Traumatised and afraid - 300,000 children who want to go home

[kpete]

Traumatised and afraid - 300,000 children who want to go home
By Anne Penketh and Kim Sengupta
Published: 04 August 2006

"I don't want to die. I want to go to school," says Jamal, a four-year-old Lebanese boy scarred by the Israeli bombing of his country. Home for Jamal is now a "displacement centre" in the southern town of Jezzine, where his family fled in fear for their lives.

"We've had our picnic, and we want to go home now," says another child,staying in a makeshift refugee camp in the Sanayeh public gardens in Beirut. "We are bored and afraid and we want to go home," says another.

These are the voices of the dispossessed of Lebanon, the hundreds of thousands of children whose world was changed forever in the seconds that followed the explosion of a bomb. "Mummy, what is a massacre?" another child asks.

About 300,000 Lebanese children have been displaced by Israel's three-week war against Hizbollah - a third of the number of people who have abandoned their homes. In many cases they were ordered out by Israeli army leaflets. They are living in open-air camps, like the one in the Beirut park, or in schools, where many sought refuge. Many children have been housed with host families - in the port of Sidon, 48km (30 miles) south of the capital, 40 per cent of the 22,700 children in temporary accommodation are doing so. The rest are in displacement centres.

more at:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1212793.ece

[Clark2008]

1. .

:cry:

[ThomCat]

2. 300,000 people who will not love Israel

when/if they grow up.

[Ms. Clio]

3. nominated

especially when it looks like many of them may never go home, as the ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon continues.

[earth mom]

4. No words...just tears...

:cry:

[libodem]

5. If they were just embryos

or fetus sized kids the Pope and this administration would be damned mad. Too bad they are out of the womb, where they are considered worth something. You can bet right to life groups figure they have their lives and thats all that counts, not quality of life. If they are beaten, starved or murdered, or raped, so what they are probably just heathen Muslims.

[Hoping4Change]

7. You are right on the mark. nt

[brer cat]

8. I think you are right....said through tears...

The four-year-old who wants to back to school, the child who has had the "picnic" and just wants to go home. If this doesn't break your heart, you don't have one. I spent today with my four-year-old and five-year-old grands who are so excited about going back to school Monday. And I wondered all day how any one could allow these "shining lights" of our world be extinguished or turned into future terrorists, whatever their nationality, whatever their religious beliefs, whatever their parents????

[breakaleg]

6. heartbreaking...