'Palestinian' Arabs' Muslim vicious tactics of HUMAN SHIELDS

Tulkarm, West Bank - In a rare letter of protest sent in early December to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, a Palestinian women's group demanded that the Palestinian Authority stop using children as cannon fodder.
"Our children are being sent into the streets to face heavily armed Israeli soldiers," said the letter from the Tulkarm Women's Union - a local branch of the Palestinian Women's Union, a trade-union group that promotes the status of women in the Palestinian Authority.
"The Palestinian Authority must put an end to this phenomenon. We urge you to issue instructions to your police force to stop sending innocent children to their death."
The letter adds weight to complaints from parents who are beginning to speak out despite what they say has been months of intimidation by armed gunmen loyal to Arafat.
'We don't want to send our sons to the front line, but they are being taken by the Palestinian Authority," says Aisheh, 43, a mother of six in the West Bank city of Tulkarm. She says she decided to speak out after her 17-year-old son was hit in the head by a rubber bullet. He suffered a concussion.
Like other protesting parents, Aisheh declines to allow her full name to be published for fear of reprisals. A nurse from Gaza who spoke out on Palestinian TV against sending children to the flash points was condemned in the Palestinian media as a traitor. Other individuals who refuse to allow their names to be published say they have been threatened by armed Fatah officials for discouraging their children from participating in the clashes.
Israel has faced international criticism for the deaths of at least 38 youths under the age of 17 in the first two months of conflict in which nearly 300 people have died. Nearly 1,000 children have been injured. The Palestinians consider anyone under the age of 17 a child. But children just entering their teens-and some even younger-have been injured in the region's worst violence in nearly a decade.
Bassam Abu Sharif, a special adviser to Arafat, has accused Israeli troops of "cold-blooded killing." He denies Israeli accusations that the Palestinian Authority has placed children at the front of demonstrations to act as human shields for armed gunmen.
"We don't send children-nobody can send children-and we don't hide behind children," Abu Sharif says.
But Aisheh says the militia of Arafat's Fatah movement and the Palestinian security forces provide transportation and encouragement to children eager to answer the call to combat Israel's continued presence on Arab land. "When school finishes, Palestinian Authority security cars go around collecting children from the streets and sending them to the killing fields," she says. "This is very serious because they are children and they are unarmed."
Israeli army chiefs point out that not all the children killed in the recent clashes have been innocent bystanders. They say their snipers have orders to shoot anyone shooting or throwing Molotov cocktails at them, but some of the attackers have been as young as 12.
Palestinian Authority TV broadcasts constant images of children carrying weapons and staging mock attacks on Israelis. Over the summer, children as young as 12 were trained in the use of Kalshnikov rifles and other weapons at special camps by Fatah officials.
"As the number of those killed rises, the Palestinian media extol and exalt not only those killed, but also their willingness to die as martyrs for Allah, emphasizing that dying a martyr's death was the realization of their hopes," says Itamar Marcus, director of the Palestinian Media Watch monitoring group.
Palestinian Authority TV and newspapers also have come under fire, accused of encouraging children to throw stones and Molotov cocktails at armed Israeli troops.
Aisheh's husband, Abdelghani, says intimidation has kept parents from speaking out. "No one here dares to say publicly that he is against sending his own children to the front line," he says. "Some parents who have tried to protest have been condemned as fifth columnists (traitors) and threatened."

More:

When Attacking Israelis - Palestinians Use Children as "Human Shields" - Palestinians use children like this as "Human Shields" and then call this child a "hero" if he gets hurt! Where are the parents of these children? ... Behind these children are Palestinian "peaceful demonstrators" using live gunfire at Israeli soldiers and civilians!
www.israelnewsagency.com/plochild.html
http://www.israelpr.com/plochild.html

ISRAEL TO U.N.
"KEEP PALESTINIANS FROM USING
KIDS AS SHIELDS"

By Herb Keinon, THE JERUSALEM POST
November 8, 2000

United Nations Human Rights High Commissioner Mary Robinson is to begin a week-long visit to the area today, with Foreign Ministry officials saying they will present a strong case to her about the Palestinian's "cynical" use of children as human shields in the recent riots.
Foreign Ministry legal adviser Alan Baker said the use of children in the violence constitutes no less than a "war crime," and cites various international conventions to back up his position. Various international treaties, Baker says, set the age of 15 as minimum age for a child to participate in hostilities, whether directly - through combat - or through other means.
According to Baker, the Palestinians are well aware of the IDF's firing procedures: tear gas and water hoses against rock throwers, rubber bullets against firebomb throwers, and live fire against gunmen.
Prime Minister Ehud Barak explained that the Palestinians are placing the stonethrowers in the front lines, followed by the fire-bomb hurlers and then the snipers. In some cases, he said, some of the Palestinian youths killed during the clashes have actually been shot from behind.
The use of children as combatants was spelled out last week in a letter Israeli Ambassador to the UN Yehuda Lancry wrote to the executive director of UNICEF, asking the children's rights advocate to pressure the Palestinians to keep their children out of areas of potential conflict.
"Chairman Yasser Arafat, who is ruthlessly encouraging the involvement of children in the violence, calls them 'the Generals of the rocks.' He would have the world believe that Israel, with its guns and helicopters, is waging a war against 10-year-olds with small stones," Lancry wrote. "In truth, however, the children... are used as human shields for the gunmen, bomb throwers, and lynch mobs whose faces have been totally obscured and invisible to the media."
The message seems to be getting through, at least at a declarative level.
Yesterday, PA Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said, "There has been an overwhelming agreement among Palestinian factions to carry out a public-awareness campaign to prevent those children under 16 years old from taking part in these demonstrations." According to Abed Rabbo, the children are not knowingly being used as cannon fodder, but rather take part in the protests as a genuine expression of pain and grievance.
The problem, Baker says, is that children at that age are incapable of making the kind of logical decisions regarding whether to place themselves in life-threatening situations, and are in need of parental guidance and authority to protect them.
Regarding Robinson's visit, Mordechai Yedid, deputy director-general of the Foreign Ministry's UN and International Organizations division, said Israel will receive her as the head of the UN's Commission on Human Rights, but not as part of a human rights inquiry commission the body set up last month after adopting a one-sided resolution condemning Israel for "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israel, said Yedid, has informed Robinson that it will not cooperate with the body, or in any way assist it in implementing the resolution.
During her two-day visit, Robinson will meet with Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, and Supreme Court President Aharon Barak. A meeting with Prime Minister Ehud Barak is still in the works.
She is scheduled to go to the Palestinian Authority on Friday, where she is slated to meet Arafat and will surely be flooded with numerous allegations of Israeli human rights violations.
Robinson is a former president of Ireland and is seen as a possible candidate in the race to succeed Kofi Annan when his term as UN secretary-general expires in two years.

Hamas Explains Use of Civilians as Human Shields