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Settlers 'using' children
17/08/2005 21:16 - (SA)
Kerem Atzmona - Terrified children were caught on Wednesday in the tug-of-war between settlers and soldiers in the Gaza pull-out.
As troops ordered settlers to leave, one family pinned orange Star of David badges on eight screaming children who marched out of a trailer with hands raised - a scene apparently meant to stir up images of the Nazi deportation of Jews.
Elsewhere, a father shoved his daughter, about 10 years old, toward a soldier, shouting: "Expel her, please take her, you are such a hero." A mother cut the shirts of two young boys with scissors, in a ritual or mourning.
Some settlers had sent their children to live with relatives in Israel so they would not be traumatised. However, others kept their children close, saying they want them to remember the day they were forced out of their houses.
In the Morag settlement, resident Michal Unterman held her pre-school age daughter in her arms earlier this week and told her to look at a soldier delivering an eviction notice. She told the child she should remember the moment. Parents 'using' children
Others warned the youngsters would be deeply traumatised.
"They pretend that the children are suffering, but they (the parents) are the main cause of the suffering of the children," said media analyst Yoram Peri. "Instead of helping them, they are using them."
Yitzhak Kadman, executive director of the National Council for the Child, warned that "children should not be a tool for parents or any other adults to promote their cause".
Peri said recruiting children for the struggle over the Gaza pull-out would produce a backlash in Israel. "The majority of Israelis can identify with their (the settlers') suffering, but would not accept the use of children for that purpose," he said. "That is counter-productive."
Throughout the day on Wednesday, children were at the centre of the confrontations, but also some of the most heart-wrenching moments.
In the Morag settlement, soldiers carried toddlers out of a nursery and loaded diapers and toys onto buses for evacuation. A female soldier with tears in her eyes held a toddler in her arms, gave him some candy and implored, "Where is his mother?" Another soldier waved away flies from a toddler lying in a stroller.
However, in Kerem Atzmona, a hardline settlement outpost, a boy of about five years old came to the door of his house with an orange Star of David on his shirt and pointed to it yelling, "this isn't for nothing".
"I am a believing Jew, a settler and you are evil Jews," the boy shouted at security forces and journalists.
- AP
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