Murderers of children

10/03/2011| IslamWeb

After Palestinian university student, Ahlaam At-Tameemi, heard the sentence pronounced by the Zionist judge against her: life imprisonment compounded 61 times, i.e. 1584 years in prison before being released, with tough recommendations from the jury not to release her in any prisoner exchange, she stated her verdict, with a confident smile,

“I do not acknowledge the legitimacy of this court, nor yours, nor do I like to let you know my identity through my name, age or aspirations. However, I will let you know my identity through my actions, which you know well. I see you angry in this court. In my heart, as well as in the hearts of all the Palestinians, there is anger, much more than yours. If you claim that I have neither a heart nor feelings, then, who else has a heart? You?

Then, where were your hearts when you killed the children in Jenin, Rafah, Ramallah and Hebron (Al-Haram Al-Ibrahimi)? Where were your feelings?"

During the last nightmarish weeks, while following the ferocious hunt launched by the Israeli occupation army and its settlers in Gaza, I started collecting the photos of children, trees and fields which had become deserts after they had been green, pleasing the beholders, along with pictures of the ruined houses. However, the photos of the murdered children imprinted themselves on my mind and soul, so that a relationship of anger, grief and heartache was established between me and the pieces of the dead bodies, faces covered with dust, small eyes fixedly staring at the features of the father, the mother, or the friend that was torn to pieces by shrapnel or whose head was penetrated by a bullet.

The last photo is of a beloved, a friend, a ruined house, the trees pulled from their deep roots in our land and removed by bulldozers as if in confirmation of killing them and punishing those who planted them, ate of their ripe fruits when they were mature, ripe and extended in their shade, and made swings on their branches for their children.

In his documentary book Atfaal Filasteen: Hasaad Ad-Damm Wal-Alam Wal-Butoolah, published at the end of 2003, researcher Nawwaaf Az-Zarw observes the crime of the systematic genocide of the Palestinian children, depending on Hebrew references written by journalists and theoreticians, and declarations of Zionist military officials, politicians and Jewish rabbis. The book proves that the killing of Palestinian children does not take place by chance, in so much as it is an intentional and systematic annihilation whose purpose is to destroy the future of the Palestinians by killing their children, planting terror in their hearts and taking revenge on their miraculous heroism. By targeting Palestinian children, Israel aims to turn the resistant Palestinian society into a fearful community whose individuals are scared simply at the emergence of the revolver of a Zionist soldier or settler, or the sound of an Apache aircraft close to the roofs of their houses or the pillars of their tents which cannot endure even the blowing wind.

Is Nawwaaf Az-Zarw exaggerating, given that he has been following developments in Israel diligently, and has enriched the Arabic library with serious books in which he depends on references and sources written by our enemies?

Here, we should remember what was said by Golda Meir many years ago, without fear of being accused of anti-Semitism or of being arrested while committing racism, "Sometimes, I become sleepless when I imagine that a Palestinian child is born." She is the same Meir who gave the following racist declaration, "The Palestinians! I have not heard about them. There are no Palestinian people."

These gloomy declarations and wishes complete the Zionist hope that counts on forgetfulness, that the generation of the old Palestinians will die in exile, whereas the young will forget…

In the great Intifaadhah (resistance, from 1987-1993 C.E.), which was betrayed by the Oslo accords, the martyrs and wounded from among the children amounted to 34 percent. This rate rose to 35.4 percent in Al-Aqsa Intifaadhah.

Nawwaaf Az-Zarw reminds us of what was written by an expert on Palestinian affairs in Yafa Centre, Tel Aviv University, in his comment on the role of Palestinian children in the great Intifaadhah, known as the Intifaadhah of Stones, describing our children as "the generals of stones": The Israeli army may be forced to confront successive generations of Palestinian young fighters in the occupied territories.

The annihilation started with religious verdicts, and it comes as no surprise that Israeli culture is rooted in racism that invites to the extermination of the Arabs in general, and the Palestinians in particular. Here, let us remind you of many racist verdicts calling for the extermination of the Arabs, given by Jewish rabbis, instigating the obliteration of all the Palestinians, regarding them as animals, (Oofadia Yosuf), and monsters whose blood differs from the blood of the Jews (Isaac Giterburg).

In fact, in order to guarantee a second term of American presidency, George W. Bush issued his extremely racist decree, in which he divided the world into anti-Semitics and Semites who deserve the Zionist blessings, forgetting that the Arab themselves are the pure Semites!

Israeli occupation soldiers always kill in cold blood, and, sometimes, by way of amusement. What is the importance of killing an Arab child or uprooting a tree or even ruining a house, as long as David Kads, the rabbi of Yetsar, that occupies the territories of Nablus calls publicly for killing the Arabs, with no fear of being accused of anti-Semitism? Killing the Arabs is not a moral problem (in the sight of the Israelis).

These self-styled "soldiers of the Lord" consider only those less than 12 years old to be children. In this way, any Palestinian child who seems from his miserable features in the sight of the occupation more than his real age, deserves to be killed: the Palestinian child born some months after the detention of his father, the Palestinian child whose classmate was killed before his very eyes, the Palestinian child who saw the trembling and quivering of the body of Muhammad Ad-Durrah on the knee of his father while bullets were penetrating his thin body and stealing his childhood…such a child is fitting for a sacrifice, regardless of his age. In any case, he is a Palestinian child, whose killing is blessed according to the rabbinic verdicts, whose brutality excels Hitler's "My Struggle".

The photo of the child Khaleel Abu Naaji, Jabalia, with his head wrapped in a Palestinian keffiyeh (headscarf), and his young sister sticking to the bier, in an attempt to restore him to life: do not forget that photo!

The photo of the children of the martyr Muhammad Ma‘roof, Bait Lahia: hang it in your memory, for the Arab and Palestinian memory has the sole function to remember forever. Forgetfulness is but a short break just to feed the memory with what makes us neither pardon nor forget.

Iman Al-Hams, the Palestinian schoolgirl who was carrying her school bag when a Zionist occupying officer targeted her with his machine-gun and killed her immediately… Remember her photo, women of Palestine, wherever you are in the homeland or the Diaspora, while combing the hair of your daughters, and implant it in the heads of the young children as a seed of punishment and freedom.

The Zionist officer was not satisfied with seeing Iman Al-Hams rolling in her blood, but he came close to her and shot two bullets into her head enjoying killing her.

They sentenced Ahlaam to life imprisonment 61 times. Then, how many life imprisonments do those monsters deserve, the killers of our children's dreams?