Dohiyi Mir
    In Which NTodd Says His Peace

Tuesday, July 29, 2003
Go to the new DM blog.


Mark 10:14


George Bush said this on July 1st:

The true monuments of Saddam Hussein's rule have been brought to light -- the mass graves, the torture chambers, the jail cells for children.

Of course, the children's jail meme still lives, despite its being debunked. So why aren't we invading Israel?

According to the international rights organization Defense for Children International, which handled two-thirds of juvenile cases brought before Israeli courts in2002 -2003, the great majority of children held in Israel are between 15 and 18 years of age. More than nine percent are 13 to14 -year-olds.

"Palestinian child detainees continue to be subjected to barbaric conditions, and often subjected to torture, particularly in Israeli military detention center, " it asserted.

Citing an example, the group said that in the Israeli Hawara detention center near Nablus, "a lawyer witnessed at first hand the ritual beatings and abuse handed out to new inmates in the prison yard before they are admitted into crowded cells, holding up to 12 other inmates."

The Defense for Children International added that at Atzion detention center "child detainees from the Hebron arrest campaign have reported beatings and positional torture, or shabeh.

In his book War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges tells a story about kids in a Palestinian refugee camp:

I visited the Khan Younis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip...Barefoot boys, clutching ragged soccer balls and kits made out of scraps of paper, squatted a few feet away under scrub trees...out of the dry furnace air a disembodied voice crackles over a loudspeaker from the Israeli side of the camp's perimeter fence.

"Come on, dogs," the voice boomed in Arabic. "Where are all the dogs of Khan Youris? Come! Come!"
...
The invective spewed out in a bitter torrent. "Son of a bitch!" "Son of a whore!" "Your mother's c**t!"

The boys darted in small packs up the sloping dunes to the electric fence that separated the camp from the Jewish settlement abutting it. They lobbed rocks towards a jeep, mounted with a loudspeaker and protected by bulletproof armor plates and metal grating, that sat parked on the top of a hill known as Gani Tal. The soldier inside the jeep ridiculed and derided them. Three ambulances - which had pulled up in anticipation of what was to come - line the road below the dunes.

There was the boom of a percussion grenade. The boys, most no more than ten or eleven years old, scattered, running clumsily through the heavy sand. They descended out of sight behind the dune in front of me. There were no sounds of gunfire. The soldiers shot with silencers. The bullets from M-16 rifles, unseen by me, tumbled end-over-end through their slight bodies. I would see the destruction, the way their stomachs were ripped out, the gaping holes in their limbs and torsos, later in the hospital.

(I entered this passage from the book manually, so all errors are mine.)

This sickens me. We use children as reasons of convenience when justifying an illegal war while at the same time supporting a regime that shows only callous disregard for their lives. This has to stop. I don't know what more I can say.

NB: I firmly support Israel's right to exist. Who knows, some of my relatives might've survived the Shoah and the pogroms and emigrated there. I also firmly believe that to support Israel, I must support Palestine. Americans for Peace Now, the US offshoot of Shalom Achshav, has an advocacy network that you can join to help bring peace and security to both nations.

Peace,
ntodd 
   |



June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 April 2007

FAIR AND BALANCED

Best New Blog finalist - 2003 Koufax Awards

A non-violent, counter-dominant, left-liberal, possibly charismatic, quasi anarcho-libertarian Quaker's take on politics, volleyball, and other esoterica.

Lo alecha ha-m'lacha ligmor, v'lo atah ben chorin l'hibateyl mimenah.

For more about me, go to www.pritsky.net. You can also e-mail me at blog@pritsky.net.

My Weather Stations
Newark WX/Webcam
Fletcher WX

Donate to my Fox lawsuit legal fund (via Paypal or Amazon). Alternately, you can buy me stuff off my Amazon Wish List.

check to have all links open new windows

Boot Bush! Donate to the DNC today
Donate to the DNC

Single Donations: 2 = $170
Sustainer Donations: 1 = $40
Recurring Donations: 0 = $0
Total Donations: 3 = $210


Contribute to John Kerry

Total Donations: 13
Total Dollars: $750
Average Donation: $57.69


Give to MoveOn

In



Dean is still the messenger.
We are still the message.



My goodness! Rummy loves
these fair and balanced blogs:



The Coalition


Cairo wonders when I'll be fair
and balanced and go throw sticks...

Listed on Blogwise

Powered by Blogger