Dr. Yoav Hoffman, a senior physician at the
pediatric intensive care unit of Western Galilee Hospital in Nahariya,
said that his department has received 25 seriously injured Syrian
children between the ages of a few months and 17 since last July,
delivered to the hospital by the IDF.
Located 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the
border with Lebanon, Western Galilee Hospital has treated a total of 230
Syrians since March 2013, many of them sent to the facility’s new
neurosurgery department.
Hoffman said that up to six of his unit’s
patients have displayed distinct bullet injuries that indicate
intentional sniper targeting.
“The injuries are very specific: gunshot
wounds from a single bullet to the lumbar spine, near vertebrates 2 and
3,” Hoffman told The Times of Israel. “These shootings are not intended
to kill, but to cause misery. They result in paralysis or slow death in
Syria’s conditions.”
Hoffman said that he had never seen such
injuries outside the battlefield; his colleagues initially believed that
the spinal injuries were a coincidence. But when patients displaying
the same injuries kept coming in, the hospital staff was “moved to
tears” as it realized that the children were being targeted.
This is what summer camp is like in Gaza, where children as young as 6 learn military discipline and how to kidnap Israel soldiers.
Youths aged between six and 16 were seen taking part in a range of exercises, including one that simulated the capture of an Israeli soldier.
Elsewhere in the mock warzone in the town of Rafah, budding fighters crawled under barbed wire, jumped through fire and ducked for cover behind sandbags in the desert terrain.
Explosions and burning tyres helped to simulate realistic battle conditions, as boys were coached to flee from the enemy and shoot at targets. Bullets were fired overhead by their masked supervisors.
The boys were also pictured marching and standing to attention as orders were barked at them to instil military discipline.
Many more pictures here. Maybe someone should send them to Ban Ki-Moon. The 'Palestinians' are a totally sick society. At my kids' camps, what they really care about is how often they get to go swimming.
UN slams use of child soldiers, forgets 'Palestinian' 'human shields' and child combatants
Commendably (for a change), the United Nations has slammed the use of child soldiers in Syria and in several other countries. Regrettably, they left out the use of children as 'human shields' (above) and combatants (below) by the 'Palestinians' and other terror organizations.
The report issued after Ban's special envoy for children and armed
conflict, Leila Zerrougui, visited Syria in December said thousands of
children have been killed in the violence, "while thousands more have
seen family members killed or injured."
The report also said children are recruited, killed, maimed or raped
by government forces and armed groups in Afghanistan, Chad, the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan and Yemen, as
well as by armed groups in Mali, Colombia, the Philippines, Myanmar,
Iraq and the Central African Republic.
The United Nations considers anyone aged under 18 to be a child.
Ban
said that in Syria, torture and ill-treatment of children accused of
associating with opposition forces was a worrying trend.
"There
were a number of accounts of sexual violence against boys to obtain
information or a confession by the state forces, largely but not
exclusively by members of the state intelligence services and the Syrian
armed forces," the report said.
"Child detainees, largely boys
and as young as 14 years old, suffered similar or identical methods of
tortures as adults, including electric shock, beatings, stress positions
and threats and acts of sexual torture," it said.
Armed
opposition groups, including the Free Syrian Army, were also accused of
using children, generally aged 15 to 17 years old, both in combat and in
support roles, such as ferrying food and water and loading cartridges,
the report said.
"From accounts received, child association with
the Free Syrian Army is often linked to an older relative facilitating
recruitment or in instances in which the child has lost all members of
his or her family," it said.
But the United Nations 'forgot' (more likely didn't want to mention) the use of children as 'human shields' by 'Palestinian' terror organizations like Fatah and Hamas.
The picture at the bottom is of 'Palestinian' kids coming right up to the border fence with Israel on November 23, 2012.
And then there's this use of a child.
Let's go to the videotape.
But silly me. In the UN's book, it's okay for the 'Palestinians' to use children in combat and as 'human shields.' After all, the 'Palestinians' are a 'liberation movement.'
#AnaLama: Saudi preacher who raped and murdered daughter pays 'blood money' and is released
You may recall Lamaa, the 5-year old Saudi girl who was raped (not part of the previous post - just found that out now), tortured and murdered by her father, a Saudi television preacher.
The only good news I can tell you is that the preacher has now been named. His name is Fayhan al-Ghamdi.
The bad news is that he has now paid 'blood money' and has been released from custody by the Saudi authorities. No trial (heck - he admitted he did it). No prison sentence. Just money for snuffing out a little girl's life.
Fayhan al-Ghamdi had been accused of killing his daughter Lama, who
suffered multiple injuries including a crushed skull, broken back,
broken ribs, a broken left arm and extensive bruising and burns. Social
workers say she had also been repeatedly raped and burnt.
Fayhan
al-Ghamdi admitted using a cane and cables to inflict the injuries after
doubting his five-year-old daughter’s virginity and taking her to a
doctor, according to the campaign group Women to Drive.
Rather
than getting the death penalty or receiving a long prison sentence for
the crime, Fayhan al-Ghamdi served only a few months in jail before a
judge ruled the prosecution could only seek ‘blood money’.
Albawaba News
reported the judge as saying: "Blood money and the time the defendant
had served in prison since Lama's death suffices as punishment."
Fayhan al-Ghamdi, who regularly appears on television in Saudi Arabia, is said to have agreed to pay £31,000 to Lama’s mother.
The
money is considered compensation under Islamic law, although it is only
half the amount that would have been paid had Lama been a boy.
Despite
Saudi Arabia’s famously strict legal system, Women to Drive say fathers
cannot be executed for murdering their children in the country.
Equally, husbands cannot be executed for murdering their wives.
Formal
objections to the ruling have been raised by three Saudi activists, and
the twitter hashtag #AnaLama (which translates as I Am Lama) has been
set up.
What's a girl's life worth in Saudi Arabia? £31,000. And a boy's life is worth £62,000. Really not a whole lot more What a sick society and a sick religion.
Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad dropped cluster bombs on children playing in a park in a Damascus suburb on Sunday. Ten of the children were killed.
Let's go to the videotape.
But the UN Security Council has not been called into session. No one is calling for a 48-hour cessation of the war to determine how the accident happened because this wasn't an accident. In fact, if you do a Google search limited to the last 24 hours, you will see that no one even noticed this story until around 7:00 am Israel time on Monday, when the Beirut Daily Star noticed it. The BBC picked it up about three hours later - the other entries mostly start about four hours after that. The story has gotten little or no coverage in the US.
But hey - it's just Muslims killing Muslims, so why should the world be interested?
Where do your kids go for their class trips? In Israel, they usually don't go far away and until 6th grade or thereabouts, they don't stay away overnight. In the US, some of my friends' kids may get a trip to Washington or something similar during the late stages of High School.
But in Islamist Turkey, they're taking elementary school kids on class trips to Mecca and Medina (but not Jerusalem, which Islam also claims to consider holy since the Jews reclaimed it).
Turkey's Directorate of Religious affairs has organized an Umrah visit to Mecca for elementary and high school students during semester break.
...
The visit is planned as 10-day trip with five days in Mecca and five days in Medina. The letters says the expedition aims at "improving the knowledge and experience of students.” It was also give the students the chance “to visit places of significance in Islamic history.”
The Directorate requested the immediate announcement of the tour and asked for a list of students, parents and teachers who wish to take part in the trip.
The Çaycuma office of the Educators' Union reacted to the Umrah program, saying it was an extension of the state's policy of incorporating religion into education.
Union representative İsmet Akyol said it was unacceptable the way the Religious Directorate perceived schools as their branch offices. He said the program was against a scientific and secular education.
'Abba, the most important thing is I'm alive - I wasn't near that bus'
I found a voice mail on my cell phone this morning from 3:30 yesterday afternoon. It was from my 11.5 year old son, who was on a bus going through town when the bomb went off yesterday. As I wrote at the time in the Liveblog, my son said that his bus had been diverted to Givat Shaul (a nearby neighborhood), but in the message he said that he did not know how to get where he needed to go. But we could not call him because he does not have a cell phone - he had borrowed one from a grown-up.
He ended his message with the title of this post: "But the most important thing is I'm alive - I wasn't near that bus."
I have another child who was about 100 meters from Sbarro on the day it blew up in 2002. But she was older then.
Golda Meir once quipped that we would have peace with the Arabs when they love their own children more than they hate ours. I don't see that happening. And I bitterly resent the loss of innocence that my children suffer on days like yesterday.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
