19-Jan-16: Children with knives and what they destroy

The victim's family arrive at the cemetery for Monday's funeral [Image Source: Reuters]

Anyone paying attention to the nature of the many Arab-on-Israeli attacks launched on Israel's streets and inside its shops and homes and buses these past four months (in particular) will be struck by an aspect that continues to go largely un-noted by the mainstream news reporting media: the age of the attackers. Many of them are children. (Click for some recent posts about child-executed terror attacks against Israelis.)

An individual believe by authorities to be the killer of Dafna Meir z"l was arrested overnight (early Tuesday morning), according to Times of Israel:

The suspect, said to be 15 years old, was arrested by IDF troops and agents from the Shin Bet security service in a village near Otniel, where he was hiding out, and was taken in for interrogation. He is suspected of entering Meir’s home and killing her before fleeing the scene. Three of Meir’s six children were home when she was killed, and one, 17-year-old Renanaa, gave security forces a description of the terrorist. Police officers and IDF soldiers set up roadblocks in the area surrounding the settlement as they launched a manhunt for the stabber, who was believed to have escaped to a nearby village, possibly Khirbet Karme, located just north of Otniel, on foot. According to reports Tuesday morning, he did not possess a permit allowing him to work in Otniel, despite early assessments to the contrary.

Haaretz says the finding and arrest of the boy, said to be named Marawad Badr Abdallah Ada'is, was done by soldiers in the Duvdevan unit

an elite special operations force within the Israel Defense Forces, directly subordinate to the Judea and Samaria Division. Duvdevan are particularly noted for conducting undercover operations against militants in urban areas. During these operations, Duvdevan soldiers typically wear Arab civilian clothes as a disguise... [Wikipedia]

The knife-wielding attacker who seriously wounded a pregnant Israeli woman in Tekoa yesterday is allegedly fifteen. Other recent Arab-on-Israeli knifers have been as young as 11. [See "11-Oct-15: Weaponizing children".]

The Arab home front generally provides a reliable cover for fugitive killers of Jews, hence the need for expert undercover security people to go right inside those towns and villages and extract the alleged killers and terror-minded thugs who can be expected to otherwise remain clutched close to the nurturing bosom of Palestinian Arab society. As for outrage and condemnation, there may be some Palestinian Arab voices but no one hears them and they don't get reported - assuming they exist.

The moral depravity that brings government officials and ordinary folk to stand with, instead of against, the wielders of kitchen knifes and axes is mirrored by the strategic silence of the world's well-funded children's rights industry -  UNICEF, Defence for Children International, Human Rights Watch, UNESCO, Child Rights International Network, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Washington-based Jerusalem Fund, Save the Children, Arab Council for Childhood Development to name just a few donor-supported, PR-savvy entities who have seem to have collectively lost their voices, their senses and their moral compasses when it comes to what Palestinian Arab society is doing to their own children. And to ours. 

(We no longer mention Amnesty International in that list. Amnesty's increasingly explicit identification with the practitioners of the Palestinian Arab brand of terror makes plain their abandonment of principle and betrayal of their supporters' values. There's no longer anything to expect from them.)

The arrest, in the wake of an intense manhunt, came some hours after the funeral of his victim:

Hundreds arrived at [Jerusalem's] Givat Shaul cemetery on Monday morning to accompany Dafna Meir, who was murdered by a terrorist in her home, on her final journey. Meir, 38, is survived by her husband Natan and their six children: Renana, 17, Akiva, 15, Ahava, 10, Noa, 11, Yair, six, and Yaniv, four. The four older children are Dafna and Natan's biological children, and the two younger ones - Yaniv and Yair - are brothers that the couple adopted. At their mother's funeral, the children could not stop crying... [Ynet, January 18, 2016]

Image Source

Children with knives: it's a phenomenon worth pondering as Red Hand Day, February 12 each year, approaches. So too is the choking silence that accompanies the devastation it brings. (If you visit the Red Hand Day website, notice that it is published in four languages but Arabic is not one of them.)

Given what a heavy toll the reality of killers-who-are-children exacts from Palestinian Arab society, it's surely top of the list of matters to which the lavishly-funded editors of Ma'an News Agency will be turning their journalistic attention and moral fury today. Let's just not stop breathing while we wait.

20-Oct-15: Children and what a soulless society can do to them

Mandela [Image Source: UNICEF]

 "There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children."

Nelson Mandela 1918-2013, addressing the launch of the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, Pretoria, South Africa, May 8, 1995 [source]

Hamas, which more closely resembles a death cult than a functioning government, organized a rally this past Friday night in Rafah, Gaza Strip. If a picture is worth a thousand words, these representative photos below, published originally in Arabic-language channels and not (yet) syndicated by the major news agency names, sum up the self-inflicted tragedy of the Palestinian Arabs.

They also highlight the hypocrisy of those who ignore the evidence in front of their faces in the rush to embrace the Islamists and their "struggle" to "resist". So does the utter silence emanating from the many child-protection agencies around the world who published heart-rending images of under-nourished or war-impacted or genitally-mutilated children (as they should) but will not touch the rampant, highly public child abuse that is a daily reality in the world of the jihadists, and in particular the dark netherworld of Hamas. What they have done to their children is beyond forgiveness,

Now bear in mind as you glance at them what's going on in the late Nelson Mandela's homeland the last few days:

Khaled Mashal, Hamas' political leader since 2004, was invited to participate in a conference of South Africa's ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), and will meet South African President Jacob Zuma. ANC said the conference will discuss "Palestinian identity issues, in addition to an independent, sovereign Palestinian state, free from Israeli occupation." [Xinhua, October 19, 2015]

And this:

Jacob Zuma (as head of the African National Congress) honors
his invited guest and arch-terrorist Khaled Meshaal
in Johannesburg, South Africa yesterday [Image Source]

The ANC released a number of tweets chronicling the meeting between Hamas leader Khaled Mashal and the South African president and a press conference that followed. Photos shared by the ANC showed South African leaders exchanging gifts with Mashal as well as the signing of a letter of intent for the two governments to build a lasting relationship. Many of the tweets expressed solidarity with Palestine. One quoted South African politician Gwede Mantashe saying, "we will call on all progressive countries to support the cause of the Palestinian people." Another tweet said that the "ANC is always on the side of the oppressed. Hence we support Palestine and Western Sahara." [i24news, October 19, 2015] 

No immediate word on how firmly the ANC stands behind children with daggers or the adults who put them there. Or whether they subscribe, as Hamas does, to the uplifting value of viciously murdering unarmed Jews and other Israelis as part of its efforts to “free Al-Aqsa”.

The source of the photos of knife-clutching children below, all taken on Friday October 16, 2015 at a Hamas event on the streets of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, is Donia Al-Watan, a Palestinian Arab website that describes itself as "the first electronic Palestinian newspaper concerned with Palestinian affairs, along with the regional and global news... [and] classified as one of the most Arabic websites that enhance democracy."

Child victim

Child victim

Child victim

Adult role model

Universal Children's Day takes place on November 20, exactly a month from today. The annual event was initiated by the UN General Assembly in 1954 as a way of encouraging states to "to promote mutual exchange and understanding among children" and similar blah blah. But also "to initiate action to benefit and promote the welfare of the world's children", a noble and concrete goal that seems as far away from being achieved today as it ever was in the past. We don't say that the vicious and violent grip that Hamas has on the children on the Gaza Strip can be reversed by concerted action by the world's nations. That would be asking for too much, and it isn't going to happen. But that they remain utterly silent in the face of the murder-centric child abuse that goes on in front of the cameras daily and nightly in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip - that's beyond unconscionable. 

Not for the first time, we ask: where is UNICEF? Or Save the Children, or Defence for Children Internation­al-Palestine (DCIP) or Terre des Hommes, or the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement or even the dishonorable Amnesty International (on whom we have not yet entirely given up hope)? Or the other well-funded, high-profile public interest organizations that purport to care for the welfare of children but that take so little interest in the unfolding tragedy of the children of the Palestinian Arabs and the terror-obsessed jihadists cheating them of their future?

Some previous posts of ours (backwards, chronologically) on this very painful theme:

• 12-Feb-15: It's Red Hand Day. Do you know where the children are?
• 24-Nov-14: Destroying their own children's lives is not the worst option for the terrorists. In their eyes, it may even be the best
• 22-Nov-14: What youths and children are good for
• 02-Nov-14: Understanding what they really mean when the terrorists say children are their main concern
• 08-Oct-14: Children, innocence, rhetoric and savagery
• 15-Aug-14: Terror and children
• 27-Jan-13: Hamas' new army of children: Will the UN's and foreign funders' role in this scandal be critiqued by the news-reporting media?
• 24-Jan-13: Sacrificing the lives of an entire generation of adolescents on their altar of hatred, the thugs of Hamas boast of plans to create a children's army
• 21-Jul-14: War, civilians, children: what the terrorists of Hamas can teach us
• 2-Jul-14: Our side and theirs: an email to a well-meaning friend
• 27-Jan-14: In Gaza, a death cult celebrates its graduating class
• 15-Jan-14: When a society praises itself for turning its children into human bombs, whose problem is that?
• 8-Oct-13: Children and their indispensable role in the conflict
• 3-Jul-13: Educating the next generation: an early-summer reflection on asymmetry
• 18-Jun-13: They want their children to become killers and they say why. The rest of us are left with questions
• 4-May-13: So you thought the people who raise children to become "the fertilizer of their land" could sink no further?
• 29-Apr-13: Hamas demonstrates importance of solid education
• 17-Mar-13: A little village in the hills, and the monsters it spawns

12-Feb-15: It's Red Hand Day. Do you know where the children are?

We first mentioned Red Hand Day here two years ago ["24-Jan-13: Sacrificing the lives of an entire generation of adolescents..."] which is marked on February 12 of each year. That's of course today's date. It's a day that serves as an occasion to encourage political leaders to be aware of the fate of children forced to serve as soldiers in wars and armed conflicts. Wikipedia says 

The aim of Red Hand Day is to call for action against this practice, and support for children who are affected by it. Children have been used repeatedly as soldiers in recent years including armed conflicts... A number of international organizations are active against the use of children as soldiers. These organizations include, for example, the United Nations Child Fund (UNICEF), Amnesty International, Terre des Hommes or the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.

As memorable events go, Red Hand Day isn't, frankly. It's hugely overshadowed by commemorations that have a stronger following at this time of year: Valentines Day, for instance, which has the enthusiastic backing of shop-keepers and gift manufacturers. There isn't much enthusiastic backing from the people whose mandate ought to include generating awareness of Red Hand Day, and in particular the egregious ways its message is trampled in Gaza and in the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, 

An iconic message of the 60's and 70's
[Image Source]

Just two days ago, we wrote ["10-Feb-15: The Islamists of Gaza: Yet again preparing children to kill and be killed"] about how cynical (and lethal) abuse of Arab children has become an open secret that is carefully ignored by some of the world's most important, best-funded child-welfare organizations. We're still waiting to hear them address the awful things done in broad daylight to Gazan Palestinian Arab children by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and their fellow Islamists. We have learned not to expect much.

In a post ["27-Mar-08: Palestinian infanticide"] here by Frimet Roth nearly seven years ago, we quoted a speech broadcast on the Hamas Al Aqsa television channel that MEMRI had translated into English, under the title "We Used Women and Children as Human Shields". In it, a Hamas spokesman boasts that 

"death has become an industry at which women excel and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this and so do the mujahideen and the children... This is why they [the Palestinian people] have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly and the mujahideen..."

Anyone familiar with the tragic realities of Gaza knows how right he is.

Frimet then recalled how Dr Hanan Ashrawi had appeared on the CBS "Sixty Minutes" program back in October 2000 [transcript here], injecting heat, but not so much light, into an interview with the show's Bob Simon (who incidentally died in tragic circumstances this morning in New York City):

"To me this is the essence, the epitome, of racism... They're telling us we are – we have no feelings for our children? We're not parents? We're not mothers or fathers? This is just incredible." 

The photo is from a decade ago (here's one source).
Where is this Palestinian Arab child now? 
What sort of life has he been living?

As Frimet wrote in that 2008 post: Indeed it is. But we in the Middle East learned long ago that reality can be incredible.

Many Americans will know that certain television channels down through the sixties, seventies and even today, broadcast a public service announcement late at night (it's described here), intended as a reminder to parents to worry about the younger generation. Times change, children are now agents of death in large parts of the world, and it's right (as Red Hand Day today reminds us) to think about what the despots and fanatics in charge of various jihad-addicted parts of the world, including the cities where many of us live, have done: 

Do we know where their children are? And what they are being taught to do? And if we do, why is so little being done about it? 

For the letter-writers among our readers, please consider sending this along to UNICEF, Defence for Children International, UNESCO, Child Rights International Network, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Washington-based Jerusalem Fund, Save the Children, Arab Council for Childhood Development and others in the thriving children's rights industry. 

24-Jan-13: Sacrificing the lives of an entire generation of adolescents on their altar of hatred, the thugs of Hamas boast of plans to create a children's army

Children at today's graduation ceremony in terrorism-addicted Gaza [Image Source]

Via an extraordinary news report by the Arab-Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh that appears in today's Jerusalem Post, Hamas announces that it is creating military schools to cater for children of twelve years old and up.

Understanding (a) why this happens and (b) how Hamas can flagrantly manipulate the education and upbringing of generations of Palestinian children towards war and terrorism, and encourage them to undertake the killing of civilians (which is essentially the sole form of hostile action in which the Hamas ranks have engaged in their entire history) without being excoriated by Arab and Western leaders who care about children wherever they are, is a large part of comprehending why this ongoing war goes on and on.

Hamas to establish military academy for schoolkids 

Haniyeh says inaugural Gaza school will prepare kids as young as 12 to establish Palestinian state "from the river to the sea."
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH | Jerusalem Post | 01/24/2013 18:42
Hamas is planning to establish a military academy in the Gaza Strip for training and educating schoolchildren. Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh announced Thursday that the new military academy, the first of its kind in the Gaza Strip, would prepare the children for the "phase of liberating Palestine." He said that children in grades 7-9 could join the academy and graduate with a Diploma or Bachelor of Arts in military affairs. Haniyeh was speaking during a ceremony in the Gaza Strip marking the birth of Prophet Mohamed. More than 10,000 schoolchildren attended the ceremony, which included a "military parade" by some of the teenagers. He said that he has instructed the Hamas-run Ministry of Education to lay plans for the establishment of the military academy. Haniyeh said that the new academy would educate and prepare children for the establishment of a Palestinian state "from the river to the sea." The decision to establish a military academy follows Hamas's announcement that it would create its own "Defense Ministry" in the Gaza Strip. The announcement was made shortly after the IDF's Pillars of Defense Operation in the Gaza Strip last November.

An AP report adds that today's parade in Gaza (image above) marked the graduation of the first cohort of 3,000 Palestinian Arab teenagers to graduate from a Hamas high school military training program that commenced in September 2012. Called "Futuwwa" (meaning 'youth'), this is an elective course now offered in all of Gaza's high schools. Hamas officials boast that 3,600 Gazan children participated. (Should we be asking what became of the 600 who signed up but did not graduate?) AP's Ibrahim Barzak writes that the highlights of the rally included children holding mock weapons, crawling commando-style on the ground and taking up fighting positions in front of thousands cheering from the stand.

Sounds like the right time to mention Red Hand Day that is marked on February 12 of each year. It's a day that serves as an occasion to encourage political leaders to be aware of the fate of children forced to serve as soldiers in wars and armed conflicts. Wikipedia says

The aim of Red Hand Day is to call for action against this practice, and support for children who are affected by it. Children have been used repeatedly as soldiers in recent years including armed conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, Côte d'Ivoire, Myanmar, Philippines, Colombia, and Palestine... Red Hand Day was initiated in 2002 when the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict entered into force on February 12, 2002. This protocol was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in May 2000 and currently has signatures from over 100 different states. A number of international organizations are active against the use of children as soldiers. These organizations include, for example, the United Nations Child Fund (UNICEF), Amnesty International, Terre des Hommes or the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.

So which of these do we imagine is going to be the first to condemn Haniyeh and Hamas? Yeah, right.

Above and below: From today's Gaza schoolchildren 'military' rally [Image Source]

 [Image Source]

[Image Source]

Few things in life are as sickening as the manipulation, exploitation and weaponizing of children.

Hamas has developed world-class specialization in the field, rivaled only by the ability of its terrorists in the killing of the other side's children. The murderer of our daughter was a Hamas agent. Now free and living an unhindered life of celebrity in the Arab world, she has repeatedly boasted publicly of the pride she and her peers take in such abominations.