I remember the Toys ‘R Us invasion when I was a child growing up in Kuwait. Along with the huge and — back then — alluring store came the toy figures such as GI Joe, Transformers, He-Man and the first Star Wars trilogy. I also remember seeing the children of American expatriates acting it out, whether it be by having small “battles” with their lightsabers or by having the huge Star Wars Star Destroyers fight some tiny rebel space ship commanded by the good Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia figures.

Even though those kids were usually on the “good” side of the fictional conflict, they never exerted any effort to know what was really going on. Why should they? It’s only a cartoon on television.

What made me remember those young American kids on this lovely day was the great resemblance your “opinion givers” have to them.

The kids made the “good guys” kill the “bad guys” in their toy-figure battles and your “opinion givers” were cheering their perceived “good guys” into killing their perceived “bad guys” of the real world.

Just like they confidently based their judgment on what they saw on television when they were kids to find out who the “good” and “bad” figures were, they now seem to confidently base their more serious judgment on the same “source.”

What they forget is that, while they weren’t expected to question the objectiveness of He-Man or Star Wars, they were surely expected to question the objectiveness of their news sources.

If they wished to support acts of murder, they must have traveled to the places they were so thrilled to damn to observe firsthand whether they were worthy of their recklessly wrathful intonations.

It’s no surprise then, that when they come to our occupied land of Palestine, to the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, they are shocked to realize that the Palestinians are the ones on the good side of the force fighting the dark side; they are the Luke Skywalkers of Star Wars or the Fremen of Dune battling the belligerent Evil Emperor Sharon and his accomplices.

Ask Rachel Corrie, although the Israelis silenced her forever — she’ll tell you in her diaries and published letters what Fox and CNN never told you, the unadulterated truth about what really goes on.

Tarek Al Farra

Sweileh, The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan