Playground bombing injures 20 Palestinians

Do these people think they can get away with something like this just because the world’s attention is focused on Iraq? Jewish settlers at it again, and something you won’t read in the American press, which is highly frustrating to the point of anger.

A bomb, which may have been planted by Jewish extremists, exploded in a West Bank school playground yesterday, injuring 20 Palestinian children.

A shadowy Jewish group called Revenge of the Infants claimed responsibility for the attack at the secondary school in the village of Jaba’a, south of Jenin.

The Israeli human rights group, B’tselem, has accused the Israeli authorities of “tacit consent” in these attacks by elements believed to operate among Jewish settlers in the West Bank. The police and army deny the charges.

Events such as this remind me of the Hebron mosque attack which claimed the lives of 20+ worshippers inside. The attack, much like this one, was instigated by Jewish settlers. These settlers are not like the pilgrims of American history, rather they are more akin to the darker side, where much like the Native American Indians the Jewish settlers are pushing the Palestinians off of their lands to build new modern cities and settlements to entice more Jews to come live in Israel.

What this policy ultimately does is view Palestinians as a second rate people, and further instigates their demands for a “right of return”, which in my opinion is a legitimate claim that should be recognized as impractical, but altogether relevant to the issue of peace.

The real question is whether the UN mandate that was so forcefully extended to Iraq will hold sway in Palestine, as UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has emphasized. Clearly it should, and the Jewish settlers are the real problem that must be dealt with before any issue is resolved. They are the ones who broke the 1993 Oslo Accords, and much like a cancer they should be removed forcibly from their stolen lands.