A common cliché in any conversation about the Israel-Palestine conflict are words to the effect of ‘neither side is perfect’, ‘both sides are bad’, or some other vapid banality which holds true for any of Plato’s Forms. This type of verbal disgorge tells us nothing. In an effort to show just how ‘bad both sides are’ it is helpful to attempt to quantify ‘bad’. Let us use a measurement so universally derogated, it is impossible for anyone to ameliorate: The murder of children. Using the following sources
- Addameer: Prisoner’s Rights and Support Group
- B’Tselem: the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
- Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- Jerusalem Media and Communications Center
- LAW: the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment
- Palestinian Center for Human Rights
- Palestinian State Information Service
the organization ‘Remember These Children’ has painstakingly catalogued the deaths of children – Israeli and Palestinian – that were directly related to the conflict. Since September 2000 there have been 119 Israeli children killed and 971 Palestinian children killed. So far this year, 1 Israeli child and 57 Palestinian children have needlessly and violently perished. For a morose list of the children’s names and the context of their deaths, go here. An example: The story of the 1 Israeli child killed in 2007 is
Mahmoud Ibrahim Mahmoud al-Krenawi, 11, of Rahat, near Beersheba, a Bedouin with Israeli citizenship living in the first recognized Bedoiun city in Israel, killed by IDF gunfire to his head and pelvis while picking figs at the home of his half brother during an incursion in Saida, near Tulkarem. [Emphasis in the original.]
The Free Palestine Blog 