http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/perspective/chi-0208040247aug04.story
Too many kids caught in the crossfire
By Emily L. Hauser.
August 4, 2002
Look at a child you love. Touch his hair, her skin. Look
into those eyes, those bottomless eyes, those eyes that radiate more light
than the sun and the moon and all the stars. Then imagine, for a split second,
if your mind will allow in even that much horror, imagine that girl, that
boy, dead. Killed in your arms, next to you, holding your hand.
I don't know how parents survive. I don't know how their lungs continue
to function, their blood to flow, their legs to propel them forward. But
the highly regarded Israeli human rights organization, B'Tselem, reports
that, in the past 22 months, the mothers and fathers of about 125 Palestinian
kids age 14 and younger and 35 Israeli children of the same age have had
to learn how to go on.
I'm an American-Israeli in a constant
state of despair over the war Israel is waging against the Palestinian people.
I'm never more horrified than when the victims of our vastly superior military
force--whether through intent or negligence, it just doesn't matter--are
children.
Earlier this summer, Randa al-Hindi was riding in a taxi with three
of her children; at a roadblock outside Gaza City, Israeli soldiers in an
armored carrier thought they saw "suspicious" figures in the car. Rather
than shoot out its tires, demand that the riders disembark, take a closer
look, anything, they fired into the cab, killing Randa and Anwar, her 2-year-old
daughter.
One Friday in May, 7-year-old Amid Abd Alsamad abu Sief was on his way
to the mosque with his father. Friday prayers are the high point of the Muslim
week, so he was, no doubt, well-scrubbed and wearing his best clothes; I
picture him running to keep up with his dad. He was shot dead by Israeli
soldiers. His father was critically wounded.
Dramatic case in point
Perhaps the most infamous example is this: 12-year-old Mohammed Aldura,
shot dead in September 2000, as his unarmed father, waving frantically and
shouting "Don't shoot!" tried to shield him with his own body, as soldiers
fired round after round after round. For 45 minutes.
There are, of course, devastating cases of the murder of Israeli children:
suicide bombings at establishments frequented by teenagers, on public buses,
at an ice cream parlor. Thoughts of the Palestinian sniper who shot 10-month-old
Shalhevet Pass, in the head, in her father's arms, still leave me breathless.
It is easy to understand when the parents of murdered children lose
their minds in grief and turn with ravenous anger on those responsible. The
almost incomprehensible thing is when they do not.
Five years ago, Israeli Smadar Elhanan was killed by a Palestinian suicide
bomber while shopping for school books. She was 14. Today, on the door to
her parents' Jerusalem apartment there is a bumper sticker that reads "Free
Palestine."
Smadar's father, Rami, recently told the London Mirror that the blame
for his daughter's death rests squarely on the shoulders of Israel's government.
"Our daughter was killed because of the terror of Israeli occupation,"
he said. "Every innocent victim from both sides is a victim of the occupation."
Rami's father survived the Holocaust; his grandfather, aunts and uncles
all perished. He and his wife responded to their own tragedy by joining the
parents of a Palestinian boy killed by Israeli soldiers, forming a group
called the Bereaved Family Forum. If there is a more godly response to a
history of hatred and death, I don't know it.
The heart's immediate response to these stories is to cry out for an
end to the violence. It is, however, easier to demand that the killing end
than to stop it. Not because people are animals, but because people are people.
Because life is made up of infinitely more than just being alive.
This is what the occupation means: Malnourishment among Palestinian
children is on the rise, a result of the curfews Israel has imposed on the
towns and villages it has seized; as of April, Israel had demolished more
than 225 homes since the outbreak of the intifada; in the last quarter of
2001, unemployment among 20- to 24-year-olds in the Gaza Strip stood at 45
percent, in no small part because most are no longer allowed to seek work
inside Israel; Palestinian ambulances are regularly kept from reaching people
wounded in Israeli actions, while the sick or injured or pregnant are frequently
detained for hours on end at Israeli roadblocks while on their way to the
hospital.
Hope an amazing thing
It is, to my mind, a wonder that anyone growing up under these circumstances
is able to find any hope at all. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak
once said that if he had grown up in a Palestinian refugee camp, he too would
be wearing a mask and fighting the occupation.
Though its leaders and people are loath to admit it, Israel is the one
with the power to put a stop to bullets piercing little girls' skulls or
bombs ripping through little boys' limbs. It is true that withdrawal from
the territories will not put an immediate halt to the violence or, of course,
the hatred, particularly not if the terms are, as in the Oslo accords, patently
unbalanced in Israel's favor. That is the excruciating price we will have
to pay for subjugating another people for 35 long, brutal years.
Ending the occupation is, however, the only place we can start.
I am stupefied by the fact that I don't hear more Israelis wondering
why a person would tape explosives to their skin and blow themselves to smithereens.
Why are so few discussing the fact that, since this intifada began, for all
our pain and despair over our own dead children, more than 3 1/2 times as
many Palestinian boys and girls have been killed in a population less than
half the size of Israel's?
And why do we not consider the fact that the vast majority of those
blowing themselves up are hardly more than children themselves?
Emily L. Hauser is an American-Israeli. She reported on Israel and the Palestinian
Authority from 1991 to 1998
Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune
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