We have been so focussed on the children of Gaza, wringing our hands that they might be injured or killed or they might not have enough to eat or drink. “How could they be exposed to such weapons hidden in their toys?” Friends have said to me. We forgot that many times in the past years we saw videos of nursery school children learning how to kill Jews, of armed school children staging attacks on mock settlements, of puppet shows that teach children how to kill. It only now hit me that the children themselves are dangerous, that the weapons we find hidden in teddy bears are theirs, that many of the deaths and injuries are caused by the fact that they are in fact the enemy, trained from infancy.
It is terrible to endanger children, but perhaps it is more terrible to teach children to be dangerous.