Twenty children died today in Gaza

Israel killed twenty children today in Gaza. I heard it on the radio as I was making dinner for my sons. I turned the radio off. I don't want my children to hear. They don't know that Israel does these things. I don't talk about Israel in front of them, now that they are old enough to understand. They don't know that some Jews think this is right for Israel to do. I won't tell them. They have Jewish relatives. I cannot explain this to my children.

How did people go on in the 1930s, in the 1940s, listening to the radio, helpless, knowing of the slaughter in Europe?

How can I go on, knowing that my government and many of my countrymen approve, believe it is rational, justifiable, and purely the fault of the Palestinians themselves?

Of course I can go on. The world around me is full of madmen and madwomen, full of perfectly nice, normal people who would rationalize the murder of 20 children, of 500 people, of a nation. But I remember Phil Weiss, Richard Silverstein, Starhawk, Deb Reich, Bay Area Women in Black, Cecile Shurasky, so many others, and I refuse to give up faith in the essential goodness of humanity.

Despite the humanity and compassion of a few, I cannot bite my angry Arab tongue. I will not silence myself, I must still say this, even if you think I am too emotional:

First we will hear that it was the fault of their fathers that they died. We will then hear that the number was not twenty, but only eleven, or four children. The other nine or sixteen were not children, or they were the children of terrorists so therefore not included in the count of children killed, or they were children pretending to be dead, posed by nefarious Palestinians in order to gain the sympathy of the world while they complain under their justifiable and merciful punishment.

Finally, when we mourn too long and remember in years to come the day that Israel killed twenty children in Gaza, we will be told that we must let the past be past. Let bygones be bygones. Mistakes were made, all of them regrettable, and we must forget.

Never forgetting is not for the likes of us who love our Arab children. Refusing to forget is a privilege reserved for other people whose children are more precious than ours.

Comments

[Antoun]

Nice post.

But if your children know what Israel truly does, and understand that it is wrong, are you not helping to build a better future?

[Richard Silverstein]

Leila: Knowing of yr conviction to keep just such harsh emotions out of yr life in the wake of your illness, I can tell how much you must be provoked by this nightmare. It grieves me both to see the suffering in Gaza and to know what it must be putting you through.

I understand the difficult position you are in regarding yr children & deciding what, and if you can talk with them about this. My task with my children may be a bit easier since I am Jewish and not Arab.

But I DO tell my oldest about what is happening. In doing so, I do not let him say, as he did once, that Israel is bad. I firmly let him know that Israel and Israelis are not bad. The generals and politicians conducting policy are bad. What Israel is DOING is bad. But that doesn't render the entire nation bad.

I know this is a complicated notion and that indeed Israelis as a people ARE responsible for the crimes of their leaders. But I think it's important for a Jewish boy to know that he can judge the bad acts of Israel without turning his back on Israel itself.

Just my own 2 cents...

[Judy]

Leila: It is difficult to allow our kids how much the world hates them.

At a small, peaceful demo last week, this one man stood in our faces saying, "the only good Arab is a dead Arab." I was next to my 14 year old, beautiful daughter, and said, shocked: Sir!This girl is an Arab -- how can you say that?"

He looked her square in the eye and said: "You should be dead."

I was glad my 9 year old son stayed home. It's hard to explain to kids that some people are very, very bad, but that you have to hold your head high in spite of an ugly world.

What does a mom say when her 17 year old daughter is weeping incolsolably after watching the news last night? ... so sorry that you have to see this, I'm glad you are not living it, we hope your grandparents and aunts and uncles are still alive. Wipe your tears and then be strong.

[John]

What happens when a ruthless military machine meets a fanatical religious cult?
Tragedy upon tragedy.

The UN announcement that 51 civilians have died in the conflict in Gaza must be understood in the context of Hamas's declared ideology to use civilians as human shields for Hamas fighters.

Indeed, Hamas continues to emphasize and promote the religious ideology that death for Allah is an ideal to be actively pursued. The goal is to convince Palestinians, including women and children, not to fear death but even to face it at the front to protect Hamas fighters.

Hamas's placement of its military installations and fighters among civilians reflects this ideology, and has led to these 51 deaths.

A Hamas representative in the PA legislative council this year expressed pride in the fact that women and children are used as human shields in fighting Israel. He described it as part of a "death industry" at which Palestinians excel, and explained that the Palestinians "desire death" with the same intensity that Israelis "desire life."

The following is the full text of the comments by Hamas representative Fathi Hamad:

"For the Palestinian people death became an industry, at which women excel and so do all people on this land: the elderly excel, the Jihad fighters excel, and the children excel. Accordingly [Palestinians] created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the Jihad fighters against the Zionist bombing machine, as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: We desire death as you desire life."

Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas) Feb. 29, 2008

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The cold indifference to the deaths of women and children is widespread.

After the suicide bombing, Palestinian university students at the An-Najah University in the West Bank city of Nablus created an exhibition celebrating the one year anniversary of the Second Intifada.[9][10] The exhibit’s main attraction was a room-sized re-enactment of the bombing at Sbarro. The installation featured broken furniture splattered with fake blood and human body parts as well as an idealized portrait of the suicide bomber holding a Koran and an automatic rifle. Also featured in the exhibition is a room with mannequins dressed as suicide bombers carrying automatic rifles in one hand and the Koran in the other, and aside another mannequin dressed up to resemble an Orthodox Jew with a taped voice quoting from the Muslim Hadith[11]:: "O believer, there is a Jewish man behind me. Come and kill him."[9] The entrance to the exhibition was illustrated with a mural depicting the bombing. The exhibit was later shut-down by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.[12]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sbarro_restaurant_suicide_bombing

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Surest way on how to harden one's heart
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsvqcp4aWF8

No child or civilian deserves to die regardless of their religion or ethnicity. When o when will these cousins learn to love one another?

[Randa Jarrar]

I know what you mean...I've recently begun telling my son about the tragedy and he's making up his own mind. He says he and his Jewish friends have found a humorous way to talk about the sadness and still be there for each other, and I think that's the greatest thing.

I like the parallels you are making here. What can we do but grieve and stand witness? And make donations? Please do!

[Sacco]

Mahmoud Zahar, the Hamas leader, issued a warning this week to Jewish parents: Your children, he said, are targets:

"They have legitimised the murder of their own children by killing the children of Palestine," Mahmoud Zahar said in a televised broadcast recorded at a secret location. "They have legitimised the killing of their people all over the world by killing our people."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5454204.ece

[LittleCalmLittleConstructive]

The Palestinian people need constructive ideas beyond my empathy and sympathy.

The Palestinian leadership has failed the people for the better part of last hundred years.

[Joshua]

The child/children question is rather an elementary one: when they are able to understand fully what this conflict is about, then feel free to inform them. Displaying images of one or the another leads to peripheral indoctrination.

[Henri]

The conflict is spilling out into other areas.

PARIS (AP) - Signs are mounting that the conflict in Gaza is starting to spill over into violence in Europe's towns and cities, with assaults against Jews and arson attacks on Jewish congregations in France, Sweden and Britain.
Assailants rammed a burning car into the gates of a synagogue in Toulouse, in southwest France, on Monday night. A Jewish congregation in Helsingborg, in southern Sweden, also was attacked Monday night by someone who "broke a window and threw in something that was burning," said police spokesman Leif Nilsson. Neighbors alerted rescue services before the fire took hold.

Someone also started a blaze outside the premises last week. And on Sunday slogans including "murderers ... You broke the cease-fire" and "don't subject Palestine to ethnic cleansing" were daubed on Israel's embassy in Stockholm.

In Denmark, a 27-year-old Dane born in Lebanon of Palestinian parents is alleged to have injured two young Israelis last week, opening fire with a handgun in a shooting that police suspect could be linked to the Gaza crisis.

France has Western Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim communities and a history of anti-Semitic violence flaring when tensions in the Middle East are high. In 2002, some 2,300 Jews left France for Israel because they felt unsafe.

President Nicolas Sarkozy warned in a statement Tuesday that France would not tolerate violence linked to the Gaza crisis. A day earlier, his interior minister said she was concerned about the prospect of contagion and met with the heads of the two main Muslim and Jewish groups and police officials to stress the need to "preserve national unity."

Damage to the synagogue in Toulouse was limited to a blackened gate, and there were no injuries even though a rabbi was giving a course to adults inside, authorities said. They said unlighted gasoline bombs were also found in a car nearby and in the synagogue's yard. A local Jewish leader, Armand Partouche, said he believed the assailants had planned to torch the synagogue, but fled when the building's alarm went off.

"It could have been very, very serious," Partouche said in a telephone interview. "There were people inside; there could have been deaths."

He said Jewish leaders are asking Toulouse authorities for reinforced security for the city's synagogues.

"We really fear that anti-Semitism will spring up again and that the current conflict will be transposed to our beautiful French republic," he said.

In Britain, the Community Security Trust, a Jewish defense group, said it had seen a rise in anti-Semitic incidents since the start of Israel's offensive against Gaza. The group said it had recorded 20-25 incidents across the country in the past week that it believed were connected with Gaza, including an arson attempt on a synagogue in north London on Sunday.

London police are investigating the attack, in which suspects splashed flammable liquid on the door and set it on fire.

Community Security Trust spokesman Mark Gardner said that in another incident last week a gang of 15-20 youths walked along the main street in Golders Green, a largely Jewish neighborhood in north London, shouting "Jew" and "Free Palestine" at passers-by.

"It could get worse," Gardner said. "We tend to see these things happen in waves."

The government in Belgium on Tuesday ordered police in Antwerp and Brussels to be on increased alert after recent pro-Palestinian protests ended in violence and dozens of arrests. Police said burning rags were shoved through the mailbox of a Jewish home in Antwerp last weekend. Damage was limited and no arrests were made.

In the Danish shooting, one Israeli man was shot in the arm and another in the leg as they were selling hair care products in a shopping mall. Eli Ruvio, who owns the company that operated the stands, said his employees have been harassed by Muslim youths since they set up three kiosks in the shopping center in August.

"They kept cursing and shouting at us," Ruvio told The Associated Press. He added that the Muslim youths also threw mud and firecrackers at the employees and spat at them.

Ruvio recalled an episode Dec. 27 when some of the youths shouted "slaughter all the Jews."

"I told my employees not to speak in Hebrew and lie about where they come from, they should say there were from Spain or somewhere else. If people ask you where you are from, never say you're from Israel," he said.

[YesToPoets]

I have heard of Reda Mansour for the first time today.

Israeli Druze - currently a consul in Atlanta.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reda_Mansour

http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=isq&q=Reda++Mansour&btnG=Search+Images

[5 dancing shlomos]

beginning in the womb or test tube, jews tell their born to be about the evils of the gentile world against jews. jewish younglings are taken to israel and shown the evil palestinians who live on jewish land.

contrary to richard "the decent", all backs should be turned to the savage, lying, fake, and illegal and immoral state called israel.its only right to exist is violence and thuggery and threats of violence. and the knuckle draggers are aided by the "humane" such as richard "the decent" and mondo "the good and anguished poster".

is lebanon next, again? it gets a good bombing on a fairly regular schedule.

[5 dancing shlomos]

curious. what do your jewish relatives tell each other. what do they think? what do their young think?

[Leila Abu-Saba]

My God, the next day after I wrote this, Israel killed so many more children. The day after that the reports came out of children found alive beside the bodies of their mothers, having waited for days while rescuers were kept at bay by the IDF. So this day that I thought I would always remember was quickly lost in another pile of days of horror.

[Leila Abu-Saba]

To my friends in comments - I stopped reading comments for a while, forgive me.

To the others... I still don't really read you.

Regarding what to tell the children - I don't want them to know that anybody is killing children so I am not talking about it.

When the day comes that we talk about it, I will say something similar to what Richard tells his son. My younger son already won fame in kindergarten two years ago for announcing, at circle time: "We don't hate George Bush, we just think he makes bad choices."

[Julia Bodeeb]

205 kids dead in Gaza now. So much violence and only peace will solve the conflice.

Salaam

Julia Bodeeb

[James]

Hamas is responsible for all that!
If Hamas stops the terror attack on Israeli civilians and releases Shalit, there would be no need for Israel action in Gaza.

[James]

Regarding Jihad Silverstein...
Richard KapoDickie Silverstein is an immature self-hating Seattle anti-Semite pretending to know something about Judaism.

[James]

Israel left Gaza in 2005, giving Palestinians the chance to run their own lives. Despite this, more than 6300 rockets and mortars have been fired into Israel since then.

[James]

Hamas used civilians and civilian locations in Gaza schools, hospitals, and residential complexes as shields behind which they launched their terrorist rockets.