The Slaughter of Israeli Children
"The Slaughter" or in Hebrew "Hashkhita" was the expression for our Holocaust. The term was used in Palestine before the Greek term Holocaust or Shoa was replacing Hashkhita. Almost 1.5 million children were murdered or died from hunger or illness in the Holocaust. But the Palestinians, with their organizations, decided to follow Shkhita, the Slaughter.
You do not have to be an expert to expose the fact that they methodically have been planning projects of murdering children. They view it as an idea of a demographic war. They view reality, statistics, as their hope for their future: "Palestine without Jews!" So in order to "help" the "statistics" they have planned military-terrorist attacks on civilians targeting places with a high density of children and young women. Remember, the attack on a Tel Aviv coffee shop in Purim? They love to murder toddlers.
Of course they rush to the anti-Israeli media when a bullet killed a 12 year old girl in Gaza, a mistake by an Israeli soldier. It happened in a war. In order to document this sadism and in order for us not to forget these young victims, ages 4 months to 19 years old, the Israeli Minister of Education, Limor Livnat, decided to publish a shocking official document: Target: Israeli Children Scores of Israeli Children Have Been Deliberately Murdered by Palestinian Terrorists (Ministry of Education, Division of Foreign Affairs Central Office of Information Jerusalem, 2002).
The brochure (60 pages) was created by the creative concept of Yitzhak Eldan, Ruth Harif, Vered Cohen, Boneh Tirush, and Yechiel Leiter. (For more information: Israel, 02-560-2330, Fax 02-560-2246). The brochure discusses the issue of peace, murder of children and infants, Palestinian terrorism, children maimed for life, children expressing their fear and anguish by poems and art, stories of the victims, (in their memory) discussing of major events such as the Dolphinarium Massacre in Tel Aviv, and a chapter on the Palestinian education of their children, children of hate, children of Jihad.
It is touching evidence. The victims are the heroes of our times. The parents and the families of these victims are only in the background. Many are broken people. The stories do not contain an element or aspect of revenge, in Hebrew Nekama, just the facts of this non-stop slaughter. Who will remember these victims.
Limor Livnat, Minister of Education, wrote: "Education Ministers in enlightened, modern countries, are generally concerned with raising the level of education in their countries, broadening their students horizons and improving the schools. They do not generally have to pen introductions to pamphlets dedicated to the memory of dozens of infants, children and teenagers murdered in cold-blooded acts of terror."
However, as Israel's Education Minister, I am unfortunately forced to do just that. The wave of terror launched by the Palestinian Authority demonstrates complete scorn and utter contempt for the rules and principles of the civilized world, turning children and teenagers into the targets and victims of barbarous acts of murder.
The laws of war in the civilized world are based on a clear-cut distinction between combatants and civilians. The civilized world has determined that acts of war may be carried out only against armed combatants not against unarmed citizens. Terrorists refuse to heed these laws and in so doing set themselves apart from civilized people everywhere.
When terrorists declare every member of a particular society a legitimate target, when babies become fair game, they are moving humanity backwards to the age of savagery, when human society was dominated by dark, unrestrained passions, not the laws and accepted rules of civilized conduct. In our current war, the Palestinians are employing terror in their attempt to vanquish Israel and force it to accept conditions the vast majority of Israelis believe to he tantamount to national suicide.
The Palestinians have demonstrated a shocking contempt for children's lives not only the lives of our children, but of their own children as well. In one of many examples, 14-year-old Ismail Ahu Nada bid farewell to his mother on April 23, 2002, saying, "I am on my way to becoming a shahid."
Armed with explosives provided by terrorist leaders, he and his friend, Anwar, 13, went to carry out a suicide attack in a Jewish town. The appeal from the Israel National Council for the Child to Palestinian authorities to leave all children on both sides outside the circle of war remains unanswered.
As Israel's Education Minister, I consider one of the most important parts of my job to be the fostering among the children of my country even at these terrible times the values that we have always taught and believed in: love of humanity, nation and homeland; tolerance and acceptance of the other; faith in the future and hope for peace; and coexistence between nations. How sad it is that on the other side the Palestinian education system persists in inculcating hatred amid lust for murder in young Palestinian minds and spirits teaching them that suicide murderers are national heroes and role models.
We must do whatever we can to ensure that the scores of infants, children and teenagers whose memory we seek to perpetuate in this pamphlet are the last victims of terror. The civilized world must not permit the murder of children and the international community must condemn and denounce those who dispatch and harbor such terrorist murderers."
As to the fact of life: "Israel has been the target of an unprecedented Palestinian terror offensive since September 2000. By the end of July 2002 some 410 civilians and an additional 179 soldiers, have been killed. These figures include the murder of 89 infants, children and teenagers from the age of four months to 19 years."
In addition, another 809 children have been seriously wounded their lives, and the lives of their families forever changed by the evil of terror. Each victim has a name and a face. Each victim was filled with the joy of life, with promising talent, with love and friendship all snuffed out in one deadly moment by cowardly murderers deliberately targeting children.
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