I’m as disturbed as anyone by the savage beating and murder of the 13-year-old Syrian boy who was involved in a children’s protest against the regime. On CNN last night Fran Townsend said it was emblematic of the inability of Arab regimes to deal with the young people who are demanding to be vocal participants in their societies.
Ok. But can the media ever address Palestine? What about the 7-year-old arrested by the Israelis in occupied East Jerusalem the other day? Is this case not in the same category? Police had to rough up his family to get him out of the house. Isn’t he emblematic? The former congressman Brian Baird likes to point out that there are 600,000 people under 16 in Gaza– a couple of them are shown at left, in Nils Andersson’s photograph from Nakba Day in Gaza– and that the future is in their hands, and Israel is caging them in conditions generally far worse than what Arabs are experiencing in Syria.
