Editorial



The news coming out of the Gaza Strip is heart-wrenching. According to UNICEF, as of Jan. 9, 257 of the 758 known Palestinian dead have been children. That toll is higher today. The Israeli attacks have reportedly been targeted carefully to minimize civilian casualties, but the Hamas fighters, whose party won the right to govern Gaza in a democratic election, are employing the time-honored tactics of urban terrorists. They are sheltering among civilians, making that most inhuman of terms, collateral damage, inevitable.

Israel is being excoriating internationally for the ferocity of its response to the rocket attacks launched by Hamas with limited effect. But the chilling opening of a story by New York Times reporter Michael Slackman, writing from Egypt, demonstrates that the real threat to Israel is not the handful of rockets lobbed over the border by Hamas but the religious extremism that allows its enemies to deny Israel's right to exist.

Slackman writes: "Late last month, Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared that anyone killed defending Palestinians in the Gaza Strip would be rewarded in heaven as a martyr. Young men began lining up - 70,000 in all - to go off and die."

For political reasons, Khamenei reversed his position and forbade would-be Iranian martyrs from leaving. But that threat, and more, is always there for Israel.

The gruesome plight of the Palestinians, who have even been killed while staying in U.N. shelters, explains the increasing support for Hamas. The 1.5 million residents of the Gaza Strip are trapped, and even if they were allowed to leave, no nation, least of all Israel, wants them.

No place in the crowded 140 square miles is truly safe. And between wars, the U.S.-backed embargo has, for three years, left Gaza's residents without adequate food and other supplies. The Gaza economy is that in name alone. The United Nations puts the unemployment rate at 45 percent. In such circumstances, who wouldn't become a smuggler?

Nothing has been able to bring about a lasting peace. But the international community can't stop trying. The voices of the children, as recorded by the United Nations Children's Fund, show that before they are hardened by hurt, cynicism and a desire for revenge, Palestinians and Israelis want the same thing: the ability to pursue their lives in peace.

UNICEF's Voices of Youth Project has, as yet, no audio diaries from children discussing the current war in Gaza. But in 2006, its workers facilitated a conversation between two 15-year-old girls: Joy, who lives in Beirut, Lebanon, and Omer, who lives in Haifa, Israel. The teens talked about their lives during the war between their nations.

"I didn't know you actually lived in Beirut," Omer said to Joy. "We got horrible pictures [of Beirut] during the war. I was actually wondering what it was like from a personal view. I mean, were you actually there the whole time?"

"We could hear the bombs going off," Joy replied. "They were very close, very loud. You could even see the smoke and stuff. We were in Beirut, and then we kind of ran away to the mountains where it's quieter, safer. But yeah, it was pretty scary. What about you?"

"For me it was weird," said Omer. "Usually my opinions are really liberal, but this time I got so fed up that when they showed pictures of Lebanon, the first thing that would come into my head was, well, at least we're doing something, so great. But then I would remember 50 people just got killed and I would get really mad at myself that I even dared to think anything about this was good."

Joy replied: "I wasn't happy that Lebanon was hitting Israel, and I definitely wasn't happy that Israel was hitting Lebanon. And it was bothering me most that you would hear, for example, 50 people injured, 20 dead or something. They're innocent, you know. It has nothing to do with the government and arguments the two countries have together."

"That's exactly what I was thinking, too," Omer said.

And this is what the world should be thinking.

None are without blame when too little is done to prevent children who could be friends and want to live in peace, from becoming collateral damage.