Who Will Mourn the Children?

Quote of the Day:
"To rationalize their lies, people -- and the governments, churches, or terrorist cells they compose -- are apt to regard their private interests and desires as just."
~ Wendy Kaminer ~

Millions of people mourned the death of Pope John Paul II this week. Kings, presidents and other dignitaries packed St. Peter's Square along with ordinary people from around the world. In the past week, there has been enough written concerning this Pope, his death and the funeral. That is all that will be said here concerning this event.

Reading of the outpouring of grief has reminded me of how severely skewed this world has always been. The death of one man elicits the tears of millions while the death of an innocent child is virtually neglected.

Do you remember reading any of these articles?

"And I walked out towards the dunes and they were--the--over the loudspeaker from an Israeli army Jeep on the other side of the electric fence they were taunting these kids. And these kids started to throw rocks. And most of these kids were 10, 11, 12 years old. And, first of all, the rocks were the size of a fist. They were being hurled towards a Jeep that was armor-plated. I doubt they could even hit the Jeep. And then I watched the soldiers open fire. And it was--I mean, I've seen kids shot in Sarajevo. I mean, snipers would shoot kids in Sarajevo. I've seen death squads kill families in Algeria or El Salvador. But I'd never seen soldiers bait or taunt kids like this and then shoot them for sport. It was--I just--even now, I find it almost inconceivable. And I went back every day, and every day it was the same."
Interview with New York Times reporter Chris Hedges - NPR - Fresh Air - October 30, 2001

"An Israeli soldier shot dead a four-year-old Palestinian boy and injured two other children today, when he fired a tank-mounted machine gun at a northern West Bank roadblock." (The IDF said it was a mistake)

GAZA CITY, August 31 "A nine-year-old Palestinian girl was shot dead and five children wounded by Israeli troops in Khan Yunis refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip late Saturday, August 30."

GAZA CITY, March 4 "Soldiers blew up four Palestinian houses after telling residents to leave, but the 33-year-old pregnant woman who did not leaver her house was crushed to death. Among those shot dead was a 13-year-old boy. The six others killed were aged between 17 and 24."

PMWATCH -- February 1, 2005 -- " The killing of 10 year old Nuran Deeb, shot yesterday in the playground of a United Nations-run school in southern Gaza, is being treated by the US mainstream media as a mystery and at best an "unfortunate tragedy". Nothing is being written about the long list of Palestinian children killed, often shot in the head, by the Israeli Occupation Forces. All that Israeli officials have to do is to declare that they did not do any shooting, and the news moves on."

A Cri de Coeur
Imagining Palestine
By KATHLEEN CHRISTISON, CounterPunch, Dec 22 2004
A Palestinian child died in my arms today. It was a young boy; it was a girl. It was an infant; it was a 13-year-old. She had been shot 20 times by an Israeli soldier firing U.S.-made bullets; he had been dismembered by a missile fired from a U.S.-manufactured Israeli helicopter gunship. I am a Palestinian, and these were my children.

I am a Palestinian. I say I am a Palestinian to express my solidarity and that of many silent Americans with a suffering people under Israeli domination. But I must bow my head in shame, for it is my government that pays for Israel's oppression of the Palestinians, my government that is committing ethnocide against the Palestinians, my government that is killing Palestinian children. I am a Palestinian, and I reject my American government.

I comforted a woman today whose house was demolished by Israeli bulldozers, monsters of destruction made in America. I helped her pick through the rubble of her home to retrieve her children's clothing and toys. I comforted her children, who will have no toys and no place to sleep tonight. I listened, thunderstruck, as her husband wailed aloud, standing in front of the pile of broken concrete that was his home. I will not be able to persuade his children that he has not failed them, not failed to provide the protection that any father must give his children. I imagined my own home in ruins, my own children bereft, and I wept. I am a Palestinian, and this woman, this man, these children are my countrymen.

I stood with a Palestinian farmer today whose agricultural land has been destroyed by Israelis. He is a middle-aged man whose olive orchard, his only means of livelihood, was burned and cut down by U.S.-subsidized Israeli settler thugs. The farmer is a young man whose greenhouses and prime agricultural land, left to him by his father and his grandfather, were leveled by Israeli soldiers driving U.S.-manufactured Caterpillar bulldozers, clearing land for a concrete separation wall meant to grab prime land for Israel. The farmer is an old man who watches daily as Israelis build new homes in settlements on land that belonged to him until it was stolen. I am a Palestinian, and these farmers once fed my now-impoverished people.

I stood in the hot sun at the notorious Huwara checkpoint south of Nablus with hundreds of Palestinians waiting for permission to go to work, to school, to medical appointments. I stood in the driving rain at the Qalandiya checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah, waiting with hundreds of others who must pass here every day, waiting for hours to get to work and then hours more to return home. There is no sun more searing, no rain more cold and driving than in Palestine, yet we all stood like automatons, fearful of arousing the anger of the power-mad teenage Israeli soldiers who control our lives and our freedom, fearful that they would shoot us if we showed any evidence of emotion. In the middle of the night last night, I consoled a woman who gave birth on the ground at a checkpoint because an Israeli soldier in his teenage wisdom regarded her as a security risk, and later I rode in the ambulance as she bled and her baby turned blue and perished. I am a Palestinian, and I stoically endure the peculiar humiliation of these checkpoints with my countrymen.

I gave solace to a Palestinian political prisoner today and to his wife. I am a Palestinian, and this man is serving time for fighting for my freedom.

I picked a fig from a tree in my front yard today and ate it. It was the most delicious sweetness I had ever experienced. I believe this because I am a Palestinian, and the fig tree grows in Palestine.

Ordinary words fail. The horrific fate of Palestine cries out for the power of poetry. This is no powerful poem, or any poem at all, but it is a cry from the heart.

I care about murdered Israeli children too, but there are far fewer of them, and my government already embraces them. I embrace Palestinian children because so few others do, because my government cares nothing about them, because my government kills them.

I am a Palestinian. I live the daily lives of Palestinians. I cradled a dying Palestinian child in my arms today.

Who, among the millions, will remember and mourn the children? Who, among the millions will take action?

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