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The
Israeli Army isn’t rounding up children and killing them
in schoolyards, or going through villages murdering them
like King Herod. They’re
not locking them in jail and denying them proper nutrition.
No, not by these methods.
The Israeli Army is an intelligent beast, with master
spin-doctors ready to heal whatever ails the image of the
beast, as it devours childhoods and sometimes the very
children themselves.
But
this doesn’t matter for 304 children, who are already in
the belly of the Israeli military beast, devoured from
September 29, 2001 till present time.
Perhaps Mom and Dad received an apology from the
powers that be, but where once stood, played, and slept a
precious child, is now only a vague casualty of the war
against terrorism. And
the beast trudges on, like Godzilla, in its tanks, jeeps,
and fighter jets, destroying everything in its path, eating
anything it wants. What
is a child’s defense in such circumstances, other than
fast legs to run for safety from any military apparatus and
prayer? The
world knows—the world that signs elaborate and eloquent
international treaties to protect them—but it is failing
gravely at implementing such treaties and upholding the law.
You see, it’s political.
There’s Arafat to deal with, and, of course, the
United States’ unique relationship and interest in Israel.
Sorry, kids—you’ll understand when you get older,
if you receive such luxury, why men in suits and safety must
work things out over bottled water and international
meetings before you receive any rights.
This is the unfair, unfortunate, and unjust reality
for 304 Palestinian children and their families that love
them.
Consider
the attack on the education of Palestinian children.
Seven Palestinian schools have been closed by the
Israeli Army, 197 schools have been damaged by Israeli
shelling and invasions, 3 schools in Hebron have been
overtaken and turned into military posts, and 25 other
schools have been used as detention centers.
1289 schools were closed in the last year for three
consecutive weeks due to the illegal occupation.
Seventeen teachers have been killed, 71 others
arrested. When
families can barely afford food, there is little hope for
books and other needed school supplies.
But if you’re in Nablus, after literally months of
military lockdown, the opportunity to get to school on a
consistent basis is a dream.
Roadblocks, closures, and checkpoints provide
additional challenges to children wanting to go to school,
forcing them to leave very early and travel in danger.
Where a normal system of education for Palestinian
children is being prevent by the Israeli military, it is
teaching them their own curriculum 24 hours a day, including
“home-schooling.” This
curriculum, with daily lessons often repeated so these
children will never forget, includes oppression,
destruction, identification of which type of bullet is being
shot in your neighborhood, humiliation, hatred, fear,
trauma, and creative ways to stay locked in your house for
months at a time. Children can also identify all sorts of military vehicles and
have developed great flexibility, as is taught through
situations like “sometimes you can come out of your house,
sometimes you can’t” or “we said the curfew was
lifted, but we’re shooting at you now, so now it’s back
on.” However
it may sound to those not living through it, it is reality
for 3 million Palestinians. The Israeli military continues to destroy the education of
Palestinian children and teach them fear and hate in return.
Malnutrition
rates of Palestinian children have skyrocketed in the past
year, surprising and alarming experts in world aid
organizations. In
USAID’s recent study, it was discovered that 13.2% of
Palestinian children under age 5 suffer from malnutrition
and 1/5 of children are suffering from anemia.
There’s plenty of food to be bought, but the
problem is that the Israeli military bans its transport to
the hungry people, or there is lockdown so people cannot
leave their homes to get it.
And many times, the family is driven to such poverty
from the occupation, that they cannot afford to buy the
basic food to ensure proper nutrition for their children.
Thus the development of the bodies of these children
suffers from poor diet as well as lack of exercise from
being forced in their homes for extended periods.
This crisis is a direct result of the Israeli
occupation.
Exposing
children to daily violence, pointing tanks at them, actually
shooting at them with these tanks, actively preventing them
from getting proper health and nutritional care, making them
pass checkpoints to school at gunpoint and constantly being
under threat of seize or wild rampant shooting is certainly
not the childhood any parent would want for their children.
But this is life for so many Palestinian youngsters,
just because they were born Palestinian.
They are all locked into this violence and witness
daily the techniques of modern cruelty and the dehumanizing
nature of illegal occupation from the hands of the Israeli
military.
When you hold
the dire situation of Palestinian children to international
safeguards such as the Declaration of the Rights of the
Child of November 1959, which states, “The child shall in
all circumstances be among the first to receive protection
and relief” (Principle 8), it is clear that there are
major human rights violations against children taking place
in the Occupied Territories.
Principle 2 states that, “The child shall enjoy
special protection, and shall be given opportunities and
facilities…to enable him to develop physically, mentally,
morally, spiritually, and socially in a healthy and normal
manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity.”
This privilege is currently not upheld for
Palestinian children. PHRMG
seeks to expose these human rights violations for exactly
what they are and demands that the Israeli forces
immediately stop attacking children through these various
techniques. PHRMG
holds the Israeli government, the United Nations and the
United States responsible for ensuring these crimes stop
now. It is long
overdue to protect these innocent children.
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