The media generally loves to portray the Middle East Conflict as a battle between David (the palestinians) and Goliath (Israel). The image of the stone-throwing palestinian teenager juxtoposed against the soldier has become the weapon of choice for the left-wing media. After all, what chance does a stone throwing kid have against an M-16?
One fallacy is that having big rocks thrown at your head is not liable to cause any severe damage. Try telling that to a friend of ours whose life has been irrevocably affected by such an occurrence.
Another fallacy is that the palestinian teenagers only ever throw rocks. Those of us who actually live here and either serve in the army or have family and friends serving, know that these kids are involved in far more malignant activities.
In many cases, their rock-throwing exploits occur in tandem with the firing of real weapons. The idea is to cause our soldiers to think twice about firing back. When they do, you can be sure the media bloodhounds are there in force to capture the next day’s front page picture.
In other cases, these teens are actually directly causing much death and destruction, whether it be by firing guns or by attaching explosives to themselves and attempting to lose their virginity to 72 fellow virgins in the Islamic version of heaven. Just today, a telephone company worker was shot and killed by a 15 year old palestinian boy.
The point here is not to say that all palestinian teens are involved in these activities, but rather to expose the palestinian’s, and indeed the media’s, cynical use of these children to inflict damage to Israel’s standing in the world and, even more importantly, to the lives our civilians and soldiers.
