Children as 'Warriors'

I've never taken my children to a political demonstration because I've always felt uneasy about 'indoctrinating' them to my own own views and prejudices, so as with religion, for example, I think that young people ought to understand the arguments for an against, but make their own minds up once they are old enough. 

So I was shocked the other day when I saw a picture of a very young boy, the son of an Australian 'jihadi' in either  Syria or Iraq, who was proudly holding up the severed head of a captured prisoner, another Muslim in all likelihood, who had been beheaded by his father or one of his father's 'brave' Islamic warriors only moments before.

Now that is cruel beyond belief and not only towards the terrified, murdered prisoner because the young boy is being abused and groomed to follow in his father's footsteps.

The same thought jumped into my head when I saw a young Gazan girl on the TV who had been severely injured by some Israeli missile strike and the journalist told the story of how efforts were being made to evacuate the child out of Gaza so that she could receive proper treatment.

But as her mother (wearing a full veil) was comforting the child, the journalist added that the girl who had previously wished to become a doctor when she grew up, now wanted to 'join the resistance' which I thought was utterly depressing.

Because that thought, if you ask me, can only have come from the child's parents, planted deliberately I imagine, and can only serve to fuel the cycle of violence and hatred that so consumes the Middle East.