Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: 136 Gaza kids killed by Israel

136 Gaza kids killed by Israel
Gaza City, Sept. 18. (Guardian News Service): Raghda Alassar's classmates 
did not hear the Israeli bullet that tore into the nine-year-old's brain as 
she wrote an English test.
But soon a wall of screams rose from the classroom of the UN elementary 
school for girls in Khan Yunis.
Though still crying for help at that time, Raghda fell silent by the time by 
the time she was hauled into the trauma room of a neighbouring hospital.
For five crucial days the army blocked Raghda's transfer to an Israeli 
hospital with the facilities to offer a glimmer of hope. An infection set 
in.
On Tuesday doctors told her father, Adnad, that she was brain dead.
"I find it so difficult to believe what happened to my daughter. She was at 
school, just carrying her notebook not a gun. What is my daughter - nine 
years old - guilty of that she has to be shot? It's state terror against the 
whole population."
In recent weeks the Israelis have again been preoccupied with terrorism, 
from the murder of 16 people in the Beersheba bus bombings to the slaughter 
of Russian schoolchildren in Beslan, which received blanket coverage.
During the six months of relative peace for Israelis, until the Beersheba 
bombings, the army killed more than 400 Palestinians.
Most were fighters, but they also included about 40 children under 15.
Palestinians say this also is a form of terror.
"We're always listening for the helicopters, listening for the tanks, 
listening for the bombs," said Khitam Abu Shawarib, the only social worker 
in Rafah refugee camp, on the southern tip of the Gaza Strip.
"It takes such a toll on our health, on society, most of all on the 
children." Israelis live in fear of random attacks, principally the suicide 
bombing of buses and cafes, and shootings in the occupied territories. But 
they are generally safe in their homes and are more likely to be killed in a 
road accident than by a bomb.
In southern Gaza and parts of the West Bank there is often no sanctuary from 
the seemingly relentless, indiscriminate Israeli shooting.
Israel classifies Gaza Strip towns such as Rafah and Khan Yunis, and Nablus 
and Jenin in the West Bank, as "war zones".
That, the army says, justifies the firing of powerful sophisticated weapons 
into residential areas or the bulldozing of scores of homes each month, 
ostensibly in search of rarely discovered tunnels for smuggling in weapons.
Barely a night passes in Rafah or Khan Yunis without the machine-gun fire 
that has shredded hundreds of homes, forcing families to sleep in a single 
inner room behind bricked up windows or a second wall.
Others live in the rubble of their bulldozed houses, perpetually in the line 
of fire from the rarely seen soldiers high in the gun towers.
A fortnight ago 15-year-old Mazen al-Ara was trying to lead his siblings 
away from tanks and heavy shooting around their house on the edge of the 
"Philadelphi Road", the highly militarised border at Rafah.
The army had partially destroyed the family home months before, but the Aras 
went on living there because they had no money to move.
Usually they sheltered in an inner room when the shooting began, but that 
night it was so intense that Mazen said they would all be killed if they 
stayed.
As he led the terrified group into the street, Mazen was caught by a burst 
of fire. Doctors took 18 bullets from his body.
A few days earlier 10-year-old Munir al-Daqas left his home in Jabalya 
refugee camp to visit his grandparents' house five minutes' walk away. 
Israeli tanks were on the far side of the camp, but no one saw any danger in 
the heart of Jabalya, around its bustling market, in daylight.
"It must have been a sniper," his mother, Kifah, said. "People told me as I 
was shopping in the market. I couldn't believe it. Munir was just there with 
me and now they were saying he was dead." Mrs Daqas unfolded a picture of 
the semi-naked body of her son in his grave. There is a bullet wound in the 
chest and another in the groin.
In four years of intifada, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights says, the 
army has killed 136 children in Rafah and Khan Yunis, a quarter of all the 
Palestinian children who have died during the uprising, because of its 
"indiscriminate shooting, excessive force, a shoot to kill policy and the 
deliberate targeting of children".
The dead in Khan Yunis and Rafah in recent weeks also include two 
12-year-old boys, a 15-year-old girl and a 75-year-old man in a wheelchair, 
Ibrahim Halfalla, who was crushed under the rubble of his own home by an 
army bulldozer as his wife begged the soldiers not to do it.
The army has not offered an explanation for the killing of Raghda Alassar, 
but it frequently says that child victims are caught in crossfire during 
Palestinian attacks on the army or Jewish settlers.
There were no such battles when Raghda Alassar and Munir Daqas were hit. Or 
when a bullet pierced the blind of Sara Zorob's living room and struck the 
10-year-old in the chest, killing her instantly.
Commanders in Gaza have admitted in the past that when their soldiers are 
attacked they are allowed to fire back randomly, risking civilian lives.
The dead are not the only victims.
"The children who are physically injured are not the only ones harmed," said 
Usama Freona, a psychologist at the UN clinic in Rafah.
"The levels of violence children are exposed to is horrific.
"We work in a lot of schools to treat the children. In the one next to Kfar 
Darom [a Jewish settlement in Gaza], all the children are suffering from 
post-traumatic stress disorder. Most of them crying and shaking when they 
were speaking about their experiences. There is a lot of bedwetting." 
Mohammed Abu Yusuf is the counsellor at Raghda Alassar's school.
Five girls in Raghda's class still won't come back to school.
We took Raghda's desk away and brought another but none of the students will 
sit at it." Raghda Alassar is not the first such child to be shot needlessly 
shot as last year an Israeli bullet blinded Huda Darwish, 12, as she sat at 
her desk.
"They see guns as the source of power, the solution to dealing with any 
problem, the way to get what they want." With that has come a collapse in 
respect for authority.
The image of Mohammed al-Dura, the 12-year-old Gaza boy shot as his father 
vainly tried to protect him from Israeli gunfire in the first days of the 
latest intifada, is seared on the Palestinian consciousness.
It has come to symbolise what they see as the callous indifference of 
Israeli forces to the lives of their children. But Mrs Abu Shawarib said it 
had a further impact on many children, who saw that a father was unable to 
protect his son.
"The respect for authority is shattered because children see their fathers 
beaten in front of them," she said. "
The authority of the father, who used to just have to utter one word for the 
child to obey, is shattered. The father looks helpless to protect the child 
and the child thinks they are alone."
Another result of the perpetual killing was that many children came to 
expect an early death and to welcome the prospect of becoming a "martyr".
"The martyr is in paradise, he has glory here and in the afterlife where it 
is so much better than life in Rafah," she said. "The children see many 
people killed, so they come to expect to be killed. This is horrible, that 
children should accept the possibility of death."
COPYRIGHT: GUARDIAN NEWSPAPERS LIMITED 2004
K
PS Spero che questi bastardi facciano presto compagnia ai responsabili del 
massacro di bambini e civili in Russia, all'inferno... Stessa marda...
Vai, bagaro' trova una pezza a colori anche per questo...

classmates did not hear the Israeli bullet
Come no!  Era firmato con la stessa di David quel proiettile :)
*ROTFL*
-Stefano