Sunday, March 14, 2004
Sending children to do a man's job
'Suicide bombers were schoolboys' - headline, news.com.au.
"The fathers of both teens said they were proud of their sons." Sure they are. Their boys killed ten Israelis, and wounded 18.
It is not fashionable in polite society (or at least liberal college towns) to condemn this child abuse -- and that is what it is -- as a repulsive and disgusting atrocity. I believe that the reluctance of some to condemn Palestinian child abuse stems from the most deplorable racism -- they simply hold Palestinians in such low esteem that they cannot imagine holding them to the same standards of conduct as, say, Americans, Europeans or Israelis.
UPDATE: You think 17 year-olds aren't really children? What about ten-year olds?
I had a boss once whose mother, as a teenager in the resistance against the Nazis, smuggled explosives used to disable German railroads. The difference? Her intended targets weren't civilians (or even soldiers, per se), and she never had the ambition to die for her cause.
"The fathers of both teens said they were proud of their sons." Sure they are. Their boys killed ten Israelis, and wounded 18.
It is not fashionable in polite society (or at least liberal college towns) to condemn this child abuse -- and that is what it is -- as a repulsive and disgusting atrocity. I believe that the reluctance of some to condemn Palestinian child abuse stems from the most deplorable racism -- they simply hold Palestinians in such low esteem that they cannot imagine holding them to the same standards of conduct as, say, Americans, Europeans or Israelis.
UPDATE: You think 17 year-olds aren't really children? What about ten-year olds?
I had a boss once whose mother, as a teenager in the resistance against the Nazis, smuggled explosives used to disable German railroads. The difference? Her intended targets weren't civilians (or even soldiers, per se), and she never had the ambition to die for her cause.
0 Comments:
