I’m not your FRIEND anymore

Four has reached the stage where children, quite effectively, threaten one another with that age-old epithet
“You’re not my friend anymore”.

Who can forget hearing this at some time or other during childhood?

They are powerful words, and an essential weapon for any aspiring young playground Machiavelli.

Of course, they are not confined merely to school and other kids. Husband and I are sometimes quite bitterly told that we are not Four’s friends. Usually this comes directly after the denial of, say, chocolate for breakfast or a pet orang-utan. One is still not talking much, at least not in a language that we can translate, so I was taken somewhat by surprise yesterday to hear this from another person. From someone that I assumed was more or less a grown-up, at least chronologically.

About a year ago a friend of mine invited me to join Facebook so I could keep up with pictures of her and her offspring. I was slightly reluctant to do so – I had thought it more a tool for school and college kids and couldn’t really see the point. However I did sign up and to my surprise was very quickly ‘found’ by lots of people that I had known over the years including, very flatteringly, a number of ex-boyfriends who were rather keen to chat and be in touch.  Time went by and more and more folks turned up from different parts of the world which was rather wonderful, and gave me the opportunity to be in daily contact with people that I thought I might never see again, like a giant study hall where people you know hang out and leave notes for each other. We’d chat, comment, debate, leave photos, articles, videos etc. You know the drill – you’re on there yourself, no doubt.

Recently, though, one of my FB friends has been persistently getting up my nose.

It has always been clear that we’d been on opposite sides of the political spectrum. I’m pretty liberal – dare I say it – left-wing, and he is slightly to the right of Genghis Khan, but I am a tolerant sort of person and I didn’t really hold that against him personally. Hey – some of my best friends are Republicans! However, he has a very annoying habit of making pompous, illogical, dogmatic and polemic commentary on anything I post. I usually don’t mind too much – I usually reply once or twice and then get bored but it is a little irritating. He is one of those types who is all dogma for dogma’s sake. Sort of like my old-school communist Granny – glued to the TV and weeping as she watched the Berlin Wall come down saying it was the most terrible day she had ever seen. I pointed out that the people coming through looked pretty happy, but she insisted it was a tragedy. Anyway, back to my FBfriend.

Yesterday I posted a story on my Facebook page that had really touched me. It was about a young Palestinian father, a civilian, who was grieving over his 6 month old baby boy who had been shot in the head in front of him by an Israeli soldier. There was a photo too. This is just one of the atrocities that have been reported by the United Nations and the Associated Press and Reuters and the International Red Cross and all those other non-partisan organisations. I was pretty gutted by it, and it would be fairly hard, whatever your position is not to feel moved by the simple human suffering that war brings. 
That was the point of the story. Human suffering by innocent civilians.

My FB friend decided to ignore the dead baby, the grieving father, the pain, suffering etc. and instead air his oft repeated views that the Israeli offensive, and all subsequent war crimes (even the Israeli ones) were the sole responsibility of Hamas. 

I don’t actually give a flying fuck anymore who is right, who is wrong, who fired more rockets, who is the axis of evil, who has read more history or who subscribes to what doctrine.

When a baby is dead, executed by gunshot, that is just plain wrong.

The correct response, the only possible moral response is

“Oh my God. That poor child, that poor man. What can we do to alleviate the suffering?” 

So that is what I told him. 

And the pompous git gave back more gobshite (this is a British term for bullshit, my American readers) about how Israel could not be guilty of anything because it was all Hamas’ fault blah blah blah…

Whatever.

Baby is dead. Baby is dead. That is the story. Shut Up.

I said, admittedly in no uncertain terms, that I was frankly disturbed by his lack of empathy, his terrifying unshakeable, blinkered convictions of dogma over humanity and that I was unnerved that he was (and he is!) readying himself for a tour of duty as an army reservist.  (You know, where they give them guns and let them go overseas to shoot ‘the baddies’)
 

His response?

I’m not your FRIEND anymore.

Yes, folks, he UNFRIENDED me. Pressed the delete button and sent me off into Facebook Oblivion.

But you know what?  It’s okay.

I’m not his friend either.