An Alternate Witness

I'm so glad that Megan posted this article to Facebook:

SDEROT, Israel -- Mohammed Abu Hassanin may be a young boy, but he's old enough to know he's scared of the attacks being launched by Israel in Gaza.

"When the Jews bomb us when we are asleep, [Hassanin] says 'We get scared,' " a translator says. Hassanin is one boy from Gaza speaking frankly to an anchor on Hamas TV about the attacks, which have gone on for 10 days.

Children like him have accounted for one-third of the casualties at Gaza's main hospital, foreign doctors say. And now Hamas and their media are making them the face of the attacks.

The children have seen terrible images of tragedy: their friends injured or killed and bloodied bodies in the streets.

They are images Hassanin says he will never forget. He'll keep them stored away until he's old enough to do something about it.

"When we will grow up, we will bomb them back," a CNN translator quoted the boy saying on Hamas TV.

It's a sentiment psychiatrists in Gaza say could be responsible for a frightening future--that the violence children are witnessing will sow the seeds for future violence.
Watch how Arab media is covering the crisis »

Story Highlights:

• Boy on Hamas TV: "When we will grow up, we will bomb them back"
• Tearful girl: "Maybe my sister could die some day, I don't know. I am afraid"
• Psychiatrists say seeing destruction firsthand can create violence in the future
• One psychiatrist said earlier children witnessing violence grew into extremists

I'm glad of this story, because it's about time I saw a story about the kids on a major Western network like CNN. This is my bugbear in all conflicts. Children of conflict are haunted by what happens to them in the fray. Some are able to take those experiences and use them to inspire lives of greatness, of service, of positive leadership. But they won't all be able to channel their experiences constructively.

Children can be very resilient, it's true. I've seen it. But they're also still forming their worldviews, their psyches, and their futures. What kind of future are these children forming?:

Israel Defense Forces tank fire killed at least 30 Palestinians at a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, UN officials and medical sources and at two hospitals said.

Two tank shells exploded outside the Gaza school, spraying shrapnel on people inside and outside the building, where hundreds of Palestinians had sought refuge from fighting between Israeli soldiers and Hamas militants. In addition to the dead, several dozen people were wounded, the officials said.

Medical officials said all the dead were either people sheltering in the school or local residents.

An Israeli sources said that militants barricaded in the school had opened fire on IDF soldiers.

This is neither a pro-Israeli or a pro-Palestinian post. I'm appalled that Israelis would fire on a school, but I'm also appalled that the Palestinian militants would take refuge in a school and expect either that the Israelis wouldn't attack, or that the deaths and injuries of those children would make anyone more sympathetic to their cause!

No, this is like every divorce my parents walked their friends through. They were constantly accused of taking the wrong divorcing parent's side in the mess, and my parents always had the same answer: "We're not on your side, we're on the side of the kids!" That's where I stand. So I'll say it again:

I'm on the side of the kids. All the kids. Everywhere. No child should have to suffer bombings, trauma, hunger, poverty, treatable illness or death when it could possibly be avoided, regardless of where that child happened to be born.