don’t seem to grasp is that it cuts both ways. If con­trolled pro­pa­gan­da is all you allow, don’t expect your cause and case to get a  lot of empa­thy from read­ers and view­ers, for whom nat­ur­al dis­as­ters res­onate more than man­u­fac­tured ones.
Or maybe empa­thy has fall­en so low in their  per­spec­tive that they no longer care, which means earn­ing it ‚if and when they may war­rant it, will take at least an earthquake…if they’re lucky.

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