Why Israel's #SderotCinema – people gathering to watch live bombing of Gaza – should make us all uncomfortable

An image surfaced on the internet a few days ago. It showed a group of people, across different age groups, on a hill top, in what seemed to be an innocent gathering of friends and family, a barbecue perhaps.

However, a closer inspection of the image reveals that the group is witnessing what could possibly be explosions and gunfire in the distance. This, allegedly, is the Sderot cinema: a gathering of Israeli locals in Sderot city to watch the ongoing live bombing of Gaza. 

Sderot cinema. Israelis bringing chairs 2 hilltop in sderot 2 watch latest from Gaza. Clapping when blasts are heard. pic.twitter.com/WYZquV62O7

— Allan Sørensen (@allansorensen72) July 9, 2014

Since its first appearance on social media, the picture has gathered much criticism and rightful disgust. It has since become a symbol of a collective Israeli apathy towards years of systemic suppression of Palestinians, and a winning response against Israel's nonchalant attitude towards the ongoing attacks on Gaza.

It isn't difficult to confirm the veracity of the image, posted on Twitter by journalist Allan Sørensen who is reporting from ground zero. Reporters who spoke with some these spectators of war have documented their interactions.

"We are here to see Israel destroy Hamas," one of them tells a Danish journalist. "It's great to be here. You can feel the thunder and see the rockets. It is a quest for excitement," says another.

Many of them cheer with every explosion. Others have carried popcorn and drinks for the "viewing".

Image credit: AFP

All of this goes way beyond Israel's collective conscience. It is a step backwards for the entire human race.

It was only a few decades ago that organised torture was frequently conducted in full public view, to emphasis on the power of the oppressors, and as a sign or a warning to whoever may question that power. The recent years alone have seen terrible war crimes as most nations crumbled farther away from civility and gave way to tribal law.

But there is no tribal law in Israel, is there? These are not savages, but members of a civil society that hopes to part of a productive international community that would hope resolve any conflict with dialogue rather than war.

And yet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted to the world's media that he had no intention of stopping the offensive against Hamas. "No international pressure will prevent us from acting with all power," he told reporters in Tel Aviv on July 11, a day after a phone call with United States President Barack Obama about the worst flare-up in Israeli-Palestinian violence in almost two years.

Earlier last week, just before the Israel-Palestine conflict escalated into a full fledged war, the international community, including the United Nations, had come together to urge both groups to exert restrain. Israel's offensive followed a build-up in violence after three Israeli students were killed in the occupied West Bank last month and a Palestinian youth was killed in a suspected revenge attack in Jerusalem.

Rachel Fraenkel, the grieving mother of one of the murdered teenagers, Israeli-American Naftali Fraenkel, has not only condemned the revenge killing, but she doesn't even condone the conflict that has followed. “Only the murderers of our sons, along with those who sent them and those who helped them and incited them to murder — and not innocent people — will be brought to justice: by the army, the police, and the judiciary; not by vigilantes. No mother or father should ever have to go through what we are going through, and we share the pain of Mohammed’s parents,” Fraenkel told the media.

But one would assume that we have come a long way since the days when public executions were a source of entertainment and value and dignity of human life was nothing more than that of cattle.

Or maybe not.

It is a rather historical irony, that the ancestors of this very group that seem to be taking pleasure in annihilating another, were witness to systemic crimes conducted for the sole purpose of their ethnic cleansing in the years during the Second World War. The horrors of the war still loom, and there is persistent guilt on behalf of the international community for having done so little to prevent the holocaust.

But then again most of us expect better from a society that has "advanced" in terms if education and technology. As much as the killing of innocent Shia Muslims by the Sunni group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Iraq shocked the world, we do remain more disturbed by a group of Israelis seemingly enjoying the live screening of death and murder in their backyard. It is not that we are selective with our judgement, although hypocrisy can't be put past us, the so called "better" among us are judged on a different scale when it comes to civilisation. Especially, if they happen to represent a group that was itself victim to systemic torture and genocide barely a few decades ago. It is, of course, not too much to expect but sensitivity from those who were at the receiving end of our history's most cruel period.

And the guilt and shame that the world now associates with the period of Holocaust should extend further to encompass this inhuman apathy towards ongoing war crimes.

Because, if this image can't "go viral" for the right reasons, we are doing something very wrong.