PA daily article promotes peace and criticizes glorification of violence in Palestinian society
"It may be that the violence of the occupation soldiers and the settlers is one of the reasons for the spread of violence among our children, but that is not the only reason, or the most influential one, since we see the environment that grows them, the educational perceptions that are passed on as a legacy, the family violence in general and violence against women in particular…
No society has given legitimacy to violence as have the sinners who disseminated it and broadened its scope, to the point where it has become sanctified in our society. They founded it on beheadings, amputation of limbs, murder for [family] honor, murder in the name of Allah and by means of His sword, stoning, and lashes…
In our society, the child has an inflated ego, such that he considers himself a mature man, as the inevitable result of a process whereby machoism is drummed into him from the time he is weaned. He is educated about his specialness in relation to the other sex and his peers in the neighborhood and in society, and therefore our child grows up arrogant, seeking opportunities to spend the energy that is pent up inside him to his very core. He reaches the stage of physical or verbal violence in dealing with the simplest forms of misunderstanding with others, no matter which gender or age group they belong to. He becomes combative for the stupidest reasons, and turns to violence in order to restore the dignity which he imagines to have been hurt by someone, while in fact the situation is not so at all.
We push our children into stones-and-burning-tires clashes with the occupation, while we ourselves, the fathers, are sitting in coffee shops, smoking and talking about the world and the state that it is in. We boast about acts of heroism which we create in the media, for goodness knows what reason. We present them as heroes for internal and external public opinion, to the developed world as well as the Third World, and they are influenced also by the violence of the raging occupation soldiers, to the point where they think that blood-soaked violence is the only path in struggle…
We can protect our children by disseminating optimism and banishing pessimism; through consolidating a principle of peace with ourselves and with others, instead of antagonism, struggle, and violence with others; through establishing discussion and dialogue as a day-to-day law and as a code of behavior; and [through] a denunciation of physical and verbal violence against others, regardless of the reason, and considering it a sin and a moral defect, instead of praising it as a manly act, as is currently the case.
When we cease teaching concepts of violence to our children, we will be taking our first steps towards liberating them from violence… Peace with ourselves and with others is the rule, while violence is the exception."
No society has given legitimacy to violence as have the sinners who disseminated it and broadened its scope, to the point where it has become sanctified in our society. They founded it on beheadings, amputation of limbs, murder for [family] honor, murder in the name of Allah and by means of His sword, stoning, and lashes…
In our society, the child has an inflated ego, such that he considers himself a mature man, as the inevitable result of a process whereby machoism is drummed into him from the time he is weaned. He is educated about his specialness in relation to the other sex and his peers in the neighborhood and in society, and therefore our child grows up arrogant, seeking opportunities to spend the energy that is pent up inside him to his very core. He reaches the stage of physical or verbal violence in dealing with the simplest forms of misunderstanding with others, no matter which gender or age group they belong to. He becomes combative for the stupidest reasons, and turns to violence in order to restore the dignity which he imagines to have been hurt by someone, while in fact the situation is not so at all.
We push our children into stones-and-burning-tires clashes with the occupation, while we ourselves, the fathers, are sitting in coffee shops, smoking and talking about the world and the state that it is in. We boast about acts of heroism which we create in the media, for goodness knows what reason. We present them as heroes for internal and external public opinion, to the developed world as well as the Third World, and they are influenced also by the violence of the raging occupation soldiers, to the point where they think that blood-soaked violence is the only path in struggle…
We can protect our children by disseminating optimism and banishing pessimism; through consolidating a principle of peace with ourselves and with others, instead of antagonism, struggle, and violence with others; through establishing discussion and dialogue as a day-to-day law and as a code of behavior; and [through] a denunciation of physical and verbal violence against others, regardless of the reason, and considering it a sin and a moral defect, instead of praising it as a manly act, as is currently the case.
When we cease teaching concepts of violence to our children, we will be taking our first steps towards liberating them from violence… Peace with ourselves and with others is the rule, while violence is the exception."