"... We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.... We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us."
Golda Meir, former Israeli Prime Minister, 1972
What kind of a society consciously and purposely sacrifices its own youth for political gain and tactical advantage? Suicide bombers are an escalation of a small-arms war introduced during the first Intifada (1987-1993 Palestinian’s uprising) and championed by Palestinian leaders, even prior to Arafat’s arrival from Tunis in July 1994. Today the overwhelming majority of Palestinian Arabs nurture a blind hatred of Israel. They created a cultural milieu of vengeance, violence and death - preparing their children to be sacrifices in a death cult. Proud parents dress up their toddlers not in clown costumes, but with suicide belts,1 and countless others celebrate their children’s deaths with traditional sweet holiday cakes and candies.
Protecting our children is a universal trait that unites the Family of Man. But in Palestinian society, that standard has been turned on its head
Around the world, children are precious gifts to their parents and keys to the future. The loving care we invest in our own children is a human trait that unites different cultures: rich and poor, traditional and hi-tech. The toughest job parents have is to raise their children while making everyday sacrifices and decisions for them. We hug them, love them and watch them grow up, praying that they will come to no harm, and doing everything we can to ensure that.
From the poorest barrios in South America to the most wretched slums of Cairo, parents strive to make sure there is food for their children and money for their children’s education. Parents everywhere walk a fine line between the need for parental guidance and youthful independence, setting rules for what their children can and cannot do, trying to ensure that their children will not make mistakes that endanger them. Parents raise their children with the hope that they will grow into happy, responsible, caring, and contributing members of society. That is what unites the Family of Man from Caracas to the Caucuses, from Timbuktu to Katmandu.
It is clear that in Palestinian society something has gone dreadfully wrong. Children in Palestinian communities in the West Bank and Gaza are turned into ‘self-destructing human bombs’ capable of carrying out casualty terrorist attacks in the struggle between Palestinians and Israelis - a phenomenon whose seeds can be traced to the firstIntifada.
It happened because Arab communities within the civil jurisdiction of self-rule under the Palestinian Authority (which includes 97 percent of the Arab residents in the West Bank and 100 percent of those in Gaza) foster a culture that prepares children for armed conflict, consciously and purposely putting them in harm’s way for political gain and tactical advantage in their war against Israel. The PA buses children to violent flashpoints far from their neighborhoods and Arab snipers often hide among the young during battle, using children as human shields. Teenaged perpetrators of suicide attacks have become the norm.2
In the first Intifada, a similar pattern surfaced, in which women and children led riots while young men in their late teens and early 20s, armed with rocks, sling shots, Molotov cocktails and grenades operated from the rear.3
There were thousands of Molotov cocktail attacks, more than 100 hand grenade attacks and more than 500 attacks with guns or explosive devices over the course of the first Intifada. Children in elementary and junior high school were encouraged to stone Israelis using rocks and slingshots, knowing that Israeli soldiers could do little beyond taking the youngsters into custody and fining their parents in the hopes they would ground their children. Instead, Palestinian parents sent their children back onto the streets. Some were killed. Others were maimed.
Palestinian society praised the transformation of its children into combatants during the first Intifada, dubbing them fondly “the children of the rocks.” Mahmud Darwish, the Palestinian national poet laureate, wrote a poem after the outbreak of the first Intifada, which sanctioned and sanctified their deaths, and praised “Arab youth on the road to victory, each with a coffin on his shoulder.”4 The poem eventually was set to music, encouraging countless Palestinian children to endanger themselves as a form of socially-condoned conduct that would bring them fame and prestige should they be hurt. This nihilistic bent took an even more destructive path in the secondIntifada, as the ‘weapons of choice’ moved from rocks to explosives and the role of the children moved from reckless life-threatening behavior to conscious premeditated suicidal acts.
Clearly horrified by the use of children in armed conflict, Israeli author and peace advocate Aharon Megged wrote during the first Intifada:
“Not since the Children's Crusade in 1212 … has there been a horror such as this – no people, no land where adults send children age 8-9 or 14-15 to the front, day-after-day, while they themselves hide in their houses or go out to work far-far away. They continue, and send them time-after-time, and don't stop them even when they know they are liable to be killed, maimed, beaten or arrested.”
But the use of children to fight grownup battles, which germinated in the first Intifada in 1987, has run the full course - not only teaching and training children to kill, a crime shared by those behind an estimated 300,000 child soldiers around the world, but indoctrinating their own offspring to take their own lives.5
Under self-rule on the West Bank and Gaza, child sacrifice has turned into a normative part of the socialization process as the phenomenon of suicide bombers has escalated to epidemic proportions.6
From an early age, children are fed anti-Zionist, anti-Jewish and anti-Western hate propaganda. Mosques, schools, summer camps, and even children’s television programs are exploited to encourage children to become martyrs in an act that will bring them respect and parental pride:
Throughout the Palestinian territories, walls are plastered with posters of young martyrs who are idolized by Palestinian youth the way other teens worship rock stars.
Against such a backdrop, Wajdi Hatab, age 14, told his classmates days before being killed: “When I become a martyr, give out kannafa (traditional cake).”15
B’tselem, an Israeli human rights organization that monitors Israeli conduct toward Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza, sharply rebuked Palestinian leadership for making little effort to keep children away from potentially violent confrontations.16
Bassam Zakhour, a bereaved Palestinian father, was far more frank. He blamed Palestinian Authority television for enticing his 14 year-old son to run off with two other schoolmates ‘to kill Jews.’ The trio was chosen by Hamas handlers because their ‘innocent’ looks would not arouse suspicion. They entered a Jewish settlement with knives and explosives packed in their schoolbags.17
Indeed, the age of children volunteering for suicide missions is dropping from men in their 20s to children in their teens and preteens.
At the same time, the scope of violence between the first Intifada and the second has escalated. Where Palestinian children threw rocks in the 1980s, they began throwing firebombs in 2000. In more than three years of guerrilla warfare since 2000, Palestinian leaders use children in warfare against Israel in other ways as well.
Toddlers have served as cover for terrorist activity by hiding munitions in their clothing. Paramedics found an explosive belt with 21 kilograms of explosives hidden under the pad of an ambulance stretcher carrying an ill Palestinian child.18 The Hezbollah weekly journal reported19 that children had helped make weapons and ammunition in the Jenin refugee camp, and then clashed with Israeli forces after they were armed with grenades and explosives. In July 2003, two Palestinian assailants posed as a family, accompanied by a female accomplice with a 4-year-old child (her niece). The accomplice and child were used as bait in the knife-point kidnapping of a Jewish cab driver. Later, another child passed through Israeli checkpoints while carrying supplies to the kidnappers.20
In addition to growing more lethal, terrorist acts are also gradually involving more Palestinian teenagers, including girls.21 Some examples of these alarming trends:22
Past’s PA Chairman Yasser Arafat, for instance, sent his wife and young daughter to Paris, where they reportedly lived on a generous monthly PA allowance of $100,000, The Palestinians’ First Lady Suha endorsed suicide operations: “There would have been no greater honor” than watching her son take his own life for the Palestinian struggle for independence – if only she had a son, the Sorbonne graduate told a London-based Arabic paper.33
In October 2000, a London-based Lebanese columnist, Hodo Husseini, condemned Palestinian leadership in the pan-Arab daily Al Sharq al-Awsat by asking: “What kind of enlightened independence will rise on the blood of the children, while the leaders [and] their [own] children and grandchildren are sheltered?” She and other critics were branded as “too Westernized to understand” in an editorial published in the PA’s state-controlled daily Al Hayat al-Jadida.
One of the most poignant protests against turning children into warriors came from Abu Saber, a bereaved father. He wrote to the London Arabic daily Al-Hayat about his eldest son who had been convinced to become ashahid, and how he learned that his dead son’s friends “were starting to wrap themselves like snakes around my other son, not yet 17, to direct him down the same path … to avenge his brother’s death.” He asked in anguish:34
Article 38 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (adopted in 1989) condemns the recruitment and involvement of children in hostilities and armed conflicts. In 2000, the UN General Assembly adopted a treaty that raises the age limit for compulsory recruitment and participation in combat to age 18. Article 36 of the same UN document calls on states to protect children against any kind of exploitation.36
United Nations Under-Secretary-General Olara Otunni condemned terrorist groups’ use of children as human shields, gunmen and suicide bombers. At a UN Security Council debate on January 14, 2003 devoted to measures to protect children in armed conflict, he said:
When Arab children are killed or injured, it makes headlines in Western media reports. But rather than investigate who is behind the participation of children in armed confrontation, Western journalists tend to report what they see on the streets.
Moreover, the age-old news adage, “If it bleeds, it leads,” is all the more true when the victims are children. No matter what the circumstances, the sight of a wounded or dead child is heartrending.
Journalists in Palestinian areas also are subject to threats and intimidation, and their film is confiscated if they take what Palestinian leadership considers “unflattering” footage that “undermines” the PA’s message.39 Aware that manipulation of children gives them a bad image abroad, Palestinian leaders have tried to hide their role in enticing children to endanger or kill themselves from Western cameras. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, a union of Arab journalists, forbids its news photographers from taking pictures of children who carry weapons or participate in activities sponsored by militant groups. Those who ignore the ban are threatened with disciplinary procedures.40
In the meantime, the cynical manipulation of Palestinian children continues unchecked.
Five months into the first Intifada in 1988, a Palestinian leader told an Israeli reporter: “We will make you cruel.” He said the use of women and children on the front lines, leading violent riots, would make Israelis look bad in the eyes of the world and make the Israelis hate themselves because Israel is morally sensitive.
In the first Intifada, the strategy of sending children into battle worked on both fronts: it produced painful headlines and anguished Israelis, leading to negative coverage of Israel abroad, including articles by American Jews who worried that Israel was losing its soul. The feeling of having been ‘tainted’ was reflected in a letter sent by an Israeli medic in the reserves to MK Haim Oron, writing that while his unit’s behavior was devoid of any case where “soldiers or officers stepped out of bounds,” the unpleasant task of apprehending rock-throwing youth was unbearable. “But now the Palestinians hate me and I hate myself. So what the hell do I do?”41
While the mobilization of children on the front lines did not have the effect Palestinians ultimately sought – a unilateral Israeli withdrawal without peace – Palestinians did note the success the strategy had in demonizing Israel in the eyes of the world and the Israelis themselves. This so-called success encouraged Palestinians to enlarge the role of their children by using them as human shields, direct combatants and suicide bombers and by glorifying, rather than mourning, their deaths.
In January 1990, at the close of the second year of the first Intifada, an Israeli journalist wrote of the sacrifice of Palestinian children and what seems to fuel it:42
A 2002 Washington Post editorial headlined “Death Wish,” following a conference in which 57 Islamic nations rejected the idea that Palestinian ‘resistance’ to Israel had anything to do with terrorism, said:
From the poorest barrios in South America to the most wretched slums of Cairo, parents strive to make sure there is food for their children and money for their children’s education. Parents everywhere walk a fine line between the need for parental guidance and youthful independence, setting rules for what their children can and cannot do, trying to ensure that their children will not make mistakes that endanger them. Parents raise their children with the hope that they will grow into happy, responsible, caring, and contributing members of society. That is what unites the Family of Man from Caracas to the Caucuses, from Timbuktu to Katmandu.
It is clear that in Palestinian society something has gone dreadfully wrong. Children in Palestinian communities in the West Bank and Gaza are turned into ‘self-destructing human bombs’ capable of carrying out casualty terrorist attacks in the struggle between Palestinians and Israelis - a phenomenon whose seeds can be traced to the firstIntifada.
It happened because Arab communities within the civil jurisdiction of self-rule under the Palestinian Authority (which includes 97 percent of the Arab residents in the West Bank and 100 percent of those in Gaza) foster a culture that prepares children for armed conflict, consciously and purposely putting them in harm’s way for political gain and tactical advantage in their war against Israel. The PA buses children to violent flashpoints far from their neighborhoods and Arab snipers often hide among the young during battle, using children as human shields. Teenaged perpetrators of suicide attacks have become the norm.2
In the first Intifada, a similar pattern surfaced, in which women and children led riots while young men in their late teens and early 20s, armed with rocks, sling shots, Molotov cocktails and grenades operated from the rear.3
There were thousands of Molotov cocktail attacks, more than 100 hand grenade attacks and more than 500 attacks with guns or explosive devices over the course of the first Intifada. Children in elementary and junior high school were encouraged to stone Israelis using rocks and slingshots, knowing that Israeli soldiers could do little beyond taking the youngsters into custody and fining their parents in the hopes they would ground their children. Instead, Palestinian parents sent their children back onto the streets. Some were killed. Others were maimed.
Palestinian society praised the transformation of its children into combatants during the first Intifada, dubbing them fondly “the children of the rocks.” Mahmud Darwish, the Palestinian national poet laureate, wrote a poem after the outbreak of the first Intifada, which sanctioned and sanctified their deaths, and praised “Arab youth on the road to victory, each with a coffin on his shoulder.”4 The poem eventually was set to music, encouraging countless Palestinian children to endanger themselves as a form of socially-condoned conduct that would bring them fame and prestige should they be hurt. This nihilistic bent took an even more destructive path in the secondIntifada, as the ‘weapons of choice’ moved from rocks to explosives and the role of the children moved from reckless life-threatening behavior to conscious premeditated suicidal acts.
Clearly horrified by the use of children in armed conflict, Israeli author and peace advocate Aharon Megged wrote during the first Intifada:
“Not since the Children's Crusade in 1212 … has there been a horror such as this – no people, no land where adults send children age 8-9 or 14-15 to the front, day-after-day, while they themselves hide in their houses or go out to work far-far away. They continue, and send them time-after-time, and don't stop them even when they know they are liable to be killed, maimed, beaten or arrested.”
But the use of children to fight grownup battles, which germinated in the first Intifada in 1987, has run the full course - not only teaching and training children to kill, a crime shared by those behind an estimated 300,000 child soldiers around the world, but indoctrinating their own offspring to take their own lives.5
Under self-rule on the West Bank and Gaza, child sacrifice has turned into a normative part of the socialization process as the phenomenon of suicide bombers has escalated to epidemic proportions.6
From an early age, children are fed anti-Zionist, anti-Jewish and anti-Western hate propaganda. Mosques, schools, summer camps, and even children’s television programs are exploited to encourage children to become martyrs in an act that will bring them respect and parental pride:
- In Hamas-run kindergartens, signs on the walls read: “The children of the kindergarten are the shahids(holy martyrs) of tomorrow.”7
- A television show called “The Children’s Club” shows a young Palestinian, age 9 or 10 proclaiming, “When I wander into Jerusalem, I will become a suicide bomber.”8
- The Palestinian Authority-controlled television,9 broadcasts MTV-style videos for teens that glorify suicide bombing and martyrdom.
- A 6th grade Palestinian textbook, Our Beautiful Language, includes the “Shahid Song” that encourages death in war as a shahid or martyr. Other textbooks carry similar messages.
- At a Palestine Authority summer camp in 2002, 25,000 children were trained in how to make firebombs, use firearms, and ambush and kidnap targeted enemies.10
- An Islamic Jihad summer school massages the libidos of teenage boys by telling them they will “liberate Palestine from the Jews” by becoming martyrs, and promise the boys that they will be greeted by 72 virgins.11
- Kindergartens, schools, summer camps, and school sports tournaments (and other institutions) are named after terrorists and young suicide bombers, who are used as pedagogic role models.12
Throughout the Palestinian territories, walls are plastered with posters of young martyrs who are idolized by Palestinian youth the way other teens worship rock stars.
Against such a backdrop, Wajdi Hatab, age 14, told his classmates days before being killed: “When I become a martyr, give out kannafa (traditional cake).”15
B’tselem, an Israeli human rights organization that monitors Israeli conduct toward Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza, sharply rebuked Palestinian leadership for making little effort to keep children away from potentially violent confrontations.16
Bassam Zakhour, a bereaved Palestinian father, was far more frank. He blamed Palestinian Authority television for enticing his 14 year-old son to run off with two other schoolmates ‘to kill Jews.’ The trio was chosen by Hamas handlers because their ‘innocent’ looks would not arouse suspicion. They entered a Jewish settlement with knives and explosives packed in their schoolbags.17
Indeed, the age of children volunteering for suicide missions is dropping from men in their 20s to children in their teens and preteens.
At the same time, the scope of violence between the first Intifada and the second has escalated. Where Palestinian children threw rocks in the 1980s, they began throwing firebombs in 2000. In more than three years of guerrilla warfare since 2000, Palestinian leaders use children in warfare against Israel in other ways as well.
Toddlers have served as cover for terrorist activity by hiding munitions in their clothing. Paramedics found an explosive belt with 21 kilograms of explosives hidden under the pad of an ambulance stretcher carrying an ill Palestinian child.18 The Hezbollah weekly journal reported19 that children had helped make weapons and ammunition in the Jenin refugee camp, and then clashed with Israeli forces after they were armed with grenades and explosives. In July 2003, two Palestinian assailants posed as a family, accompanied by a female accomplice with a 4-year-old child (her niece). The accomplice and child were used as bait in the knife-point kidnapping of a Jewish cab driver. Later, another child passed through Israeli checkpoints while carrying supplies to the kidnappers.20
In addition to growing more lethal, terrorist acts are also gradually involving more Palestinian teenagers, including girls.21 Some examples of these alarming trends:22
- February 16, 2002. An 18-year-old boy blew himself up outside a pizzeria in the territories, killing three Israelis and wounding 30.
- March 30, 2002. A 16-year-old girl walked into a Jerusalem supermarket and detonated a bomb concealed under her clothing, killing two Israelis and wounding 22 others.
- April 23, 2002. Three teenagers from Gaza, armed with knives and explosives, were killed attempting to crawl under a perimeter fence to attack residents of a Jewish settlement.
- May 2002. A 16-year-old boy with a suicide belt strapped to his body, was arrested in a taxi near Jenin
- June 13, 2002. A 15-year old girl was arrested for throwing a firebomb at IDF soldiers. She admitted she was a recruit.
- July 30, 2002. A 17-year-old boy from Beit Jala, an Arab suburb of Jerusalem, became disoriented after being dropped off by his adult handler, blew himself up outside a virtually empty falafel stand in the city and injured five Israelis.
Countless Palestinian parents support, encourage and praise the sacrifice of their children in suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks.
Arab culture holds these child-soldiers in such high regard that parents accept the deaths of their children with pride. A June 2002 public opinion survey conducted by the independent Arab-polling institute Jerusalem Media and Communications Center, found 68 percent of Palestinian adults support suicide bombing operations.25 The father of a 13- year-old says, “I pray that God will choose him [to be a martyr].” The father of another youth who carried out a June 2002 attack outside a Tel Aviv disco declares: “I am very happy and proud of what my son did, and frankly, I’m a bit jealous.”26 Financial incentives to families of suicide bombers also provide parents with reason to acquiesce, especially given the poverty of a majority of Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza, where living standards have plummeted since September 2000.- The Palestinian Authority pays parents $2,000 for each child killed and $300 for each wounded child.
- Saudi Arabia pledged $250 million as part of a billion-dollar fund established to aid families whose children are killed.
- The Arab Liberation Front, a group loyal to former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, was paying $10,000 to the parents of each child killed and $25,000 for suicide bombers.27
“Don't you understand, stupid, that when a girl of 18 springs blows herself up, this means that her cause is right, and that her people will be victorious sooner or later?”
In an interview on Egyptian satellite TV Iqraa, Dr. Sadeq further clarified:“Our culture is one of sacrifice, loyalty and honor. … Bush was mistaken when he said that the girl was killing the future when she chose to kill herself. On the contrary: She died so that others would live. … When the martyr dies a martyr's death, he attains the height of bliss.... The message to Israel is that we will not cease. … It is very important to convey this message. … The child who threw a stone in 1993 today wraps himself in an explosive belt. … Either we will exist or we will not exist. Either the Israelis or the Palestinians - there is no third option.”29
Some parents and social organizations do protest the barbaric use of children as warriors, although not necessarily criticizing suicide bombing as a tactic. Unfortunately, they are small voices in the wilderness.
Some Arab parents have condemned the use of children as combatants, but their voices are isolated and they carry the risk of being ostracized and vilified. In December 2000, a local group of Palestinian women trade unionists called on the Palestinian Authority to stop using children as cannon fodder: “We don’t want to send our sons to the front line, but they are being taken by the Palestinian Authority,” said a mother of six from the West Bank city of Tulkarem.30 A nurse from Gaza who spoke out on television was condemned in the Arabic media as a traitor. Others reveal that they have been threatened by armed Fatah officials for discouraging their children from participating in clashes.31While Palestinian leaders exhort the public into volunteering their children for suicide missions, they make sure their own children are not among the volunteers.
Many Palestinian leaders who tell parents that it is their patriotic duty to sacrifice their children32 have sent their own offspring abroad (as have other Palestinians with the financial means), while others keep their own children under close supervision to ensure their safety.Past’s PA Chairman Yasser Arafat, for instance, sent his wife and young daughter to Paris, where they reportedly lived on a generous monthly PA allowance of $100,000, The Palestinians’ First Lady Suha endorsed suicide operations: “There would have been no greater honor” than watching her son take his own life for the Palestinian struggle for independence – if only she had a son, the Sorbonne graduate told a London-based Arabic paper.33
In October 2000, a London-based Lebanese columnist, Hodo Husseini, condemned Palestinian leadership in the pan-Arab daily Al Sharq al-Awsat by asking: “What kind of enlightened independence will rise on the blood of the children, while the leaders [and] their [own] children and grandchildren are sheltered?” She and other critics were branded as “too Westernized to understand” in an editorial published in the PA’s state-controlled daily Al Hayat al-Jadida.
One of the most poignant protests against turning children into warriors came from Abu Saber, a bereaved father. He wrote to the London Arabic daily Al-Hayat about his eldest son who had been convinced to become ashahid, and how he learned that his dead son’s friends “were starting to wrap themselves like snakes around my other son, not yet 17, to direct him down the same path … to avenge his brother’s death.” He asked in anguish:34
“By what right do these leaders send the young people, even young boys in the flower of their youth, to their deaths? Who gave them religious or any other legitimacy to tempt our children and urge them to their deaths?... Why until this very moment haven’t we seen one of the sons or daughters of any of these people don an explosive belt and go out to carry out in deed, not in words, what their fathers preach day and night?”
In his letter, Abu Saber cited by name sheikhs and leaders who had sent their sons abroad “the moment theIntifada broke out” – including the son of the past head of Hamas in Gaza – the late Dr. Abdul Al-Rantisi,35whose wife, he charged, “has refrained from sending her son Muhammad to blow himself up. Instead, she sent him to Iraq, to complete his studies there.”Article 38 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (adopted in 1989) condemns the recruitment and involvement of children in hostilities and armed conflicts. In 2000, the UN General Assembly adopted a treaty that raises the age limit for compulsory recruitment and participation in combat to age 18. Article 36 of the same UN document calls on states to protect children against any kind of exploitation.36
United Nations Under-Secretary-General Olara Otunni condemned terrorist groups’ use of children as human shields, gunmen and suicide bombers. At a UN Security Council debate on January 14, 2003 devoted to measures to protect children in armed conflict, he said:
“We have witnessed child victims at both ends of these acts: Children have been used as suicide bombers and children have been killed by suicide bombings. Nothing can justify this. I call on the Palestinian authorities to do everything within their powers to stop all participation by children in this conflict.”37
The UN could do much more. Although the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (or UNRWA) funds nearly all PA-controlled schools in the West Bank and Gaza, UNRWA rejects criticism that it allows Palestinian pedagogues and educators to propagate hatred of Israel and identification with suicidal martyrdom, saying UNRWA has no mandate to set curricula or means to control terrorist activity within its camps.38When Arab children are killed or injured, it makes headlines in Western media reports. But rather than investigate who is behind the participation of children in armed confrontation, Western journalists tend to report what they see on the streets.
Moreover, the age-old news adage, “If it bleeds, it leads,” is all the more true when the victims are children. No matter what the circumstances, the sight of a wounded or dead child is heartrending.
Journalists in Palestinian areas also are subject to threats and intimidation, and their film is confiscated if they take what Palestinian leadership considers “unflattering” footage that “undermines” the PA’s message.39 Aware that manipulation of children gives them a bad image abroad, Palestinian leaders have tried to hide their role in enticing children to endanger or kill themselves from Western cameras. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, a union of Arab journalists, forbids its news photographers from taking pictures of children who carry weapons or participate in activities sponsored by militant groups. Those who ignore the ban are threatened with disciplinary procedures.40
In the meantime, the cynical manipulation of Palestinian children continues unchecked.
Palestinians are killing their children because they make effective delivery systems for killing Israelis. They also sacrifice them because wounded or dead children paint Israelis as heartless and cruel in the eyes of the world and the Israelis themselves
Five months into the first Intifada in 1988, a Palestinian leader told an Israeli reporter: “We will make you cruel.” He said the use of women and children on the front lines, leading violent riots, would make Israelis look bad in the eyes of the world and make the Israelis hate themselves because Israel is morally sensitive.
In the first Intifada, the strategy of sending children into battle worked on both fronts: it produced painful headlines and anguished Israelis, leading to negative coverage of Israel abroad, including articles by American Jews who worried that Israel was losing its soul. The feeling of having been ‘tainted’ was reflected in a letter sent by an Israeli medic in the reserves to MK Haim Oron, writing that while his unit’s behavior was devoid of any case where “soldiers or officers stepped out of bounds,” the unpleasant task of apprehending rock-throwing youth was unbearable. “But now the Palestinians hate me and I hate myself. So what the hell do I do?”41
While the mobilization of children on the front lines did not have the effect Palestinians ultimately sought – a unilateral Israeli withdrawal without peace – Palestinians did note the success the strategy had in demonizing Israel in the eyes of the world and the Israelis themselves. This so-called success encouraged Palestinians to enlarge the role of their children by using them as human shields, direct combatants and suicide bombers and by glorifying, rather than mourning, their deaths.
As long as the deaths of children serve the Palestinian cause, Palestinian leaders will continue to employ this strategy. If deploying Palestinian children as combatants and targeting Israeli children is to halt, the world community must take a clear moral stand.
The death of Arab children on the front lines – extolled as shahids or martyrs – has become a cynical weapon in the arsenal of Arab leaders. They have learned that when their children are killed, they gain world sympathy, especially in Europe and North America - where the death of any child is viewed as a tragedy and portrayed as such in the media, regardless of circumstance.In January 1990, at the close of the second year of the first Intifada, an Israeli journalist wrote of the sacrifice of Palestinian children and what seems to fuel it:42
“The numbers are horrendous. However these child victims of the Intifada are not targets. They are weapons. Few … in the West stop to ask – Who sends children to the front with coffins on their shoulders and potentially lethal projectiles in their hand? … The Intifada is unconventional warfare, using women and children as weapons, because it is a psychological war … [for] the hearts and minds of world opinion … to erode traditional support of Israel by the diaspora … to victimize Israelis by manipulating moral sensibilities inherent in Jewish ethics and Western society to undermine motivation and paralyze the Israeli body politic by systematic de-legitimization of our self-image … The only way to break this brutal and vicious circle and put an end to Palestinian moral-mental blackmail is to get to the source and recognize that the youthful victims and their elder victimizers hail from the same camp.”
Not much has changed since then except that the Palestinians’ exploitation of children has reached new heights. Their 1988 threat to Israel – “We will make you cruel” – hangs in the air. With sometimes 20 or more tips of planned terrorist attacks in their final stage of execution every day, Israelis are forced, against their will and against their humanitarian instincts, to take extreme measures to protect their own children from these onslaughts. Perversely, Israel is condemned for protecting herself from these lethal ‘children.’ To add insult to injury, the hapless victims are often not mentioned by name in the world press – not even in short obituaries - while the young perpetrators are the focus of compassionate coverage, with long, empathetic profiles like the one about the suicide bomber in The New York Times Sunday Magazine. It described the killer as a person who “raised doves and adored children.”43A 2002 Washington Post editorial headlined “Death Wish,” following a conference in which 57 Islamic nations rejected the idea that Palestinian ‘resistance’ to Israel had anything to do with terrorism, said:
“In effect, the Islamic conference sanctioned not only terrorism but also suicide as a legitimate political instrument.... It is hard to imagine any other grouping in the world’s nations that could reach such a self-destructive and morally repugnant conclusion.”44
The Post castigated Muslim states and suggested their behavior was liable to be the seeds to their own destruction. It concluded:“The Palestinian national cause will never recover – nor should it – until its leadership is willing to break definitely with the bombers.
- A criminal Palestinian Arab leadership, along with cowardly and intimidated Palestinian parents on the West Bank and Gaza, exploit their children to engage in armed conflict - in opposition to values held by the rest of the civilized world and in flagrant violation of international law and common decency.
- There is no excuse – nor any widespread precedent among the wretched of the earth - for sacrificing the youth of any society for political gain and tactical advantage. If this is to stop, the culpability must be put squarely on the shoulders of Palestinian society and others who legitimize, support and ‘understand’ such child sacrifice.
1 “Baby Bomber Photo ‘Just Fun,’” BBC, June 29, 2002, at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/
2 The Times, London, March 15, 2002.
3 Reuven Koret, “Child Sacrifice, Palestinian Style,” Capitalism magazine”, November 13, 2002, at:
http://www.capmag.com/article.
4 January 1988, shown in footage of a documentary on the radicalization of Palestinian youth, Israel Broadcasting Authority.
5 “Child Soldiers,” BBC World Service, at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
6 See Professor Gerald Steinberg, “Palestinian Child Sacrifice,” October 25, 2000, at:
http://www.cdn-friends-icej.
7 USA Today, July 5, 2001.
8 See: http://www.operationsick.com. (11605)
9 See Kenneth R. Timmerman, “Palestinian TV glorification of ‘martyrdom’ on upswing,” Insight magazine, December 19, 2002.
10 See: http://www.operationsick.com. (11605)
11 Jeremy Cooke, “School trains suicide bombers,” BBC, July 18, 2001, at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/
12 Among those memorialized, Dalal Mughrabi, who took part in the killing of 36 Israelis and Gail Rubin, the niece of U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff in 1978. See:
http://www.zoa.org/pressrel/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/
For sports tournaments, see:
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/
13 Alan Philips, “Lynch mob suspects held by Israelis,” Telegraph, June 26, 2001, at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
14 The preschooler was photographed in a Hamas kindergarten holding up her palms – dipped in red paint, in front of a model of the el-Aqsa mosque.
15 Al-Hayah Al Jadida, Palestinian Authority newspaper, November 9, 2000.
16 USA Today, December 8, 2000.
17 Kenneth R. Timmerman, “Palestinian TV glorification of ‘martyrdom’ on upswing,” Insight magazine, December 19, 2002.
18 See “Indictment on Use of Ambulances for Terrorist Activities,” IDF Spokesperson, March 12, 2003 at:
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/
19 “Palestinian children's role in Jenin warfare,” IDF Spokesperson, November 25, 2002. See at:
http://www.
20 Amos Harel, “Rescued abductee Eliyahu Gurel tells of his ordeal,” Haaretz, July 24, 2003, at:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/
21 Partially using modesty as a means of preventing detection of the perpetrators.
22 See: “Chronology of suicide bombings” at:
http://www.hrw.org/reports/
23 See “Exploitation of Children for Terrorist Purposes,” Israel Action Committee, January 14, 2003 at:
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/
24 Ibid.
25 For further details, see: http://www.jmcc.org/
26 Justus Weiner, “The Recruitment of Children in Current Palestinian Strategy,” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, October 1, 2002. See:
http://www.jcpa.org/brief/
27 Ibid.
28 Special Dispatch #373 – Interview on Egyptian satellite TV, April 30, 2002, at:
http://memri.org/bin/articles.
29 Ibid.
30 USA Today, December 8, 2000. For a summary of the article see:
http://www.camera.org/index.
31 Ibid.
32 For instance, Hafiz Barghouthi, editor of the PA daily Al Hayat al-Jadida, labeled those who refuse to endanger their children “traitors”; see David Schenker, “An Arab Debate on ‘Child Sacrifice,’” Jerusalem Post, November 15, 2000, at:
http://www.highbeam.com/
33 See Michelle Malkin, “Sick: Kiddie Suicide Bomber Chic,” Capitalism magazine, April 17, 2002, at:
http://www.capmag.com/article.
34 Special Dispatch #426, MEMRI, October 8, 2002, at:
http://memri.org/bin/articles.
35 Dr. Abd Al-Rantisi was killed April 17, 2004 after an Israeli helicopter gunship attacked his car.
36 Convention on the Rights of the Child at:
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/
37 See, “Children and Armed Conflict” at:
http://157.150.184.6/
38 “Setting the Record Straight,” UNRWA, at:
http://www.un.org/unrwa/
39 For a radio documentary on the intimidation of Palestinian journalists, see the Australian Broadcasting Company transcript: Robert Bolton, “The State of the Media and Journalism in the Palestinian Territories,” February 4, 1999 at:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/
40 “Palestinian Group Warns Journalists,” Associated Press, August 26, 2002. See:
http://www.geocities.co.jp/
41 Quoted in Daniella Ashkenazy, “An answer to a soldier’s letter,” The Nation, January 30, 1989.
42 Daniella Ashkenazy, “Small-arms Warfare,” Jerusalem Post, January 31, 1990.
43See Andrea Levin, “The Unbearable Urge to Sympathize,” CAMERA, February 22, 2002, at:
http://world.std.com/~camera/
44 “Death Wish,” Washington Post, April 4, 2002, at:
http://www.mefacts.com/cache/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/
2 The Times, London, March 15, 2002.
3 Reuven Koret, “Child Sacrifice, Palestinian Style,” Capitalism magazine”, November 13, 2002, at:
http://www.capmag.com/article.
4 January 1988, shown in footage of a documentary on the radicalization of Palestinian youth, Israel Broadcasting Authority.
5 “Child Soldiers,” BBC World Service, at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
6 See Professor Gerald Steinberg, “Palestinian Child Sacrifice,” October 25, 2000, at:
http://www.cdn-friends-icej.
7 USA Today, July 5, 2001.
8 See: http://www.operationsick.com. (11605)
9 See Kenneth R. Timmerman, “Palestinian TV glorification of ‘martyrdom’ on upswing,” Insight magazine, December 19, 2002.
10 See: http://www.operationsick.com. (11605)
11 Jeremy Cooke, “School trains suicide bombers,” BBC, July 18, 2001, at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/
12 Among those memorialized, Dalal Mughrabi, who took part in the killing of 36 Israelis and Gail Rubin, the niece of U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff in 1978. See:
http://www.zoa.org/pressrel/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/
For sports tournaments, see:
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/
13 Alan Philips, “Lynch mob suspects held by Israelis,” Telegraph, June 26, 2001, at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
14 The preschooler was photographed in a Hamas kindergarten holding up her palms – dipped in red paint, in front of a model of the el-Aqsa mosque.
15 Al-Hayah Al Jadida, Palestinian Authority newspaper, November 9, 2000.
16 USA Today, December 8, 2000.
17 Kenneth R. Timmerman, “Palestinian TV glorification of ‘martyrdom’ on upswing,” Insight magazine, December 19, 2002.
18 See “Indictment on Use of Ambulances for Terrorist Activities,” IDF Spokesperson, March 12, 2003 at:
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/
19 “Palestinian children's role in Jenin warfare,” IDF Spokesperson, November 25, 2002. See at:
http://www.
20 Amos Harel, “Rescued abductee Eliyahu Gurel tells of his ordeal,” Haaretz, July 24, 2003, at:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/
21 Partially using modesty as a means of preventing detection of the perpetrators.
22 See: “Chronology of suicide bombings” at:
http://www.hrw.org/reports/
23 See “Exploitation of Children for Terrorist Purposes,” Israel Action Committee, January 14, 2003 at:
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/
24 Ibid.
25 For further details, see: http://www.jmcc.org/
26 Justus Weiner, “The Recruitment of Children in Current Palestinian Strategy,” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, October 1, 2002. See:
http://www.jcpa.org/brief/
27 Ibid.
28 Special Dispatch #373 – Interview on Egyptian satellite TV, April 30, 2002, at:
http://memri.org/bin/articles.
29 Ibid.
30 USA Today, December 8, 2000. For a summary of the article see:
http://www.camera.org/index.
31 Ibid.
32 For instance, Hafiz Barghouthi, editor of the PA daily Al Hayat al-Jadida, labeled those who refuse to endanger their children “traitors”; see David Schenker, “An Arab Debate on ‘Child Sacrifice,’” Jerusalem Post, November 15, 2000, at:
http://www.highbeam.com/
33 See Michelle Malkin, “Sick: Kiddie Suicide Bomber Chic,” Capitalism magazine, April 17, 2002, at:
http://www.capmag.com/article.
34 Special Dispatch #426, MEMRI, October 8, 2002, at:
http://memri.org/bin/articles.
35 Dr. Abd Al-Rantisi was killed April 17, 2004 after an Israeli helicopter gunship attacked his car.
36 Convention on the Rights of the Child at:
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/
37 See, “Children and Armed Conflict” at:
http://157.150.184.6/
38 “Setting the Record Straight,” UNRWA, at:
http://www.un.org/unrwa/
39 For a radio documentary on the intimidation of Palestinian journalists, see the Australian Broadcasting Company transcript: Robert Bolton, “The State of the Media and Journalism in the Palestinian Territories,” February 4, 1999 at:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/
40 “Palestinian Group Warns Journalists,” Associated Press, August 26, 2002. See:
http://www.geocities.co.jp/
41 Quoted in Daniella Ashkenazy, “An answer to a soldier’s letter,” The Nation, January 30, 1989.
42 Daniella Ashkenazy, “Small-arms Warfare,” Jerusalem Post, January 31, 1990.
43See Andrea Levin, “The Unbearable Urge to Sympathize,” CAMERA, February 22, 2002, at:
http://world.std.com/~camera/
44 “Death Wish,” Washington Post, April 4, 2002, at:
http://www.mefacts.com/cache/
