This is 11-year-old Hussam from the city of Rafah in Gaza standing in the rubble of his bombed-out home. The children of Gaza have now to cope with the devastation & terror they have just lived through, seeing neighbors, school mates, family members die, seeing their homes demolished, over 136 schools & kindergartens damaged or destroyed. They are left without sufficient water, inadequate sanitation, & without necessary health & trauma care.
Can Israel explain the purpose for bombing schools? They won’t, but we can: it was intended precisely to traumatize Palestinian children, to demoralize & terrorize them, because every new generation is a threat of continued resistance to apartheid. Fear of the young is not unique to Zionism. Prior to the US Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, there was an odious genre called pickaninny art which depicted Black children, often tiny infants, in perilous circumstances--the most common one was an infant clinging to a branch over a crocodile pit. These repugnant images were reproduced by the thousands & were part of popular consciousness. Viewing these images can lead to only one conclusion: the dominant nationality is terrified of the young because every new generation has to be broken, inculcated with self-hatred & passivity, discouraged from resistance.
To express your solidarity with the children of Gaza, boycott all Israeli products (barcode beginning 729) & demand no US aid to Israel! (Photo by Iyad El Baba/UNICEF)
No comments:
Post a Comment