Tuesday August 26, 2014 – 1pm
Posted Aug 26, 2014 02:40:04 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
1:00- Omar Ramahi, Waterloo Region resident, born in Jerusalem and lived in the Middle East
The fact that more than 396 Palestinian children were killed by the bombardment and smart missiles of Israel cannot be covered up anymore. It is documented not by Hamas but by independent organizations, the most prominent of which is the United Nations and other non-Hamas health organizations. What can be spun, however, is who killed those children and how it happened. Indeed Israel does not bomb Palestinians in Gaza indiscriminately – it bombs them discriminately. The July 24 bombing of a UN school that had been turned into a human shelter was precise and falls under what Israeli labels as “targets.” Indeed, according to the UN, the precise co-ordinates of the shelter/school were communicated 33 times to Israel. The Israeli bombing of another UN school-turned-shelter on July 30 took the lives of more than 15 defenceless Palestinians while they were sleeping. Again, according to the UN, the co-ordinates of the shelter were communicated to the Israelis 17 times. Those massacres were condemned by the international community. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called yet another attack on a school shelter on Aug. 3 a “moral outrage” and “criminal act.” The sinister claim of Palestinians using their children as human shields implies the subhuman nature of Palestinians. The claim championed by the Israeli army and later picked up by Elie Wiesel and other propagandists for the Israeli Defense Forces is indecent and utterly evil. While we cannot bring back to life the 396 children who grew up under a brutal Israeli blockade that rationed even their daily caloric intake, the least we could do is to not dishonour them with myths and untruths that glorify their killers.
1:15- Dr. Amy Neustein, Sociologist and Editor of “Tempest in the Temple: Jewish Communities and Child Sex Scandals.”
As a Jewish sociologist residing in the New York area, I was stung by the words of Nobel laureate and Holocaust historian Elie Wiesel in a paid ad that appeared this month in a handful of major newspapers along the Eastern corridor. The headline: “Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago. Now it’s Hamas’ turn.” What did Wiesel accomplish in blaming the Gazan parents for the untimely deaths of their children? Did all the Gazan parents place their children in harm’s way? Was there even one child placed deliberately in front of Israeli artillery? Do Gazan parents lack the same parental instincts, found in populations throughout the world, to protect their children? On the other hand, should we be blaming the Jewish settlers who have buried their own children following attacks, when it is undisputed that living in the West Bank settlements leaves one vulnerable to such attacks? If blame serves the purpose of minimizing our pain over the deaths of both Palestinians and Jews whose lives were tragically cut short, then we’ve successfully used blame to excuse ourselves from working together to find a solution.
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