Suffer The Little Children 

By TAD BARTIMUS

Recently – his mother and father could surely tell us how many days, how many hours, how many minutes ago -- Mohammed al-Durra became a statistic in what somber diplomats and politicians call the Arab-Israeli conflict, and what real people call the Middle East madness.

Few will remember Mohammed's name, but all of us should. Think back to your nightly newscast and your Sunday morning newspaper: the image of a terrified child dressed in sneakers and blue jeans, huddled against a concrete block wall with his head tucked under the arm of his equally terrified father. That was Mohammed.

On Sept. 30, at an Israeli checkpoint near Gaza City, a French television cameraman filmed Mohammed's father trying to protect him from a sudden melee involving rock-throwing Palestinian youths, Palestinian police and Israeli soldiers with guns.

The pair was returning home to the Breji refugee camp in a taxi after selling the family's used car when the shooting started. Caught in the crossfire, they abandoned the taxi to huddle, completely exposed, next to a bare wall. The TV cameraman captured indelible images of Mohammed begging for help, of his father pleading to the gunmen to stop firing: "THE CHILD! THE CHILD!"

The bullets could not drown out the mortal screams. "THE CHILD!" died. His father was wounded eight times. An ambulance driver who tried to help the pair also was killed.

Nabil Aburdaineh, an advisor to Yassar Arafat, pronounced: "This is a killing in cold blood, an attack on an innocent child without any excuse. This cannot be forgiven."

An Israeli government spokesman accused the Palestinians of using rock-throwing children to taunt their soldiers: "What we are seeing is the cynical use by the Palestinians of children," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Noam Katz. 

This child's blood is on the hands of every ego-maniacal, hatred-riven, religiously zealous politician involved in the mired Middle East peace talks. It drips off the fingers of every rock-throwing, bomb-building, gun-toting human being – sanctioned or outlaw -- who commits violence in the name of nationalism in the region. So does the blood of any child, Arab or Jew, who has died senselessly in countless battles and terrorist attacks in the cradle of most of the world's great religions

Each side's response to the murder of Mohammed al-Durra was obscene. Issuing press releases and pointing fingers accomplished nothing but more polarization and escalating bloodshed. Every single official involved in Middle East negotiations – including U.S. President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright – ought to be required to wear the photo of Mohammed's last, excruciating moment on this earth --enlarged, laminated and pinned over their hearts – until the killing stops.

If anyone balks at progress by hiding behind the phrase "for the sake of our children," may their mouth fill up with Sinai sand. Anytime anyone, even for a second, puts death before life, war before peace, may her or she be locked up in a windowless room with a television set turned up full volume, forced to watch a loop tape of Mohammed al-Durra's last screams, until they repent of their wicked ways.

It may, at times, be a back-sliding role model, but Northern Ireland has made real progress toward ending its centuries-old sectarian and religious violence; the catalyst was the senseless deaths of three of its children. On Aug. 10, 1976, a guerrilla getaway car, its driver mortally wounded by a gunshot, went out of control and slammed into the siblings and their mother in Belfast. 

Shocked into action, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan – two ordinary women who'd had enough of "the troubles"– went door-to-door pleading with their neighbors to end the killing. Their courage and determination launched the Northern Ireland Peace Movement, for which they were awarded the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize. Of them, the Nobel committee said:

"The time had come when the ordinary man and woman must rise in protest against this senseless use of violence. It was no longer a question of political attitudes or religious convictions. There was only one remedy: the people themselves must cry halt. … someone had to start forgiving… The(se) two women… simply acted. They never heeded the difficulty of their task: they merely tackled it…. There was no talk here of ingenious theories, of shrewd diplomacy or pompous declarations…. No, their contribution was a far better one: a courageous, unselfish act that proved an inspiration to thousands, that lit a light in the darkness, and that gave fresh hope to people who believed that all hope was gone."

Please, God, may somebody – ANYBODY – step forward to lead the Israelis and Palestinians out of the darkness of violent divisiveness and into the light of peaceful co-existence. Most of all, may Yasser Arafat remember that he, too, has a Nobel Peace Prize; let him not disgrace it by being less brave than Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan. 

Arafat, along with Israelis Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, was awarded the 1994 prize for signing the Oslo Accords "which called for great courage on both sides." Where is that courage now? Where is the courage of the Israeli leadership? 

Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan, said the Nobel Committee, "taught us that the peace for which we strive is something that has to be won within and through the individual human being." 

Someone has to light the first candle. Someone has to knock on the first door, put down the first rock, empty the first gun. Someone has to put the children first.

Will someone? For Mohammed's sake? 

© 2000 The Women Syndicate

Visit TAD at www.tadfriends.com and send your own great stories – 300 words or less – to tadfriends@yahoo.com or write c/o The Women Syndicate, P.O. Box 728, Puunene, Hawaii 96784. Thanks for sharing.





© 2000 The Women Syndicate

Visit TAD at www.tadbartimus.com and send your own great stories – 300 words or less – to friends@tadbartimus.com or write c/o The Women Syndicate, P.O. Box 728, Puunene, Hawaii 96784. Thanks for sharing.

© 2000 The Women Syndicate. The content on these pages is the property of The Women Syndicate and may not be used without express written permission. Contact friends@tadbartimus.com