Do you know the names of the three Israeli children who were kidnapped and killed, asks Raza Nadim?
It’s not that hard to find out. The BBC mentions their names and ages: Naftali Frenkel, aged 16; Gilad Shaar, aged 16; and Eyal Yifrach, aged 19.
But do you know the names of the Muslim children in Palestine that have been recently killed by Israel? I didn’t think you did.
It is actually really hard to know the exact number of Muslim children killed by Israel, and even harder to find out their names.
Fortunately, due to alternative media sources and social media, which allows us to talk to people in Palestine more regularly, we know some of the names of the Muslim and Christian children killed by Israel.
For example, Yousef al-Shawamrah, aged 14, was shot in the back and left to bleed to death by Israeli forces on 19 March 2014. He was gathering thistles near his West Bank village.
If you search for Yousef’s full name, it’s really hard to find major news corporations that actively covered his brutal murder.
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And I know some smart aleck will say “oh, but it was mentioned in some media outlets so what are you complaining about?”.
Really? In the same way that the deaths of these Israeli teenagers has been?
Do we know more about the child? What were his dreams? How are his parents coping? How angry are the local Muslims?
You cannot even begin to compare the massive difference in news coverage between the cases.
It becomes even more shocking when you consider the number of Muslims and Christians in Palestine killed by Israel. Official statistics from the Ministry of Information in Ramallah reveal that 1,518 Palestinian children were killed by Israel’s army from the outbreak of the second Intifada, in September 2000, up to April 2013.
That’s the equivalent of one Palestinian child killed by Israel every 3 days for almost 13 years
And that is the simple reason why no Muslim will ever mourn the death of any Israeli teenager killed.
Our dead had names too. But we barely know their names. When is the BBC going to give their deaths coverage?
When will we be told by the rage that burns in the heart of so many Muslims because of Zionist aggression?
When will we hear from the families broken by Israel’s terror and aggression?
Ask any Muslim and they’ll probably tell you that they have come to expect major media outlets, who inform the opinions of so many, to ignore our dead.
If our people’s blood is going to be treated as cheap, don’t pretend to be shocked when we treat Israeli blood as the same.
