Palestinian Child Sacrifice

During the Cold War, Sting hoped 'the Russians loved their children too.' Sadly, if Australian Darly Johns is right, Israel cannot entertain the same hope about their Palestinian neighbours .

Johns was so affected by media pictures of dead and wounded Palestinian children, allegedly the victims of Israeli aggression that she decided to do something about it. She went as a volunteer peace activist in the Palestinian Authority but when she arrived she was greeted by a far different reality. Johns discovered to her horror that Arab children are actually the victims of child abuse from their own society.


The following video is one of the most moving and disturbing I have ever seen. In it, Johns tearfully recounts how she came to realise that many of the children whose pictures she had been presented as evidence of Israel's cruelty had in fact died while attacking Jewish men, women and children at the behest of their elders.

The video includes clips of Palestinian children reciting hatred for the Jews and expressing a deep desire not for peace, but for war and Israel's demise.


Subtitles are all in French and Hebrew, but the following is a translation of most of the statements by the Arab children and where they can be found on the six-minute film:

1:38 - [Announcer] Her uncle was a martyr and went to Paradise. He's now in heaven! [To the young girl] Your uncle?

1:45 - [Girl] He's in Paradise.

2:42 - [Boy] We should show how our fighters resist. Like the young engineers Mohammed Sawimih and Abu Gnadl.

2:50 - [Interviewer] What did they do?

2:53 - [Boy] They are young engineers who set death traps. They blew up tanks of the Jews.

3:03 - They threw stones on the tanks. We went to see when they buried the martyrs. And a tank arrived and we threw stones at it, and the soldiers fled.

3:22 - It's true that we are a small country, but we have young engineers who can make grenades and bombs to blow up the tanks and cause the [Israeli] soldiers to flee.

3:37 - [Boy] We don't want peace!! We don't want peace!! We want war! We don't want peace. We want to die like all the martyrs in Jenin.

3:51 - [Interviewer] What chance is there for peace, if the children are educated to die? The youth do not forget those who died as martyrs?

3:54 - [Boy] How can we forget them? We do not forget them. We do not forget the blood of the martyrs. It is a martyr, he is with Allah. We do not forget him. We fight until we [also] die as martyrs.

4:44 - [Boy] Allah willing we will have a future, and I will be just like Sheikh Mahmud. That is my future.

4:52 - [Interviewer] Who is this Sheikh Mahmud who you want to be like?

4:55 - [Boy] He was an engineer of planes and everything. He built bombs and sent martyrs to blow up everything, buses and everything.

5:03 - [Interviewer] Do you see your future as a martyr?

5:06 - [Boy] No, that's not my future... [Interviewer] Then what is your future?

5:09 - Our future is for Israel to disappear. That is our future. That Israel will disappear, Allah willing.


In the interview Johns expresses her opinion that the willingness of Palestinian parents to encourage their people to die is like the ancient pagan practice of sacrificing virgins. She concludes the interview with the observation that the Palestinians 'never had any other intention except to eliminate Israel.'