Fast Times at Intifada High
Those pretending that young Palestinians being released from captivity are innocent civilians are ignoring the pernicious truth about youth indoctrination and terrorism
In 2002 a girl from Deheishe Refugee Camp near Bethlehem attempted to entere supermarket in Jerusalem's Kiryat Yovel neighbourhood. She was not buying groceries, but rather was there to take the lives of herself and anyone around her. Her name was Ayat al-Akhras and she would kill two people, the security guard who attempted to check her belongings as she entered, and a 17 year-old Israeli girl named Rachel Levy. Al-Akhras's final act was not just unique in that it was one of the few examples of female suicide bombings at the time, but also the fact that she may have been underage at the time. Some reports have her being 18 years old, but others hold that she was only 16. At the time I also happened to be 16 years old and a college sophomore. In 2019 the Palestinian Authority placed a plaque in her honour at a girls' high school in Bethlehem. In 2023 a lot of Twitter users with red triangle emojis in their handles would probably erect shrines to her.
Today Palestine advocates and media commentators are treating Palestinian detainees under the age of 18 as if they are children victimized by the Israeli war machine, not the pawns duped by cynical terror groups or radicalized by war propaganda that they are. For example a recent report by the Straits Times from Singapore it described the account of now-freed detainee Omar al-Atshan, who alleged severe mistreatment in prison. Omitted from the report was that al-Atshan of Ramallah, then aged 15, was arrested after opening fire with a weapon. The notion that underage Palestinian detainees are just little rascals getting collared by ruthless Israeli soldiers and police ignores a long history of terror groups deliberately using teens in the furtherance of their activities. Here are a list of other acts of terror committed by underage offenders:
In 2003 two 17 year-old males from Askar Refugee Camp of the Palestinian city of Nablus committed suicide bombings that killed two victims.
In 2004 a 14 year-old special needs boy named Hussam Abdo was arrested after surrendering to IDF Paratrooper Brigade soldiers near Nablus. He had been wearing a suicide vest and was sent to commit an attack against Israeli soldiers and civilians. After his release following 9 years in prison Abdo remarked that he had been brainwashed by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade.
In November 2004 a bombing in Tel Aviv's Carmel Market killed 3 and injured 30. It was carried out by 16 year-old Amar Alfar on behalf of the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Alfar's mother condemned the use of her son in the attack.
In April 2005 a 15 year-old boy was arrested at Hawara checkpoint south of Nablus carrying five pipe bombs.
These attacks happened in the context of the Second Intifada (2000-05), which was almost 20 years ago, and many of those individuals if they perished in those attacks would be in their 30's and potentially raising families today. Juvenile offenders have continued to be a phenomenon within the Palestinian terror movement, sometimes as members of terror groups but often as unaffiliated assailants. A further outbreak of violence began in 2015, blamed in part on a gruesome arson attack and murder that killed three members of a Palestinian family in the village of Duma near Hebron. Called the "knife Intifada", this less organized effort was more disorganized as suicide belts had become more difficult to smuggle from the West Bank into Israel. On Oct. 12, 2015 two brothers, Ahmed and Hassan Manasra, then 13 and 15 years old respectively, stabbed two Israelis in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Pisgat Ze'ev. Hassan Manasra was killed by a police officer after the stabbing, but Ahmed survived and was eventually convicted on two counts of attempted murder and sentenced to twelve years in prison (letter reduced to 9.5), and remains behind bars as of this writing. One of the female prisoners released was Nourhan Awad who was 16 when she and a cousin stabbed an elderly Palestinian neighbour in 2016.
Ten years old forever
As always I try to see the whole picture, so in general Palestinians do not solely see children as cannon fodder in their struggle against Israel. For the Palestinian cause symbols have deep meaning including the keys of ancestral homes or olive trees that signify the land they long to return to. One of the most well-known symbols of the resistance movement is "Handala", a cartoon boy who is often featured on Palestinian signs, materials, and clothing and as in the image above is seen in combination with both the olive tree and the key. According to its creator Naji al-Ali, Handala is the proverbial 10 year-old who never grows up, just as he was ten when he was exiled from his home village of Al-Shajara near Nazareth with his parents. This Peter Pan-like character is always drawn with his face away from the reader as if he is constantly wandering and his dusty clothes, bare feet, and disheveled appearance are meant to bring attention to the poverty and destitution of Palestinian refugee families like al-Ali's wherever they may be. In 1987 Naji al-Ali was murdered in London, with competing theories suggesting he was either killed by the PLO (whom he criticized relentlessly) and the Mossad.
What Handala symbolizes should be juxtaposed against what has been the trend in Palestinian society of manipulating children into committing acts of violence that likely result in them being either killed, wounded or imprisoned. Like in other conflict zones, teens are recruited for terror activities in the hopes that they will be a vanguard force for their cause. Child soldiers were used in the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) with some becoming icons of national pride such as 13 year-old Mohammed Hossein Fahmideh who killed himself while disabling an Iraqi tank using a belt of hand grenades. In Iran copper busts of his head are handed out as trophies at sports competitions.
The reasons for using children in war are simple: they are impressionable, often have other relatives that may have been killed or harmed or have seen their parents humiliated by the enemy, and tend not to have their own dependents to worry for their care should they be killed. In the Palestinian territories children until the age of 16 have no ID cards, and therefore their identity can be confused for someone else, including similarly named relatives.
So what do we make of this. I do have compassion for Palestinian civilians harmed in the conflict, and that I don't take any joy at any of the suffering that they're going through. However, we cannot look at people who before achieving adulthood committed acts of violence including stabbings as "civilians". The real tragedy of the current situation is that Hamas and most other Palestinian groups have used teens (or "children" as they would call them) for a variety of attacks, and that they are now mortgaging the lives of actual innocent civilians including children from Israel and other countries like Thailand in order to have people that are accused or convicted of such crimes released back into society where they may indeed commit more acts of terror. As I was writing this, Hamas forced Yarden Bibas, whose wife and two sons ages 9 months and 4 years old were also being held captive and apparently killed, to film a hostage video pleading for the return of their bodies to Israel. through a prisoner exchange. I also heard about a family of Israeli Arab Bedouins, the Zeadnas, who had four members held hostage by Hamas, two of whom were released today. In order to get to this point Hamas waged a war that led to the killing of several thousand other Palestinians including children, all for the sake of further violent attacks.