Aside from its sheer barbarism, this chant reflects the widespread belief among Israeli Jews that Israel scored an impressive victory in Gaza – a victory measured, not least, by the death toll.....
Hatred, in other words, is the great winner of this war. It has helped mobilise racist mobs, and as the soccer chant indicates it has left absolutely no place for the other, undermining even basic empathy for innocent children. Israel's masters of war must be happy: the seeds of the next wars have certainly been sown.
Anti-Arab sentiment swells among youth in aftermath of Gaza war: Globe and Mail, January 26, 2009 - When the leader of Israel's religious-Zionist Meimad Party recently addressed a meeting of 800 high-school students in a Tel Aviv suburb, his words on the virtue of Israeli democracy for all its citizens were drowned out by student chants of "Death to the Arabs."Not since the days of the now-illegal Kach party, and Baruch Goldstein killing 29 Muslims at prayer in Hebron in 1994, has Rabbi Michael Melchior heard such anti-Arab sentiment.
But that sentiment is swelling, and the controversial former cabinet minister Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beitenu party are riding the wave. They have emerged as the biggest political winners from the recent war on Gaza. Their unequivocal anti-Arab policies have never been more popular....
Observers worry Gaza war scarred children with hate for Israel: Orlando Sentinel, January 25, 2009 - ....Psychologists say Israel's three-week offensive inflicted more severe trauma than previous conflicts in Gaza because civilians in the crowded sliver of territory had no safe place to run. A wartime study among hundreds of Gaza children showed a rise in nightmares, bedwetting and other signs of trauma, said psychologist Fadel Abu Hein.
Counselors and aid workers fear that Gaza's children, who make up 56 percent of the 1.4 million people here, will grow up hating Israel and become easier prey for extremists.
"We are losing the next generation," said John Ging, the top U.N. aid official in Gaza. As a buffer against militancy, U.N. schools are launching human rights classes for their 200,000 students this week....
War takes emotional toll on Gaza's children: Financial Times, January 29, 2009 -....Symptoms of post-conflict syndrome include anxiety, fear, aggression, increased attachment to parents or increased withdrawal, and bed wetting, experts say. Parents report that children do not want to go to schools, mosques or hospitals, all places that were bombed, because they think nowhere is safe.
Parents say they don’t know how to help their children. “There is no entertainment for children here – no parks, no circus, no theatres,” says Hani’s father, shopkeeper Ramzi Abu Mohammad. “If they need some kind of therapy, where are we supposed to take them? There is nowhere to go.”....
Gaza conflict radicalises Muslims in UK: Middle East Online, January 28, 2009 - Britain's security and counter-terrorism minister, Lord Alan West, warned Tuesday that the conflict in Gaza has set back the government's attempts to tackle radicalism in Muslim communities here.
"There is no doubt that when you see these pictures coming back, that in the mind of people making hate, there is a linkage between the US, Israel and the UK. Without a doubt it will have set us back," he said.
West also dismissed the refusal by former prime minister Tony Blair to acknowledge the link between foreign policy and security threats.
"We never used to accept that our foreign policy ever had any effect on terrorism. Well, that was clearly bollocks," he said, according to widespread and concurring reports....
Similarly, leading British Muslims had warned Prime Minister Gordon Brown in a letter that anger over the Israeli campaign in Gaza has reached "acute levels" and was empowering extremists....
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