>>snipers will take advantage of the preoccupation of troops with rioting children, including teenagers, to take shots at troops.
This is the first time I am hearing of this strategy. Could you summarize why you believe this is true?
zonder, did you read this article I posted to ET?
Message 18558537
it documents the PA's recruitment of "martyrs", including specifically child martyrs.
I have read articles in the Israeli press documenting coordination between the Tanzim and rock-throwing children, where the children were given their orders about where to stand and where to throw the rocks, while the gun-wielding Tanzim took up positions in the rear of them. Who should be surprised at this? Everyone knew that the children might be killed if the Israelis started to fire, but shudaha is a "good thing", so that is okay.
As for the rationale behind the strategy, that is not hard to find either. The intifada was always a battle with two fronts. One in the streets, and the other in the newspapers, Arab, European and American. Pictures of dead kids are a potent weapon in the newspapers. Pictures of rock-throwing kids against tanks are another potent weapon. Have you ever noticed how few pictures of Palestinians shooting guns or lobbing grenades make the papers? Stop to think about it. Are Palestinians with guns a rare feature in this combat? Not at all, right? So why do we see only the IDF shooting, but the Palestinians are pictured mostly as rock-throwers? Because the Palestinian reporting is controlled, and is done mostly by Palestinian stringers who openly support the Palestinian side, and consider their job to be fighting on the PR front. The PR front plays up Palestinian weakness and desperation, so pictures of armed Palestinians are to be avoided. |
