Victims are not Heroes

All dead should be mourned, individually or collectively. Victims, however, are not heroes. Heroes are those who died in brave actions for a cause, in defense of another. If you jumped in the torrential river to save a drowning stranger you are a hero. If you were maimed in this effort, you are a great hero; if you died by saving another, you are a noble hero. Heroes should be revered; they deserve to be memorialized. There are war heroes, and there are war victims. From the time immemorial, there were wars and war victims; innocent defenseless people perished with no cause except for being in the wrong place at the wrong time -- in the blitz, air raids, and senseless brutality and massacres. We have them all over the world in war zones. There are also victims of natural disasters -- earthquakes, floods, and volcanic eruptions as well as of catastrophes like collapsing buildings and urban conflagrations, and of individual criminal actions. Catastrophes are tragic; and they bring people together in solidarity and promote communal mourning. But there are in every disaster innocent victims and heroic rescuers. Disasters of major scale call for mourning on a national scale. But if we honor and memorialize victims, we are doing less than justice to true heroe.