Sunday, November 06, 2005
The Little Boy Is Really Dead Now
As Flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods,
They kill us for their sport.
The little boy who was playing with the toy gun that he got for Eid is really dead now. The Israeli Occupation Forces shot him through his head and his heart. The first news stories said that he was dead but later stories reported that he was clinically dead. I have a little boy named Kahlil. The little boy who was shot was named Ahmad Ismail, younger than Kahlil, just twelve. Kahlil, my son, is fifteen, and he likes to go out with his friend on Saturdays for the BB gun wars, he calls them. Lucky for Kahlil, that he doesn't have to cross paths with Israeli occupation forces. We're relatively safe here in Germany, but I see pictures of the Palestinian kids who are snuffed out by the Israeli occupation forces, and they all look like Kahlil, my only son, dark and handsome, who is lazier than I'd like him to be, who doesn't study as hard as I'd like him to study, and who unfortunately is really into guns.
I don't know a lot about Eid because I'm a Christian Arab and I did not grow up in an Arab country. Children receive presents for Eid. Maybe Ismail got his toy gun for Eid and he was celebrating the holiday like Christians celebrate Christmas. Kids usually take their toys outside and play. They don't expect to get shot by an occupation army in their own neighborhood or when they go to visit relatives for the holiday.
I read that Ismail was with his parents when he was shot so he probably wasn't baiting the occupation soldiers. And even if he was, it wouldn't merit a gunshot. After all, Jewish illegal colonisers threw acid on Israel soldiers and weren't shot at. Teenagers have been rioting outside of Paris for nine days now, and they don't get shot at.
Here in Germany, I teach dependents of the US Military, many of whom are deployed in Iraq. If I so much as touch a cheeky kid on the shoulder and say follow me you're going to see an administrator, I am liable to be hauled off to a social worker, to be suspended from my job indefinitely and to face criminal charges.
In Israel, they shoot kids with impunity. Upwards of seven hundred Palestinian kids have been murdered by the "purity of arms" Israeli occupation forces since end of September 2000. Al-Jazeera reports that according to Palestine Red Crescent Society figures, 682 Palestinian children under the age of 18 have died during the second intifada (uprising) between 29 September 2000 and 29 September 2005. Of those, 158 were under 12-years old.
That's two to three a week. How in the hell would Americans react if their kids were gunned down in their own neighborhoods by a foreign occupation army?
Meanwhile, in this cesspool of a world in which we live, the ignorant citizens of Rome rally on behalf of a brutal, apartheid state and Hilary Clinton, the doyenne of the liberals, prepares to visit Ariel Sharon, the foremost Arab killer of our times.
Eid Mubarak, Ahmad. May Your Memory Be Eternal. For your sake, I pray that the world wakes up from its ignorant indifference to injustice. That will be the day when people rally in support of kids like you, rather than in support of an apartheid repressive country with a big military machine to whom kids are no more than Shakespeare's flies that are killed for sport.
They kill us for their sport.
The little boy who was playing with the toy gun that he got for Eid is really dead now. The Israeli Occupation Forces shot him through his head and his heart. The first news stories said that he was dead but later stories reported that he was clinically dead. I have a little boy named Kahlil. The little boy who was shot was named Ahmad Ismail, younger than Kahlil, just twelve. Kahlil, my son, is fifteen, and he likes to go out with his friend on Saturdays for the BB gun wars, he calls them. Lucky for Kahlil, that he doesn't have to cross paths with Israeli occupation forces. We're relatively safe here in Germany, but I see pictures of the Palestinian kids who are snuffed out by the Israeli occupation forces, and they all look like Kahlil, my only son, dark and handsome, who is lazier than I'd like him to be, who doesn't study as hard as I'd like him to study, and who unfortunately is really into guns.
I don't know a lot about Eid because I'm a Christian Arab and I did not grow up in an Arab country. Children receive presents for Eid. Maybe Ismail got his toy gun for Eid and he was celebrating the holiday like Christians celebrate Christmas. Kids usually take their toys outside and play. They don't expect to get shot by an occupation army in their own neighborhood or when they go to visit relatives for the holiday.
I read that Ismail was with his parents when he was shot so he probably wasn't baiting the occupation soldiers. And even if he was, it wouldn't merit a gunshot. After all, Jewish illegal colonisers threw acid on Israel soldiers and weren't shot at. Teenagers have been rioting outside of Paris for nine days now, and they don't get shot at.
Here in Germany, I teach dependents of the US Military, many of whom are deployed in Iraq. If I so much as touch a cheeky kid on the shoulder and say follow me you're going to see an administrator, I am liable to be hauled off to a social worker, to be suspended from my job indefinitely and to face criminal charges.
In Israel, they shoot kids with impunity. Upwards of seven hundred Palestinian kids have been murdered by the "purity of arms" Israeli occupation forces since end of September 2000. Al-Jazeera reports that according to Palestine Red Crescent Society figures, 682 Palestinian children under the age of 18 have died during the second intifada (uprising) between 29 September 2000 and 29 September 2005. Of those, 158 were under 12-years old.
That's two to three a week. How in the hell would Americans react if their kids were gunned down in their own neighborhoods by a foreign occupation army?
Meanwhile, in this cesspool of a world in which we live, the ignorant citizens of Rome rally on behalf of a brutal, apartheid state and Hilary Clinton, the doyenne of the liberals, prepares to visit Ariel Sharon, the foremost Arab killer of our times.
Eid Mubarak, Ahmad. May Your Memory Be Eternal. For your sake, I pray that the world wakes up from its ignorant indifference to injustice. That will be the day when people rally in support of kids like you, rather than in support of an apartheid repressive country with a big military machine to whom kids are no more than Shakespeare's flies that are killed for sport.
