Monday, June 6, 2011

Are Palestinian Children Less Worthy?

During the first and second intifada, more than 700 Palestinian children were killed, and a further 313 children died in the Israeli shelling of Gaza in December 2008-July 2009 [GALLO/GETTY] 

The following is an opinion piece in Al Jazeera English by Joseph Massad, Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University.

It begins by asking these questions:

"What is it about Jewish and Arab children that privileges the first and spurns the second in the speeches of President Barack Obama, let alone in the Western media more generally? Are Jewish children smarter, prettier, whiter? Are they deserving of sympathy and solidarity, denied to Arab children, because they are innocent and unsullied by the guilt of their parents, themselves often referred to as "the children of Israel"? Or, is it that Arab children are dangerous, threatening, guilty, even dark and ugly, a situation that can only lead to Arabopaedophobia - the Western fear of Arab children?

Click here to read the full story of 'Are Palestinian Children Less Worthy?'

 

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