And the Children of War?
Adults wage wars -- children suffer them!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_violence_against_Palestinian_children
One cannot help but wonder what the long term effects of the violence in Israel/Palestine -- and the hate propaganda emanating from either side there -- will have on their children?
I well recall my own 8-year-old experience with WW2. On December 7, 1941, about 5:30 p.m. a million or more of us American kids suddenly had our late Sunday afternoon children's programs (Jack Armstrong, All American Boy?) interrupted by the announcement that the U.S. fleet had been attacked at Pearl Harbor. Reports stressed that week that the wily Japanese had planned this sneak attack while a delegation from Japan had been carrying out a deceptive visit to Washington to work out peaceful accommodations. We quickly learned -- from our comic books and other sources -- that both the Japanese and Germans were monsters. They were depicted respectively with their buck teethed fangs gnashing innocent babies or with jackboots stamping on same -- with blood graphically gushing forth from the little ones in both cases.
Within a few months of the attack I was actively engaged in the war effort. We happened to live on the lea side of Avon mountain, west of Hartford, Connecticut, and our yard with its sweeping views of the flood plains to the west (and the glorious sunsets there, too) was selected as one of the checkerboard of aircraft warning station sites set up to alert command headquarters in Washington, D.C. of passing planes.
My own contribution as a precocious kid was to put together the heavy black card board mockups of war planes -- theirs and ours -- designed to inform the regular volunteers who manned our post on two hour shifts -- 24/7. I became the in residence expert on such things. I could identify specific makes of plane by ear, let alone sight. And I often trained nervous new volunteers on how to place their calls with 8 bits of information about the passing planes -- "one, bi, high . . . ."
We also had a grandstand seat to watch young fighter pilots in training practicing dog fights over the valley -- one day one did not pull out of a dive and crashed, scattering both the body parts of the pilot and also fragments of the plane -- the latter of which kids living nearby brought in pieces the next day to share with schoolmates.
I particularly recall one dark night when some of the volunteers came to my rescue. My second floor bedroom overlooked the post building and apparently, experiencing a horrible nightmare, I had climbed from my bed and was half hanging out the window when awakened by shouts from volunteers below who had heard my screams. This would now be called post traumatic stress?
It took me decades to overcome my deeply instilled hatred of both the Germans and Japanese -- a month long hiking trip down the Rhine with German and British kids as a teen (designed as a peace-making effort by the West German government when I was an exchange student in a British public school) helped convert Germans back to humans for me. I eventually translated a book from the German -- Christian Faith in Our Time by Fritz Buri. My whole generation of kids-of-the-war had much recovering to do. My parents told me that during that early wartime period I frequently awakened them with violent nightmares of which I had no memory the next day.
I assume that Israeli and Palestinian kids are undergoing the same traumatic experiences. Are their parents instilling in them -- directly or indirectly -- hatreds that should only belong to adults? I fear so from the attitudes that some share when commenting on the THEM!!! We adults must keep in mind what we are doing to our children when we wage our wars!
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_violence_against_Palestinian_children
One cannot help but wonder what the long term effects of the violence in Israel/Palestine -- and the hate propaganda emanating from either side there -- will have on their children?
I well recall my own 8-year-old experience with WW2. On December 7, 1941, about 5:30 p.m. a million or more of us American kids suddenly had our late Sunday afternoon children's programs (Jack Armstrong, All American Boy?) interrupted by the announcement that the U.S. fleet had been attacked at Pearl Harbor. Reports stressed that week that the wily Japanese had planned this sneak attack while a delegation from Japan had been carrying out a deceptive visit to Washington to work out peaceful accommodations. We quickly learned -- from our comic books and other sources -- that both the Japanese and Germans were monsters. They were depicted respectively with their buck teethed fangs gnashing innocent babies or with jackboots stamping on same -- with blood graphically gushing forth from the little ones in both cases.
Within a few months of the attack I was actively engaged in the war effort. We happened to live on the lea side of Avon mountain, west of Hartford, Connecticut, and our yard with its sweeping views of the flood plains to the west (and the glorious sunsets there, too) was selected as one of the checkerboard of aircraft warning station sites set up to alert command headquarters in Washington, D.C. of passing planes.
My own contribution as a precocious kid was to put together the heavy black card board mockups of war planes -- theirs and ours -- designed to inform the regular volunteers who manned our post on two hour shifts -- 24/7. I became the in residence expert on such things. I could identify specific makes of plane by ear, let alone sight. And I often trained nervous new volunteers on how to place their calls with 8 bits of information about the passing planes -- "one, bi, high . . . ."
We also had a grandstand seat to watch young fighter pilots in training practicing dog fights over the valley -- one day one did not pull out of a dive and crashed, scattering both the body parts of the pilot and also fragments of the plane -- the latter of which kids living nearby brought in pieces the next day to share with schoolmates.
I particularly recall one dark night when some of the volunteers came to my rescue. My second floor bedroom overlooked the post building and apparently, experiencing a horrible nightmare, I had climbed from my bed and was half hanging out the window when awakened by shouts from volunteers below who had heard my screams. This would now be called post traumatic stress?
It took me decades to overcome my deeply instilled hatred of both the Germans and Japanese -- a month long hiking trip down the Rhine with German and British kids as a teen (designed as a peace-making effort by the West German government when I was an exchange student in a British public school) helped convert Germans back to humans for me. I eventually translated a book from the German -- Christian Faith in Our Time by Fritz Buri. My whole generation of kids-of-the-war had much recovering to do. My parents told me that during that early wartime period I frequently awakened them with violent nightmares of which I had no memory the next day.
I assume that Israeli and Palestinian kids are undergoing the same traumatic experiences. Are their parents instilling in them -- directly or indirectly -- hatreds that should only belong to adults? I fear so from the attitudes that some share when commenting on the THEM!!! We adults must keep in mind what we are doing to our children when we wage our wars!
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
posted by Ed Kent at 10:24 AM
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