Why Children?

Death in Gaza is a documentary made by James Miller and Saira Shah. Its about the

children of Palestine who have suffered enormously because of the conflict there.

Basically it follows the lives of three young chilren in Gaza. Ahmed and Mohammed

who are 12 and Najla who is 16. Miller and Shah initially intended to make the

documentary with children from both sides of the divide, but then were unable to do

so.


This was because James Miller was killed by the Israeli soldiers while filming for

the documentary. The way the whole video of the shooting (taken by a local film

crew) looks, it seems to be a massacre. Of the whole crew, all of who were wearing

TV crew flak jackets, with TV written on them, wearing helmets, waving a white flag

and using cameras, only Miller was shot dead. This seems to be a way by which the

IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) tried tho show who was still the boss around there.

Miller's death has brought more attention to the film than the attention it would

have recieved had he lived. Ironic and morbid as it may seem, it is a fact. The

unfinished documentary has been released...unfinished because it wasnt completed

with the Israeli chilren in it.


I havent actually seem the whole documentary, but then the parts that i saw on tv

now were enough for me.


All I can see is someone who was trying to bring out the suffering of children in

the middle east to this world was killed, leaving two small chldren

fatherless...and the story of how many adults in the guise of nationalism and

religion are responsible for the deaths of many innnocent children who live under

some of the most extraordinarily chaotic and dangerus situations in the world.

Ahmed in the period of the filming has been recruited by the local paramilitary

organisation. The film shows him at one of the meetings. The leader of the paras

teaches him how to hold a rocket launcher. Then he hugs and kisses Ahmed and says

that they all love him very much. All this and he knows he is sending the boy to

his death. When asked how he can send a child to his death, stuff he says is like :

"We are men and we know responsibility" and "If Ahmed dies there are a thousand

kids more like him".


And he says they all love Ahmed.


They love him because everyone killed there is a martyr...a death and the posters

come out...freshposters with the pictures of the person killed so that more

individual passions are inflamed and more new recruits are found...

Najla has had more than 4 young relatives of her's killed. One was killed as h

emerged from school..another when he left from a private study. Now she wants to

know if she will also die.


I couldnt care less about the fighting. If only the children are left alone. Why is

it that children always have to be involved in the fight? Everywhere there has been

a conflict, be it the African civil wars, the war that was fought between the ltte

and the government in Sri Lanka or Afghanistan under the taliban..why does it

always have to be children also fighting?


In fact this has become so epidemic in Palestine that a while back when an Israeli

soldier asked a school girl to stop and she did not, he just shot her on the

suspicion that she had explosives in her bag.


When will this exploitaion stop??? Who will stop it and how??


And when people like Miler try to bring it out to the rest of the world, They are

killed.


But in the end...all I want to know is: Why Children?