Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Systemic Societal Child Abuse?

The anti Israel propaganda machine has been in full swing in recent weeks, joining forces with their usual comrades in arms, the human rights groups, over Palestinian 'children' in Israeli custody. The gradual wind up to this seems to have started with posed pictures of Palestinian kids behind barred windows (these were posed behind their school windows and the children, quite young, were not under arrest). When these images got some media traction, the stories and condemnation of the number of children under arrest started to make headlines worldwide, and large numbers of social media posts began. More recently (and inevitably) I have seen"Israel tortures children" tweets, and it wont be long before we see mainstream media pick up on this. Once again Israel will be falsely accused of doing something that Islamic countries actually do on a regular basis.

What the media and the human rights noise makers have missed is the real story underlying the number of Palestinian 'children' being arrested by Israel (by children, they really mean under eighteen older teens of course). Its a story that has been brewing for years, and that supporters of Israel have tried to get the world to take notice of, the story of systemic societal child abuse in the Palestinian Authority & Gaza.

When I was a boy, my mother did not like me watching The A-Team, Hill Street Blues or some other shows that glorified violence. She hated me playing with toy guns when I was little (not that it worked, as I built a fort and spent entire summers fighting wars across the garden fence with my neighbor Joss!). This is good parenting and its normal parenting. My wife runs a gan (kindergarten) in Israel for 2-4 year olds and she never allows 'death' to be mentioned in her gan. "theres plenty of time for them to discover that as they get older" she will tell parents. So, when she teaches the story of Noah and the flood, she tells the kids that when it started to rain, the people had to crowd on mountain tops and got very very wet and miserable! Why does she do this? Its because in a normal society we protect our kids from the darker forces of the world for as long as possible. We hope to preserve their innocence for as many as years as we can. We let them have a childhood. Its not easy to do anywhere, especially in a country where everyone joins the army the day after school, and where many of our cities suffer rocket fire from Gaza, nor is it a simple thing to explain Grandpa's holocaust experiences either, but we do what we can, knowing that eventually our children will have to confront the realities of human evil and basic life and death.

In Palestinian society childhood has been manipulated, extorted and perverted by hatred: schools teach the well edited Palestinian version of Nakba Day, text books quote 'The Protocols of The Elders of Zion', kindergartens dress the kids up as Israelis and pretend to torture Arab children in end of year ceremonies, state sponsored Arab TV famously had its own Mickey Mouse who spewed hate for Israel...the examples are endless. Jewish children sadly often find themselves trapped on the front lines of violence, but Palestinian children are encouraged there by their own parents and society, starting with kindergarten indoctrination, school curriculum revisionism and the hero worship of terrorism and martyrdom all around them.

The result is of course, that Palestinian teens are present whenever rock throwing riots against the army take place; Gaza rocket launch cells use the proximity of children as a deterrent for return IDF fire, and Palestinian propaganda experts ensure the media see crying children at every incident. This amounts to exploitation and worse, it is societal child abuse.

It is abhorrent that entire generations are manipulated to hate and it doesn't bode well for the future, when these abused and damaged kids assume leadership of Palestinian society. So whenever you hear that Israel has a Palestinian 'child' in custody, think about the years of indoctrination and perverted education that led to his being in the situation which got him arrested. Shame on the human rights & peace groups that have allowed this situation to continue under their noses for decades. How dare they now blame Israel when these hate filled 'children' come into conflict with Israel. I urge everyone to consider the type of society that can idolize suicide bombers, encourage children to jihad and produce parents that show pride in their children's violence, hate and racism.

see BBC Newsnight 2007 on Palestinian Children taught to hate


UPDATE: Nov 22nd 2012 (Post Operation Pillar of Cloud):
The past few days has seen some of the most sickening & blatant abuse of children, alive and dead, that the world has ever witnessed! Hamas, who rule Gaza, and their side kicks Islamic Jihad, have waged a campaign of war, by firing their vast number of rockets from within civilian neighborhoods, next to homes and schools. Their targets have been exclusively civilian areas of Israel, placing children on both sides in great danger. Despite Israel's improved ability to accurately target its weapons, never the less, placing a rocket launcher next to a home obviously endangers those within, men women and children.

What has been worse has been the callous use of images of dead children used by Hamas. The fact that many of these images were in fact taken in Syria over the summer only makes the abuse of these poor little girls and boys even worse. I'm not going to compound the crime by showing them here, but perhaps the most famous example of this sick depraved phenomenon was the dead body of Mahmoud Sadallah, the 4-year-old Gaza boy whose death moved Egypt's prime minister togenuine and understandable tears when his broken body was placed in Sadallah's arms. The fact that Hamas knew that this little boy had been killed by one of their own rockets only adds to the crime. Can you imagine even after 9-11 someone placing the still warm corpse of a child in President Bush's arms for a photo shoot? Its unthinkable, yet Hamas did it, and has been tweeting and blogging 100s of pictures of dead kids, their bodies positioned for maximum effect. Their 'message' the past few days is "Israel kills children" - never have I been more disgusted - yes its obviously a lie as the fact bear out, but to see little people, their lives already so short and violent, used like this is the very defeinition of a  crime against humanity. Most of these kids, as I say above, were Syrian not Gazan, but that did not stop western journalists seizing on these photos for retweets and even reproduction, compounding the crime and encouraging the terrorists to keep committing these abominations.

Lets remember that the reason the Gazan children are dead at all  is because Hamas made them targets: Hamas chose the battlefield for this war, and Hamas clearly saw their presence as a win win situation - if Israel doesn't strike back then they did their job as human shields, but if it did fire at the terrorists, and children died, then Hamas could use their bodies for propaganda - martyrdom even beyond death!

The final insult to children was the video produced by Hamas of children of a senior terror leader who died alongside Al JAbari on day one of the violence. These very small children, hours after their fathers death,  explained how they too wished to die as martyrs like their daddy - if these are not abused children, I don't now what is.






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