Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Always the victims - never the perqs.

Last week the news and papers were filled with the suffering a Palestinian girl’s over the death of her father when a family outing to the beach in Gaza Strip ended in tragedy.

Israel was loudly condemned, and even Kofi Annan issued a statement thinking it was far too incredulous to believe that Palestinians would mine their own beaches without the slightest regard for the safety of their own citizens and soundly condemned the Israelis for their alleged wanton disregard for the lives of unarmed Palestinian civilians. He has since retracted his initial gut response/condemnation.

And as more and more information has come to light; the evidence is clearly suggesting that it is not so incredulous after all to believe that the Palestinian Authority would act in a manner that exhibited a callous and wanton disregard for the safety or security of unarmed Palestinian civilians.

Yesterday, a school bus filled with young girls came under sniper fire emendating from an Arab settlement near Ofra. The Jerusalem Post reports:
MDA reported that a school bus carrying a group of 16-year old girls was making its way Monday afternoon to the Ofra settlement near Jerusalem when shots were fired at the bus from the direction of the neighboring Arab village of Kafr Sinjil.

An MDA paramedic at the scene told The Jerusalem Post that three girls were being treated for light wounds to the back and to their hands. Two of the girls were being treated for shock. Six bullet holes were discovered in the side of the bus. Three of the girls were evacuated to Hadassah Ein Kerem University Hospital, and two to Hadassah Mount Scopus University Hospital in Jerusalem.


A school bus filled with children and where is the outrage for the deliberate targeting of school children in this conflict? The Secretary General of the UN issues no statement about the wanton senseless attacks on the lives of young Israeli school girls by Arab terrorists.

Where are the world leaders to stand up to the plate and demand that all Palestinian terrorists who deliberately target school children as the preferred target of the day become as pariahs unto the world community?

Where are the references to the Ofra attack outside the Israeli papers? I could not find a single online reference to this incident in the Toronto Star but I did find this story of Palestinian teenage angst in the World news section:

JERICHO, West Bank—The Palestinian man who had an Internet romance with a 16-year-old Michigan girl is a music-loving computer buff who says he loves the teen and is heartbroken she was sent home.

Abdullah Jimzawi, a 20-year-old high school dropout who lives with his parents in Jericho, said he and Katherine Lester had planned to marry and she intended to convert to Islam.

Lester was en route to Tel Aviv when she was intercepted in Amman, Jordan, by U.S. authorities who seized her passport and put her on a flight back to the United States.

The couple still speak to each other at least five hours a day via Internet phone calls, said the shy Jimzawi. "We love the same things, the same songs and we have similar dreams. I fell in love with her because she is innocent and good hearted. We found ourselves to be soulmates," he said in an interview in Jericho”

An Israeli school bus comes under a sniper attack and the world yawns, but heaven forbid that you are a lovesick Palestinian youth.

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