Israeli anti-terror efforts are regularly criticized in the world media for causing Palestinian civilian casualites. The IDF makes extraordinary efforts at lessening such casualties (including endangering Israeli soldiers’ lives on a regular basis), but the criticism remains. Part of the problem is the fact that armed Palestinians oftentimes take cover among children and civilians (click on picture), placing them in harm’s way in the most irresponsible manner imaginable.
Here’s some insight to the problem from the perspective of the kids: Peter Hermann of the Baltimore Sun reports on Palestinian kids “flirting with death” by cozying up to the armed men in the heat of battle. He quotes Mahmoud Youssef Abu Saleh, a 12 year-old-boy living in the Jabaliya refugee camp:
Mahmoud says the attraction of the fighters is often too much to ignore.
“Sometimes we go to help,” he says. “Sometimes we go to throw stones. But we are afraid. Sometimes children go because they want to be martyred.” Those who participate, he says, “become big men” in the camp.
This article blames the problem on a breakdown of traditional authority — Palestinian fathers who would prevent their children from running to battle sites are no longer taken seriously by their children, who see their protective fathers as weak.
So what about the armed Hamasniks themselves refusing to allow children in their midst during gunfights? Why doesn’t Peter Herman talk with them, demanding an explanation for this extreme form of negligence?
Greg Myre of the New York Times also filed an article on this topic, which stresses Palestinian ‘defiance’ and willingness to die as a ‘martyr.’
