Innocent of what?
From Malta Today:
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has urged Police to exert caution and capture the Toulouse gunman “alive” in a bid to have him face justice over his recent killings, which included innocent Jewish children.
‘Innocent Jewish children’ as distinct from what, exactly: guilty Jewish children? Perverted Jewish children? And why Jewish children and not just children?
I hate it when children involved in trouble are described as innocent. Innocent of what? Raiding the cookie jar? Children are children. Killing them is wrong because they’re human, the crime being magnified by the fact that they are small, young, trusting, vulnerable and defenceless, not ‘innocent’.
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Reply to A. Charles Click here to cancel reply
That is Malta Today’s translation as I have not read it as such on thetimes.co.uk, haaretz.il, BBC News and Cooiere della Sera website.
Net News reports that, apart from the children, a Jewish rabbi was also killed.
Like there are different sorts of rabbi? Lest we might have thought it could have been a Christian rabbi?
Thinking about it, I guess the word innocent, when used in this kind of context, could mean that… (let me think how I can articulate this) the children weren’t guilty of whatever the ‘crime’ that led their killer to conclude they had to be executed; hence, they were innocent. No?
They were children, they were innocent and they were Jewish. Is there something wrong with stating facts nowadays?
Do we have to pretend political correctness for every flea that farts? Come off it!
[Daphne – Innocent is taken as given with children, Chris. There’s no need to state it. It’s the exceptions which are stated, not the rule – for e.g., if the children were disabled. It’s nothing to do with political correctness. As for the Jewish bit, that should have been carried after the intro – not for reasons of political correctness, but because that’s where the descriptions and adjectives and details go.]
I see absolutely nothing wrong in emphasising the fact that children are innocent, though it is of course a given. I think you’re giving too much of a legal interpretation to the word “innocent”. Here it means pure/untainted. The Jewish bit is also necessary – I would say essential – as it puts the killer’s background – Islamist fanatic – into context.
Would you not agree that “Nutter kills child” means just that, while “Islamic fanatic kills innocent Jewish child” is a much more meaningful statement, with very serious implications? I think most people would.
In this context, ‘innocent children’ may mean ‘children who know no wrong, much less did anything wrong’.
[Daphne – For heaven’s sake.]
“Innocent Jewish children” is simply a rhetorical device to paint the attacker in as bad a light as possible – not that there’s any real need, mind you, but Sarkozy would not waste such a golden opportunity to associate the Islamic jihadist with the Nazis who also killed “innocent Jewish children”.
[Daphne – Like the US politicians who talk about ‘saving American lives’ because, presumably, the other lives are important, but not so much.]
Reminds me of Donald Sutherland in Outbreak exclaiming, “These are not just lives, they are AMERICAN lives!” when reacting to the fire-bombing of an American town to stop the spread of a virus.