Posted on 12/19/2002 1:13:58 PM PST by Nachum
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has issued a new report to the Security Council condemning 23 nations and movements that recruit child soldiers - yet one entity particularly known for massive recruitment of child warriors is conspicuously absent: the Palestinian Authority.
"For the first time in an official report to the Security Council," said Olara Otunnu, Annan's special representative for children and armed conflict, "those who violate standards for the protection of war-affected children have been specifically named and listed." Despite this blanket statement, WorldNetDaily.com reports that amidst cited offenders such as Afghanistan, Colombia, the Philippines, Sudan, and many others, the Palestinian Authority - where "children continue to be raised, virtually from birth, to be jihad warriors" - is not mentioned.
The intentional recruitment of PA children to die as suicide bombers is accomplished, writes WorldNetDaily.com yesterday, "through constant indoctrination in the mosques, by way of television programming, and in the school classroom."
On the other hand, the PA is theoretically a government, and the Al-Aqsa Brigades - a wholly owned subsidiary of the Fatah movement which is in effect the government of the PA - recruit children.
There is recruitment which spans both government and religion amoungst these people. It is not only the recruitment of children from the government schools, but it is thrown into a pita with children's television programming, preschool and gradeschool indoctrination, and religious calls for the same from the imams. Gradeschool textbooks are not far off from being a primer for child soldiering.
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