Acting like children

As I look at the ongoing 50 year conflict in the Middle East I can’t help but feel that the players are acting like a bunch of children. The “he hit me first” rhetoric that we hear so often reminds me of what I heard from my own children as they went through the sibling rivalry phase, but it didn’t take them fifty years to get over it. (fortunately) I am also, however, reminded that in one of my favorite bible verses in the Gospel known to the church as Mark, the Gospel writer has Jesus say “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child shall not enter it”. For me the writer is saying unless we have the open, accepting attitude of a little child we will not find the kingdom in our lives. In the words of the musical South Pacific “you have to be taught to hate and to fear”. That is why I was disturbed to see this picture of Israeli school children writing messages on artillery shells before they were fired into Lebanon which appeared last week in the Israeli English language paper Haaretz. This picture, along with many other graphic pictures from the conflict, has flashed around the Arab world on the internet. (If you are interested in what the Arab world is seeing, click here. Be aware that this is not the sanitized version of war that we get in U.S. on CNN and MSNBC. Parental guidance suggested.) The subject of the impact of this seemingly endless conflict on children was explored by the James Miller documentary Death in Gaza. We only see the Palestinian side as Miller was killed by Israeli soldiers before he could go to Israel to film the Israeli side of the conflict. In the film two young boys show how to make hand grenades from a cocktail of household chemicals and Coca Cola cans. They describe in detail how they had to score the can with a drill so that the explosion will create shrapnel which will be more effective in killing and maiming the targets. Another documentary film on the conflict, Jenin Jenin, describes the Israeli invasion of Jenin during the second intifada. In the film we meet a young girl, probably not much older than twelve, who is very attractive, very bright, very articulate and very angry. I remember thinking as I watched the film that the Israelis should probably be very afraid of her. These are the children who will grow up to be leaders of their societies. In the words of the Hebrew prophet Isaiah “a little child shall lead them”. The question is, where will they lead?.


Israel
Palestine
Middle East