(no subject)

[misterx]

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13154917,00.html

"Children as young as 10 are being recruited to fight for the Palestinian cause."

Comments

[laurielee.livejournal.com]

Thats awful. :(

[lilith17.livejournal.com]

Joseph and I were talking about this the other day...we'd seen a story on pbs in which teenage wannabe suicide bombers were being interviewed, and the discussion led to the kind of culture that would promote that and the religious brainwashing that takes place.

The thing that gets me is that this war isn't just about religion or the land involved. It's roots are in what may very well be a fictitious account of sibling rivalry in the Bible.

Personally, I think the US should lay out an ultimatum that they resolve this or we're going to take Gaza and turn it into a huge military base. Treat them like feuding siblings since that's where this comes from. Brothers will fight over a toy relentlessly, but let some other neighborhood kid come and try to take it and suddenly they are a united front. That's oversimplifying, but I still think that the basic concept applies. And if it didn't, we'd have a base and the fighting amongst them would still maybe end.

[roaming.livejournal.com]

It's worse: to train youngsters to get over an aversion to *real* killing, they tie dogs up, spreadeagled, and have the kids rush at them with knives. Because they can't have them be squeamish or hesitate when it comes to the real, not practice, thing. I'm not saying they do it in Israel, I don't know (though they might), but they sure do it in Afghanistan to train young rebels.

[misterx.livejournal.com]

Because they can't have them be squeamish or hesitate when it comes to the real, not practice, thing.

When your enemies are trying to kill your children and training their children to kill your children, perhaps this is equivalent to us teaching our kids to look both ways before crossing the street. You're just trying to give your kid the best chance, right?

Except that they aren't teaching them that for self defense, they're teaching them to send them forward as soldiers.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

The palestinians give kids guns and bombs, the isrealis fire hellfire rockets into kids homes and terrorize them with tanks and troops. Neither side is at all good. Neither side can be made happy. The palestinians are not going to conveniently disappear, and the isrealis aren't either. They can't both posess the same lands and properties. One side will be opressors and the other terrorists for a lot longer than any of our lifetimes. Maybe in five or ten or a hundred years, they will trade postions again, but the story will be exactly the same.