When I was flying home from Dublin on the third anniversary of 9/11, at the airport there I saw a Time magazine cover with the shocking photo of a boy who had escaped the Beslan massacre, nose bloodied, crying out in anguish, with clenched fists and only underwear on; the title screamed “Slaughter of the Innocents.” After we landed in Atlanta, I discovered, however, that Time magazine for the U.S. has a different cover showing a placid Muslim boy with his right hand over his heart, accompanied by the innocuous title: “Special Report: The Struggle Within Islam.” So, is the message here that American readers should be less interested in what happened at Beslan than in the general state of Islam? Bizarre. The European choice to allude to the biblical King Herod invites reflection about the role of children in war, both ancient and modern.

Who were the “innocents” that King Herod ordered slaughtered, and why did he do such a horrendous thing? In chapter 2 of the gospel of Matthew, Herod learns from magi from the east that a new king of the Jews has been born and that they have followed a star to come pay homage. Herod wants them to report back to him about this baby, but they instead escape his clutches after visiting Bethlehem. Furious, Herod orders all the male children two years of age and younger to be slaughtered so that the rival king be destroyed before seizing power from him. Joseph and Mary, however, have whisked their baby Jesus away to Egypt for an ironical reverse-Exodus deliverance. Scholars have argued that no other ancient source (including the other gospels, Paul, Philo, Josephus, and the rabbinic literature) records such a Herodian slaughter, and some instead propose that this is yet another reversal of the Passover account, where Egyptian, not Jewish, babies were destroyed. For the evangelist Matthew, the event is a fulfillment of a prophecy of Jeremiah. Furthermore, some scholars suggest that the murder of these babies in the gospel is also a metaphor for the fact that Herod killed two of his sons after receiving false evidence when he was becoming old and increasingly paranoid (thus becoming a model for Shakespeare’s King Lear). Whether two grown sons or many babies died, Herod’s mad desire for political power at all costs underlies the story of the “slaughter of the innocents.”

Jesus was born into a land that had been held by Herod as client king of the Romans, and during the troubles that followed the king’s death in 4 B.C., the Roman legions under their general Varus burned the rebellious city of Sepphoris, which is right across the valley from Nazareth where Jesus is said to have grown up in Galilee. The number of children who died in this attack is unknown, and those who survived were enslaved. Another “slaughter of the innocents”—and again for the sake of political power. (Varus later received justice when he and his three legions were ambushed in a German forest a dozen years later and were slaughtered.)

Two thousand years later we still see children suffering misery and death in wars conducted by nations and rebel groups vying for political power. Here are some grisly statistics from UNICEF:

*More than 2 million children have died as a direct result of armed conflict over the last decade.

*More than three times that number, at least 6 million children, have been permanently disabled or seriously injured.

*More than 1 million have been orphaned or separated from their families.

*Between 8,000 and 10,000 children are killed or maimed by landmines every year…

*An estimated 300,000 child soldiers - boys and girls under the age of 18 - are involved in more than 30 conflicts worldwide…

*Of the 25 countries with the highest proportion of children orphaned by AIDS, about one-third have been affected by armed conflict in recent years. Of the 10 countries with the highest rates of under-five deaths, seven are affected by armed conflict. (http://www.unicef.org/protection/index_armedconflict.html)

According to UNICEF, “In 2002 the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict entered into force. It outlaws the involvement of children under age 18 in hostilities.”

UNICEF published a statement on 9/10 after the Beslan atrocity, which included the following: “‘UNICEF is outraged at what has happened to children in Russia and what is happening to children worldwide when children are not safe in their schools or on their way to school,’ says UNICEF Child Protection Officer Pamela Shifman. ‘Targeting schools is a war crime. Children should never be targeted in times of war.’” (http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/russia_23609.html)

It remains to be seen whether any of the perpetrators or backers of this war crime at Beslan will actually receive justice at the hands of the world community. Do Chechens really want to see their independence from Russia founded upon the murder of innocent children? They may claim their own innocent children have died at the hands of the Russians, which is, of course, true, but how can more senseless murder make a cause just?

If the UN hopes to have any moral force whatsoever, it should specifically denounce and ostracize any state party that deliberately targets children for death. How can member states stand by while Palestinian and affiliated bombers deliberately carry out latter day slaughters of innocent Jewish children? The UNICEF officer quoted above rightly decries the death of the unnamed Palestinian child who was killed on his way to school, but I think we better look beyond school for where children are targeted for maiming and death.

If we as a world community cannot unequivocally hold a zero-tolerance policy against state parties who sanction killing children, then there’s really no point in pretending that we’re civilized. Thucydides wrote of a similar atrocity in 413 B.C.:

The Thracians bursting into Mycalessus sacked the houses and temples, and butchered the inhabitants, sparing neither youth nor age, but killing all they fell in with, one after the other, children and women, and even beasts of burden, and whatever other living creatures they saw; the Thracian race, like the bloodiest of the barbarians, being ever most so when it has nothing to fear. Everywhere confusion reigned and death in all its shapes; and in particular they attacked a boys’ school, the largest that there was in the place, into which the children had just gone, and massacred them all. In short, the disaster falling upon the whole town was unsurpassed in magnitude, and unapproached by any in suddenness and in horror. (Peloponnesian War 7.29, from http://www.perseus.tufts.edu)

“Barbaric” really is the only adjective to describe those who kill children, especially en masse at school. Thucydides reports that the Thebans brought swift retribution upon the Thracians. Let’s hope that the world community will do the same with any people or states that deliberately target children for slaughter.