Palestinians Carry Knives; Therefore They Are Wrong, Or..?

The number of Palestinians under 18 years who are sentenced to prison has as much as tri-doubled since the increased violence broke out between Israel and Palestine in October last year. One reason for this is that the Israeli justice system prosecute Palestinian youths on weaker grounds than what they do on Israeli youths. Evidence displayed in the article seems to prove that this is the case. Another reason for the increased number of Palestinian youths sentenced with crimes may simply be that Palestinian youths have become more violent. The article reveals that security forces routinely search Palestinian schools, and that in one of those recent searches, the forces found knives in 70 of the Palestinian students' bags. When asked about their knives, numbers of youths confirm that they want to use them to kill Israelis. This fact makes me think about what we learnt about terrorism, because these youths are dangerously close, if not there, to reason like terrorists. What we learnt was that the environment and personal circumstances can make anyone a terrorist, and I believe that is what I have witnessed by reading this article. It must be these youths' experiences and their environment that fosters their hatred. An evidence of this is that the second biggest Palestinian party, Hamas, who openly encourages violence, have a free-access tv-channel in Palestine, where they show how they kill Israelis. This channel is viewed by Palestinian youths, serving as isolating brainwashing to a number of people.

However, after reading about the extreme Palestian youths, and the majority of them's seemingly horrible, moral standards, I sent the link of this article to my friend, who is one of the two Palestinian students on campus. I asked him if this was the experience he had about life back home, and if it really was that common for youths in Palestine to carry knives. His response from reading the article was quite different than mine. He was upset the text and told me how disappointing he finds it to always see how Western media take a stance for Israel in the Israel-Palestine conflict. He told me that living under occupation is many times horrifying, and he has experienced a lot of scary things himself. However, he said, Israelis do a lot of horrible things as well that are nearly ever focused on in Western media. This reminded that even the news sources that we value as the most trustworthy can in fact be rather biased on certain foreign issues. I believe that as a way to cope with this fact we need to read foreign news with a critical lens. Before forming our own opinion about the news, we need to first consider if it can biased. If we do that, we will form a better and more true understanding of the world.

Victor Krueeger

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/30/world/middleeast/surge-in-palestinian-youths-in-prison-tests-israels-justice-system.html?ref=todayspaper