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Infants and Children –Victims of Palestinian Terror
The third millennium began with a horrific wave
of terror attacks throughout the world: in Asia,
the Middle East and the United States. The
motives behind those carrying out these attacks
are different, as are their goals, but all have
selected terror as their principal weapon to
achieve their political ends.
With total contempt for moral values, human
rights and international law, these groups and
organizations have chosen to use deliberate violence
against innocent civilians.Terrorism’s immediate
goal is to plant fear in the hearts of
potential targets, to completely disrupt normal life
and create public pressure on decision makers in
order to force them to capitulate to the terrorists’
political demands.
From the terrorist’s perspective, Israel’s civilians
serve a twofold purpose. First, they are the targets
of the terror assaults. Secondly, the terrorist
hopes that the country’s citizens will be so horrified
by the attacks that they will pressure the government
to give in to their extORTionist demands.
In the eyes of the terrorist, the more brutal, savage
and deadly the attacks, The more effective
they are likely to be.
The Palestinian terrorists are among the
“pioneers” of modern terror. They helped “blaze”
the terror trail with a series of high-profile airplane
hijackings in the 1960s, and have proven
themselves especially savage and cruel ever since.
From the outset, Israeli children have always been
a major target for the Palestinian terrorist. A
number of examples from the past illustrate this
all too well:
*Armed Palestinian terrorists attacked a school
bus in 1970, taking children from the Avivim
Moshav to their nearby school, killing 12
children.
*In May 1974, Palestinian terrorists attacked a
bus with students from Safed, who were on tour
to Ma’alot, killing 22 children.
*More recently, in June 2001, a suicide terrorist
blew himself up while standing among a
crowd of teenagers waiting in line to enter a
discotheque at the Dolphinarium in Tel Aviv,
killing 21.
*In December 2001, two suicide bombers blew
themselves up at almost the same time on
Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall –
crowded on that particular Saturday night with
youths celebrating a friend’s birthday – killing 11.
*In May 2001, Palestinian terrorists brutally murdered
two young hikers they happened to
come across near the community of Tekoa.
Using rocks, they smashed the boys’ faces
beyond recognition.
*In March 2001, a Palestinian sniper shot and
killed a ten-month-old Jewish baby girl in
Hebron.
*In August 2001, Palestinian terrorists shot up a
car full of Israeli teenagers in a drive-by shooting,
killing a 17-year-old girl.
These acts of terror succeeded in achieving one
of the terrorists’aims – sowing fear and planting
terror among the population.
From time to time, the moral question of deliberately
targeting civilians – especially children – in
the context of “Palestinian resistance” is raised
in Palestinian society. The terror chiefs, however,
repeatedly deflect all such questions, claiming
that no Israeli citizen – boy or girl, man or
woman, civilian or soldier – can be considered
innocent.
That so many Israeli children have been murdered
in the last two years reflects – perhaps
more than enything else – the depth of cruelty and
lack of humanity implicit in Palestinian terror.
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