Despite the massacres taking place in Palestine, room for smiling still exists just by imagining the kind of war Israel threatens to launch. The mighty Israeli Army will fight the mighty army of Palestinian school children.

I can imagine a military report from the Israeli army about destroying the platoon of Gaza junior high school students. With the same report stating that the kindergartens of Jerusalem are discovered to be stone throwing training camps for the children.

Ehud Barak might give a statement that the Palestinian army is very mobile; its soldiers can run under the four-foot barricades without bending.

It is a tragedy that Israel still finds the reasons and support to make their killing of the children necessary and even ethical. Is the killing of children a divine promise? Is it how Israelis will feel secure? Throughout history, humans have found reasons to enslave and kill one another.

Nevertheless, killing and slavery should never be accepted. Killing unarmed people is not accepted.

History also says that if one has power, one can always buy the reasons for wrongdoing, and this is what is happening today in the Middle East.

I can’t understand how Israel is still arguing that the Palestinians are responsible for their own killing.

Israel has the mighty army occupying other territories. All Israel needs to do is just pull out of these territories and give some freedom to the Palestinians.

Sameh Al-Shihabi

Graduate student

Industrial engineering