News

Ayub Asaliya was on his way to school last Sunday

535585097
Ayub Asaliya

My heart keeps breaking over him, the loving hand touching his face, the loss felt by the person cupping his cheek for the last time. Is that his father? Ever since I first saw his photo, I cannot recall where but there was no name for him, he symbolized all the martyred children of Palestine for me. I didn’t know who he was but I kept his photo on my desktop and have been looking at it for days.

Today, for no particular reason I came upon Shayna’s blog, and a post she had written titled Ayub Asaliya:

Ayub was a little twelve-year-old boy on his way to school who was killed by the IDF “shelling”. Hearing about little Ayub really hit me hard. I think it is because he was on his way to school. The little boy was doing the “right thing” headed to school, and his life here was taken from him by dudes conducting war in a civilian population.

I don’t like when people use emotionally charged words to convey their message. But I think about it, it really is like little Ayub was murdered on the way to school. I don’t think a child deserves that.

I don’t know when I will stop crying over Ayub. I think what happened to him, speaks to the wrong of conducting war on a civilian population.

I wish I could find a picture of Ayub from when he was alive, because I would like to post it here.

I knew this was the boy in my photo. After googling his name I came upon another photo of him. Yes, it was the same boy. AFP says he was killed last Sunday.

Shayna’s blog is covered with pink roses, belly dancing and surfing. And Ayub too. If anyone finds a photo of Ayub when he was alive, could you please send it to @shaynaamour.

Shayna, thank you for expressing such beauty and purity of heart.

(Reports on Ayub’s death found here, here, and @mshafiquk )

27 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

That photo is heart wrenching, the pathos is unbearable. It speaks more eloquently than a thousand diatribes against the monsters who do this with no shame or retribution. It should be displayed everywhere, except of course the Israeli smear machine will go into overdrive, such is the heartlessness of their ideology.

Please stop mentioning the IDF, and in such an accusing way. He fell from a swing. And, by the way, he fell from the swing on the flight. They all do.

There was a Palestinian American murdered in Texas, who spoke about the children who died in this conflict, his body found in a lake, after he was reportedly under FBI investigation. There certainly is huge resistance to speaking about these Palestinian children murdered by Israel, and publishing pictures of their faces. Their faces need to be plastered everywhere, on milk cartons, on billboards, we need to force the people everywhere to look at their faces, and to see it is not their children, it is our children being killed. All children, we need to see them each one as “our children.”

The man who died in Texas in mysterious circumstances that I addressed in my last post, his name was Riad Elsohl Hamad, he was a teacher, he worked with Palestine Children’s Welfare Fund.

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2008/04/216918.php

Over the weekend, my niece was sending all of her friends on facebook a link to a very effective You Tube video about Joseph Kony.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc

Joseph Kony has the honor/dishonor of being the number one man wanted by the ICC for war crimes, related to his abduction of children who are forced to become child sex slaves and child soldiers in his Rebel Army in Uganda and surrounding countries in Africa. What this video demonstrates is how people of conscience have been able to join together, taking on the cause of children, to bring the US government to send 100 soldiers to Uganda to assist in capturing Joseph Kony.

I believe the cause of the children being killed and injured and maimed in the Israeli Palestinian conflict could be used in a similar fashion to open the eyes of people in the US to the plight these children are facing, as well as other innocent civilians, and once presented with the facts of what is happening to these children and other innocents in Palestine, people, including politicians, would be forced to take a stand against these human rights abuses.

A problem we seem to have is people who try to bring up the plight of the children in Palestine are being attacked. And of course, we need a campaign organized along the same lines as that used to apprehend Joseph Kony.