by Boaz Bismuth
A child is supposed to be innocent. So why did we see two children trying to stab Jews to death again on Tuesday?
Wars have never been pretty. People are maimed and killed. Children are orphaned and spouses are widowed. It is precisely for this reason that wars, over time, have been relegated to the adult sphere: because children need to be children. Indeed, some are less innocent than others. But they are still children.
The Palestinian Authority still has not internalized what the role of the child should be in a conflict. In the Palestinian Authority, just as in the Gaza Strip, they don't understand that children shouldn't play any role at all.
A child has the privilege of being a child, regardless of origin, religion or skin color. A child is supposed to be innocent. So why in hell did we see two children trying to stab Jews to death again on Tuesday?
The video from the Jerusalem light rail on Tuesday shows two children, one of whom less than 12 years old, assaulting a Jewish security guard with knives. It is an appalling and terrifying sight.
In the video we can see everything, except for the innocence of a child. We don't see two children. We see two terrorists. We see two murderers.
Those who try to excuse this grave incident by blaming the "occupation" are wrong and misleading. It isn't the "occupation" sending children with knives to kill Jews. Palestinian incitement is sending them, efficiently and persistently.
Those who send their children to summer camps where they learn about defending mosques and becoming shahids need not feign surprise that they have raised a terrorist in their home. This is what the children are taught at the Al-Aqsa summer camp, for example. And there are many others just like it, run by mosque preachers who don't exactly devote time to things like sports and games. At the same time, Hamas-run summer camps have been a huge success in Gaza. So is anyone really surprised to see child terrorists?
It's abundantly clear already that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn't the root of all the Middle East's afflictions. In truth, the violence in Syria, Iraq and Yemen fan the flames of violence here. Is the knife wielded by an Islamic State thug any different than the knife wielded by a 12-year-old boy? To our sorrow, both knives are aimed to kill.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during his meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House on Monday, reiterated his commitment to the two-state idea. True, there are conditions: recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and a demilitarized Palestinian state. It's hard to argue that these demands are so unreasonable as to justify the other side sending children to kill.
Before he signed the Oslo Accords, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin demanded of Yasser Arafat that he put an end to incitement in Palestinian schools.
Rabin understood why. Evidently, ending the incitement was just one more thing that never came to pass. All we can do now is wonder whether a state can actually be built on child terrorists.
Boaz Bismuth
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=14305
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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