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Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2007 12:15 pm| Quote: |
| Lindsey Hilsum writes on the worrying extremes of both Israeli and Palestinian teenagers.
The extremes of youth Lindsey Hilsum is international editor for Channel 4 News. This article first appeared in the New Statesman. First I stood in the Israeli settlement of Neve Dekalim and then, a few days later, I was on the other side of the wall, in the Palestinian town of Khan Younis. On both occasions it was the teenagers who worried me. In Neve Dekalim I met Chen and Emuntya, 14-year-old twins from a settlement in East Jerusalem who had come with their parents to protest about the removal of Jewish settlements from Gaza. Dressed in orange T-shirts, flat sandals and loose trousers covered by long skirts, they would not have looked out of place in the Summer of Love. They giggled when I asked them questions, and then out came the vitriol. "It doesn't matter if the Palestinians say this is their land. We conquered it, and we're here and we say it's ours," said Chen. "Anyway, we don't trust the Arabs; they just want to kill us," added Emuntya. "All Arabs are terrorists," interjected a friend. These are "hilltop youths", brought up in fortress-style Jewish settlements on the tops of hills in the West Bank and Jerusalem, looking down on the Palestinians in the valleys. Educated entirely at religious schools, they never encounter alternative views or religions. Theirs is a world of absolutes: the Jews must have whatever land they want; the Arabs deserve nothing; anyone who disagrees is a Nazi. "Compromise" is not in their vocabulary. "The rest of the world is just WRONG!" screeched a girl with shoulder-length brown hair, when I suggested that others might think differently. "Don't bother," said an older woman, as she pulled the girl away. "She's a Palestinian," she spat over her shoulder, as if that were the worst insult. When they gathered for the last stand in the synagogue at Neve Dekalim, the girls sang and prayed and wept and shrieked for hours. I felt I had walked into a bad acid trip at the Chalet School - hundreds of adolescent girls whipped into hysteria, burning with hatred and self-righteousness. In the beachside outpost of Shirat Hayam, police made a young girl empty her pockets, and found nails and spikes meant for their tyres. In Kfar Darom, girls sprayed acid on soldiers, causing several to be hospitalised. They played in the rubble of houses the Israeli army had razed to make a buffer zone - they haven't been allowed to go down to the beach for years, and there is nowhere else to go. The contrast with the California-suburb look of the settlements could not be greater. The bullet-marked facades of half-destroyed buildings were plastered with posters of martyrs, no distinction made between those who killed Jews as suicide bombers and innocent children felled by Israeli fire. This was the front line between settlers and Palestinians; to these children, dodging Israeli bullets and throwing rocks at settlers were normal. A unit of Palestinian security forces appeared. The children attacked, teenagers to the fore. The soldiers wrestled with them, but this was not good-natured rough-and-tumble. The young people are out of control. They have seen their parents humiliated by Israeli soldiers at checkpoints and they know that their armed forces cannot match Israeli firepower. They have no respect for authority because the authority figures in their society are manifestly powerless. They hate the Israeli occupiers, whom they refer to as "the Jews" or "the rapists". All their experiences reinforce the teachings of militant groups such as Hamas - to kill an Israeli is their dream. There will be no shortage of extremists in the years to come. The Palestinians cannot cope with so many people on such a small piece of land, and want to maintain demographic pressure on Israel. The religious Jews in the West Bank and Jerusalem settlements believe in having as many children as possible - Chen and Emuntya are from a family of nine. Most Israelis watched in disgust as the hilltop teenagers flouted the law and cursed Israeli soldiers, but their parents encourage them. This is the vanguard of a new generation of extremists with no regard for the institutions of their own state, let alone for the Palestinians. Israeli disengagement from Gaza went well for the authorities on both sides. Hamas did not disrupt it, so the Palestinian Authority was able to give an impression of control. The protests enabled Israel to show the outside world how difficult it was to withdraw from Gaza). Israelis are again talking about peace, Palestinians about statehood. But I look to the future and I worry. Both societies are militarised, and these kids are not being taught restraint. In 15 years, their generation will have political power. I'm not sure either side will be talking of compromise or peace then. |
Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2007 2:47 pm
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Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2007 4:12 pm
Y'what? I think that whole paragraph is slightly daft to me! And if it
*is* meant to apply to the books, I'm fairly sure that this person has
never read them, cause I don't recall anything of the sort in the
books. As for the rest, I wouldn't like to comment, but it seems to
have been painted in a light which was at least slightly biased. For a
start, what questions did the interviewer ask?
Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2007 4:36 pmPosted: Tue Jun 05, 2007 4:43 pmPosted: Tue Jun 05, 2007 5:42 pmPosted: Tue Jun 05, 2007 8:24 pm
).
Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 8:03 amPosted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 11:03 pm
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