pics of Israeli girls writing ..

Assalamu Aleikum Herjihad:

"I think a trip to Lebanon would be much more valuable than a trip to
Disney.� But that's just me."

No! It's not just you, me too!

There was a letter in yesterday's El Pais (The Nation) saying almost
exactly what I did about teaching the Israeli girls about the
consequences of their 'bomb messages'. Must be something in our
genes ...

Daniel Dworsky wrote: Let them be children as long as possible. I hate that I was exposed to archive footage of the the holocaust at 6 years old. Tonight I realized yet again that my beliefs in equality democracy and human rights define me as an anti-zionist. A song that brings tears to my eyes when I hear it called "The Hope" (National Anthem of Israel) has a racist line in it. I wrap my mind tightly around all of it and do the right thing. Emotionally It all feels wrong no matter what I do. How can so many of the people I love be unwittingly flirting with Fascism. The ghosts of my own relatives among the six million who perished scold me in my dreams. Really they do. The funerals and Shiva calls have started for my past and present students or in some cases their fathers and Nasralla the moron is trying to hit my house with chinese missiles. It's job security. If more people thought as I do - he'd be out of a job. It's personal. I knew it. Hey Nasrallah you look like a Goth version of the stay puff marsh mellow man! Bite me.

Bismillah,

Yes, isn't it so funndy that we often want to do, or are somehow compelled to do the opposite of our parents!  And we think that it's because THEY were wrong.  But when my kids say, "That was you mom.  Our lives are different," when I'm trying to give them an ever-so-important hard learned life lesson.

So I'll be bold and say I understand really your point of view.  It's yours.  Keep it.  I just will say that I believe in letting kids know what's going on in the world without making them share responsibility because they are kids.  But our bombs are making those babies die and children become crippled or orphans.  I want my kids to know, and they are old enough now anyway. 

But when they were younger, I would expose them pictorally and verbally to as much truth as I thought that they could handle with the belief that if those kids could live through it, my kids could know about it in a meaningful way that would make them think about other people's suffering enough to want to do something to stop this madness when they are older.

It hasn't worked yet though.  I'd like to take them there personally.  I think a trip to Lebanon would be much more valuable than a trip to Disney.  But that's just me.

Your kids are living through it.  Sheltering kids who have to live through it is a different matter, isn't it?  They've seen plenty, and kids like that more than anything else need a rest.

In Shah Allah, all the kids and parents will rest soon and the bombings will be stopped.

Salaamu Alaykum

Indeed Daniel, no matter what the ideology behind the carnage, it is
wrong. Death does not solve anything, killing only spawns more
killing. But desperation is its own master.

I agree with you up to a point, showing graphic images of death and
blood to young children is not my first choice as an educational prop
either!

But look how many children and young impressionable adults see it
IN REAL LIFE daily, in Palestine, Iraq and now Lebanon. Nobody
thought to protect them from such trauma. Why should the girls who
wrote on those bombs be prevented from seeing images of the
results? Their mother's should ask them: "Would you like to see
where your bomb fell?" Children are both impressionable and
resilient, and maleable. That's why we have to strike while the iron is
hot, so to speak, and show them the consequences of their actions

Nevertheless, you can see such images on the front page of Spanish
newspapers. My daughter was very intrigued by the pictures of the
girls writing on the bombs, it was very hard to explain to her what it
was about. She's 4. Days ago, she also saw the photo on the front
page of a father running through the streets of Gaza holding his
dead child in his arms and I lied to her, telling her he was hurt but
going to the hospital. It would perhaps have been better to really talk
about how bad people sometimes cause such terrible things and tell
her in more detail. But it is beyond her.

It is beyond me, except that I have been seeing it all my life and so it
has become something 'normal' when we should all be finding it
abnormal.

Daniel, I have been thinking of the pictures of Israeli girls writing
messages on bombs for a few days. These pictures have been
published in so many different places on the web. And I want to
know; is it possible at all, do you think, to actually find those girls
and show them the photos of other Lebanese little girls who are
dead. Dead in their father's/mother's arms?

I really think learning this kind of lesson early is vital. Unfortunately,
children everywhere quickly learn the hatred and violence their
parents transmit to them and their surroundings teach them.

Put 12 Israeli and Palestinian/Lebanese children together in a play
group and I bet they won't all tear at each other's eyes. Only if an
adult tells them to.

And on a seperate note: I am disheartened to learn how obnoxious
activists can be, thank you for putting up with that and taking a
stand!

PEACE