Thursday January 20,2005

I've Been Thinking:

In Jenin today Israeli soldiers killed a child. His name was Salahdin abu Muhsen. It was a grave error. The boy had a toy gun.

This incident points to some very troubling and important issues that we must not be afraid to raise and discuss.

Palestinian children are sometimes outfitted with real guns and real bombs. They are encouraged to play games that use toy guns to re-create scenarios that are not at all innocent. They are not imitating cops and robbers or king of the mountain, those innocuous games we grew up on. Palestinian children often play a game called "Shahid", martyr, hero. It's sad, it dismays, it's true.

That Israeli soldiers made this mistake is truly tragic, but somehow, inevitable. It is tragic and inevitable because Palestinian children carry real guns often enough that any gun is assumed to be real by Israeli soldiers, no matter how young the hand that carries it. And it's tragic that Palestinian children often play games where they want to become suicide terrorists fighting the Israelis.

Palestinian kids do not dream of a happy successful future, they dream of murdering innocent Israelis and even being killed themselves in order to become the shahid/martyr/hero.