A “Call for Young People” was put out early Friday in Arabic over the Internet via the Twitter social networking site, accompanied by a glowing picture of an Arab teen preparing to hurl a rock with a slingshot.
The fancy computer graphics are attractive to the eye, with bright colors that are sulfurous yellow and cherry-red above. The human figure is in ethereal white. The message seems pretty clear: violence awaits.
The “call” is only one of many such methods used to recruit new blood for the Palestinian Authority terror machine, which has begun to feed on its own children.
Allegedly the logic behind the strategy is two-fold:
1. Israeli authorities are loathe to jail a child, particularly one at age 13 or below, regardless of crime committed;
2. If the child is shot and wounded or killed during the course of attacking Israelis, that too is a “plus” because it makes for a terrific photo image to be used abroad, one that conveys the ultimate in “poor Arab population being abused by the powerful Israelis” graphics.
One way to avoid falling in to this abyss is to bar news coverage at a terror attack site. That is not popular but it can be done, citing the safety of media. Another way, and probably more effective, is for security personnel to erect an opaque cylindrical barrier around the body of any child terrorist shot or otherwise wounded during any attack.
Such a barrier will prevent the photographing of such images and their immediate misuse by media abroad.
The “call for young people” being flashed around the region by social networks in Arabic is not new: it is just updated with the Internet and bells and whistles now provided with computer graphics programs.
The sooner Israel learns to counter such posts, the better off we all will be.