An editorial in the New York Times of June 18, 2001 reports that more than 300,000 children under 18 are fighting throughout the world. In Myanmar, the army recruits children for minesweeping. In Ethiopia, youngsters are used for human attack waves. In Iraq, thousands of children under 15 belong to the Saddam Lion Cubs, learning combat and the use of arms. In Sri Lanka, young Tamil girls hailed as "Birds of Freedom" are trained as suicide bombers. Governments take these youngsters against their parents' wishes.
Apparently a Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers documents this chilling practice, but makes no mention of the Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza who willingly send their youngsters into war and suicide terrorist missions. Even the United Nations General Assembly has adopted an international protocol banning the practice. However, neither the Times nor the United Nations, nor the report of the Coalition includes any mention whatsoever of the thousands of children who are volunteered for martyrdom by their schools and their parents, many of whom receive financial remuneration for offering their offspring.
In Tom Wolfe's novel Bonfire of the Vanities there is a hilarious vignette. When a young thug is killed by a hit and run driver, the tabloids immediately depict the victim as an "honor student." A reporter following the case asks the school for a definition of "honor student" and is told that the young victim actually showed up in classes from time to time. The media continues, however, to refer to him as an "honor student." Such is the case today in reporting on the conflict between Israel and the Arabs. If you have not strapped a bomb to yourself and blown up a bus, you are by definition a moderate.
The recent death of Faisal Husseini, terrorist accomplice of Arafat, elicited an orgy of grief and paeans to this so-called "moderate." Never mind his unabated hatred and instigation to violence against Israelis. Never mind his oft-repeated assertion that peace would come only when Israel did not exist and Jerusalem was the undivided capital of another Arab state. Steven Plaut called the wordy dirges from pacifist imbeciles "rodent worship.. Among the most egregious examples are:
1) Gush Shalom, which called Husseini a "patriot, courageous warrior for his people's liberation and for peace between the two nations of the land."
2) Peace Now, which mourned the death of "A brave leader and visionary, who paved the way to understanding, cooperation and coexistence in Jerusalem. A true partner for peace."
3) Meretz USA, which actually paid for an obituary in the New York Times, calling Husseini "a man of peace and reconciliation." At Husseini's funeral in Jerusalem, Meretz City council member Moshe Amirav gave a speech depicting him as "a friend of peace and many Israelis, who dreamed of a Jerusalem of peace." After Amirav was finished, a chant went over the loudspeaker leading the audience in a cry of "Khaibar, Khaibar." Khaibar was the Jewish community in the Arabian Peninsula that Mohammed's army slaughtered for its failure to accept Islam. How fitting.
Here is our own AFSI obituary:
Jews have the highest regard for life and respectful awe for death. Rivalries, grudges, jealousies, and outright hostilities lose their spark when one of the participants dies. However, real enemies, who encourage and abet violence, carnage, murder, and terrorism against the Jews should drop dead. Husseini did.
Stalin called his American followers "useful idiots." Even when they were confronted with his egregious brutality and vicious anti-Semitism, they insisted that the path to noble ends was often strewn with "difficulties." By the time Stalin was finished, there were twenty million victims in Europe, to say nothing of additional millions killed in China and other Communist nations. The idiots still insisted that Communism was a noble system that simply had not been implemented properly. Many continued their efforts on behalf of every Third World dictator calling himself a Communist, as part of attaching themselves to any and all causes of the "blame America first" crowd.
In the struggle between Israel and the Arabs, Arafat's useful idiots have been the American Jewish "peace" groupies, outfits like the New Israel Fund, the Abraham Fund, Americans for Peace Now and Seeds of Peace. (If we have failed to mention any group who belongs in this list, we offer our sincere apologies.) Because they are Jewish, these groupies have been the single most helpful outside support group for the terrorists who pray and plan for the destruction of Israel. They have exercised their political and financial clout to influence legislators and the media here and in Israel, further emboldening Israel's mortal enemies. Their folly is matched only by their persistence. While Arab terror escalated, the number of victims grew, and the anti-Jewish rhetoric of all Arab nations including those, like Egypt, that had signed "peace agreements" became deafeningly loud, they insisted all the more loudly that peace was no more than a few more Israeli concessions away. They have been like the true believers described in Leon Festinger's When Prophecy Fails, whose response to the failure of the world to end on the date specified was to believe in their cult and its leaders all the harder.
Finally, a few of them are beginning to voice "discomfort" with the events in Israel. Even these are not hanging their heads in shame. Their lame excuse is that "it is never wrong to strive for peace."
In fact, these people don't give a hoot about
[(Continued on p.11)]
Outpost - 10 - June-July 2001