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This one from Burhan did get published.
The children of terror
The Herald-Sun
Mar 26, 2004 : 4:40 pm ET
Maybe some Palestinians' courageous denouncements of wiring children with
high explosives, the better to kill Israelis, will register on the new
leader of Hamas. Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi is, ironically, a pediatrician. But
maybe is a word with little force to begin with, so in the hate-drenched
dynamics of the Middle East there is scant reason to expect much to change.
Any terrorist outfit that will send mere children on suicide missions is
beyond the reach of morality.
The child warrior fad among Hamas is a cynical ploy for trying to get around
Israeli security. Consider what Hamas has done so far:
n An 11-year-old boy carrying 22 pounds of explosives in a backpack was sent
on a one-way mission through an Israeli security checkpoint. The boy
apparently had no idea that he was being sacrificed by his handlers.
Fortunately, this setup didn't work -- Israeli security disarmed the boy
before his cargo could be detonated, presumably by a radio signal.
n In February, Israeli troops detained three teen-age boys, one of them only
12, on their way to bomb a target in Afula.
n Just last week, in video images seen around the world, Israeli troops
saved a 16-year-old rigged with an explosive vest. The teen was a rarity, a
suicide bomber who said he didn't want to die. His mother angrily criticized
Hamas and the Palestinian leadership for using a boy to carry out an act of
terror. This was an extraordinary public denunciation by a Palestinian
mother who knew that she and her family could suffer serious consequences
for going against the party line.
Using children to kill is nothing new in the experience of the world. Nor is
teaching them that they have a duty to die for their people and their God,
who is waiting to reward them for their sacrifice with rivers of honey and
72 virgins.
But wiring children into human bombs is something else again. This is a
pathological homage to death, both for the child and for those who set him
up to die for their cause: To kill as many Israelis as possible and drive
the survivors into the sea. It is senseless, because terror cannot defeat
Israel.
The world should be shocked by what Hamas is doing with mere children. A
global voice raised against the use of these walking kamikazis might have
enough force to stop it. The first refrain is coming from Palestinian
mothers; second should come from the rest of us.
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For Middle East peace, end Israel's occupation
If the intent of your editorial, "The children of terror" [Herald-Sun, March
28] was to promote peace, your mission failed.
Intentionally or unintentionally, you left out the most important fact about
these children; they are made violent by a violent and brutal Israeli
occupation. Occupation is terror, and terror breeds terror. These children
are the true product of the demolishing of their homes, the uprooting of
their orchards, the confiscation of their land to build "Jews only"
colonies, and the killing or jailing of their fathers, brothers and friends.
These children were deprived of any hope for normal life by more than 30
years of unmerciful Israeli occupation. Your editorial did not once
acknowledge that thousands of Palestinians, children and adults, were killed
by the occupying Israeli army as if it's OK if terror is committed by
Israel.
You can be assured that these children will not resort to desperate acts if
the Israeli occupation comes to an end. Unfortunately, the Israeli
occupation is uniquely brutal in the fact that the objective of the
occupiers is to steal the land from its Palestinian owners. Israel stole
more that 50 percent of the land of West Bank and Gaza since the occupation
started in 1967.
The unconditional military and political U.S. support for Israel is also
depriving the Palestinians from due process through the United Nations.
Israel and the United States rendered the Palestinians, children and adults,
helpless and hopeless.
Only after the end of Israeli occupation will Palestinian and Israeli
children live a normal peaceful life.
BURHAN GHANAYEM
Bahama
April 4, 2004
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