Posted on 02/19/2002 12:55:56 PM PST by knighthawk
In Bethlehem, Arab children look forward to being doctors, teachers or suicide bombers, reports Ross Dunn.
Smartly dressed in their school uniforms, Manar Alameer and her friend Khadija Bdeer pass through narrow alleyways, skipping over puddles formed from the showers that drenched the clusters of cement buildings the night before.
The walls of their high school in this densely populated Palestinian refugee camp are marked with bullet holes, from fierce exchanges of gunfire between Israeli troops and Palestinian snipers which have raged sporadically for more than a year.
Manar and Khadija, both aged 12, smile brightly and giggle as a group of boys tease them on their way home. Few could imagine that behind those apparently proud, self-confident faces there is a complex, troubled inner world. Witnessing clashes from their windows and losing friends have impacted on their subconscious minds. When night comes, these girls wake in a cold sweat, haunted by nightmares and sometimes apocalyptic visions of a final battle between Arabs and Jews.
They are faced with a difficult dichotomy in attempting to cope with the conditions around them. On one hand they dream of becoming doctors or teachers "so they can help others", while at the same time they harbour darker desires, sometimes wishing to be among the next generation of suicide bombers.
Khadija says she has dreams about Israeli soldiers bursting into her home and killing her. "I want very much to be a martyr," she says defiantly. "I keep telling my friends and my family all the time, 'I want to be martyr.'"
Manar says this is a frequent topic of conversation at school after clashes. "Among friends at school we talk about the need for peace, but when the Israeli actions started we wanted to become suicide bombers because not even our schools are safe," she says.
To seek martyrdom is not only an ambition that more Palestinian children are expressing freely, it is also what the experts fear will happen. These two girls have taken part in a pilot study by a Palestinian clinical psychologist, Dr Shafiq Masalha, who is analysing their dreams and how they express themselves through their drawings. He surveyed 150 Palestinian children aged from 10 to 12 in the West Bank. The results indicate that nearly 80 per cent dreamt about the conflict, about 15 per cent wanted to become martyrs and, surprisingly, a quarter of them were girls.
This finding might have greater relevance after a Palestinian woman carrying a bomb died in an explosion in the heart of Jerusalem last month. Some claim that she died after the explosives detonated prematurely; others say this was the first case of a Palestinian woman suicide bomber.
The truth about this incident may never be known but Masalha's study shows that there are an increasing number of Palestinian girls who express a wish to die in this fashion.
"This material is very troubling, I believe," he says. "It is troubling for the Palestinians themselves, for the kids and for the Israelis, that we are raising children who are only 10 years old and thinking that they want to kill themselves and sometimes to kill others."
He is driven to find out more in the dream world of Palestinian children where the signs of danger and despair are becoming deeply rooted.
Manar tosses in the night, envisaging herself standing outside the Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary) in Jerusalem's walled Old City, where she has joined other Muslims preparing to confront the Jewish people. The area is the third holiest site in the Islamic world after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.
In this compound stands the Al-Aqsa mosque and the golden Dome of the Rock, the glittering jewel in the landscape of the Holy City, built over the spot where the prophet Muhammad is said to have ascended to heaven. But it is also known as the Temple Mount, the place where the Jewish holy temples stood in biblical times, making it the most sacred place in Judaism.
The area is featured in prophecies and predictions about the end of the world and these associations are symbolised in Manar's dreams. "There was a big river," she says, recounting her visions. "I was standing on one side with the Muslims and on the other bank were the Jews. Then the Muslims threw all the things that belonged to the Jews into the river, so that the Jews would leave the Al-Aqsa. But suddenly the river filled with the blood of the Muslim people and I woke in fright and told my mother."
In another dream, she sees one of the Palestinian youths from her refugee camp who was killed in the recent fighting. She follows him until suddenly he vanishes. Bewildered, she marches towards his tomb, only to find him standing in front of it.
Khadija also shares a pattern of dreams filled with potent symbolism, even a faint hope amid the winds of war that peace will one day prevail. "I saw a horse walking along and above him was a white dove," she says. "The [Israeli] soldiers shot the dove, which fell on the horse's back.
"The horse does not sense that the dove is there, which then slips from his back to the ground. But there is a flock of doves flying overhead who saw the plight of their fellow bird and sweep down from the sky. They heal her wounds and teach her to fly again."
But even such rare expressions of hope by Palestinian children in the West Bank are less likely to be found in the Gaza Strip, where their counterparts are also disturbed in their sleep.
The prominent Palestinian psychiatrist Dr Eyad Sarraj, who is concerned with the mental health of children in the Gaza Strip, says the disorders are the result of a situation of utter despair. "There are a lot of nightmares, a lot of night terror, a lot of insomnia and bed-wetting, which is a sign of anxiety and stress," he says.
"But to have 15- and 18-year-olds bed-wetting [is a new phenomenon]. My idols were movie stars and football players. Today the idols are martyrs."
He asks others to imagine the predicament of Palestinian children who, he says, are unable to rely on their elders for support, because they, too, are terrified and traumatised by the violence.
"The content of their lives is very traumatic," he says. "And they receive trauma through the eyes of their parents and the behaviour of their parents." He adds that when the area is under attack, there is no escape from the Gaza Strip, which is bordered by the sea on one side and Israel on the other.
"Imagine yourself in Gaza and suddenly there is an Apache helicopter in the skies and everybody is vulnerable and so exposed and at the same time trapped. You are in prison; you can't leave Gaza because Gaza is closed off. You have the sea and you have all the borders closed off," he says.
"People are suddenly in a panic and don't know where to hide. Is it better to be on the roof or underneath, because we don't have bomb shelters? Is it better to be in the street or under a tree, and, of course, adults panic? They [the children] watch and they see the helplessness and desperation of their parents and they ask their parents in return, 'Why don't you have a gun, father?'"
This sense of helplessness is something that Palestinian social worker Iman Saleh, tries to encourage the children to overcome. She lives in Bethlehem and visits the Aida refugee camp, where she even teaches them some practical techniques, such as crawling along the classroom floor when the school is under fire and to sing out loud to distract their minds from the horrors of war. "Fear. Most of the feeling is fear - fear of everything," she says.
And more often this is being transformed into violence that is being directed inwardly in Palestinian society, as well as by the Israeli army. Mothers often complain to her that their children are not only bed-wetting but fighting more often among themselves in the school playgrounds and in their homes, and committing acts of vandalism.
"Before the Intifada [the Palestinian uprising against Israel that began in September 2000], they played normal games like all kids," she says. "But after the Intifada, the only thing they play is Palestinians and soldiers." The Israeli Government claims that the children are prone to violence because of the political propaganda they are fed in Palestinian schools.
How much of their thinking is influenced by the education system or their culture remains unclear. But there is no doubt that the drawings of Manar and Khadija have been politically inspired and are not simply the work of a child's imagination.
Holding up one of example of her work, Manar says: "This is 1953 when my family became refugees and the key means that we want to return home. The tree stands strongly in the land and all the Palestinians will stand like this tree. This is the map of Palestine and she is surrounded and the eye of Palestine is weeping." Khadija, too, speaks with the strong will of a family torn apart by war and longing to return to their former homes, which have become part of Israel since its establishment in 1948.
"With God's will they will go back to their homes in Israel," she says, presenting one of her drawings. She points out the basic elements of the composition. "This is an Arab defender and these two are Israelis," she says. "He [the Arab] kills one of the Israelis and this drawing shows that one day, hopefully, we will liberate our land."
Masalha says that the trauma of daily life for many Palestinian children, particularly those in refugee camps, is being reflected in their dreams, as well as their drawings. He says he is deeply disturbed that not one child in his survey made a single positive statement about Israelis. "So these kids, who are living in these terrifying circumstances, terrifying daily events - so what can we expect from them?" he asks. "What feelings, what thoughts would they expect thinking that life is not worth living and maybe death is a way out from these terrible circumstances?
"If this generation continues to grow up in the way that they represent themselves in their dreams, I believe that our future is very bleak."
i'm sure that if the palestineans had f-14's the kids would dream of growing up to be just like tom cruise in top gun. kids play soldier in bethlehem just like in america.
What american kids play of blowing themselves up in a middle of a crowd?
they don't. you missed the point. they play soldier according to the weapons available to their soldiers -- what they see on the news. its sad really, on both counts. we play with our flight simulator videogames, they play suicide bomber.
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| Palestinian boys check a toy plastic machine gun at a street vendor at the West Bank city of Ramallah February 18, 2002. Israel said it feared a new wave of Palestinian suicide attacks after its security forces caught three alleged bombers and foiled an attack outside an armt base. REUTERS/Ammar |
Interesting though...those who scream the loudest about Israeli "brutality" for killing "innocent" children have no commentary on those same children being taught to hate and kill. I find that very interesting....and very revealing....
Instead of commenting on the Arab children by, for example, condemning the adults who teach them, you turn it around and claim to have seen "similar" teachings on the Israeli side.
Sometimes exposing the morality of people like you is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.
Forget this tribal bull**it that DocLady likes to hit you with. The Jews of Israel are fighting the Islamic Jihad. This is a religious war. Amusing part is that Yassir Arafat is a gay communist atheist. Nonetheless he has also made this all a religious war. He calls for Jihad too.
___________________________________________________
"To Jerusalem we will march - millions of martyrs. And, O God, Master of the
Universe, please let me be one of the martyrs." shouted Arafat to an adoring
crowd of Palestinians outside his headquarters in Ramallah yesterday
(Saturday Jan. 27).
Arafat's words in Arabic were broadcast across the Arab world by
"Al-Jazeera," the Arab satellite television service which also showed
Arafat, waving his right hand as he led the crowd in a chant-"Al-jihad,
al-jihad, al-jihad, al-jihad, al-jihad, al-jihad": "Holy war, holy war, holy
war, holy war, holy war, holy war."
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You are hallucinating. Increase your thorazine dosage.
If all you're left with is provocative and rhetorical statements then maybe its best you stay away from the topic of Israel altogether. You appear to be ill-equipped intellectually and emotionally for this kind of discussion. It's no wonder. Out there in Michigan where most of those Arabs and Muslims sympathize with terrorism and with the extinguishing of the Lebanese Christians as well it's not hard to understand where you're coming from. Now how did that piece of rhetoric feel? Feel slighted? Feel unjustifiably accused and castigated? Get used to it if you want to play rhetorical games.
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