I recall my childhood growing up in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el Bared, in Lebanon. We were creative in devising seasonal games that didn’t require much money: one season playing soccer, another hide and seek, swimming and fishing in the Mediterranean and so on. My favorite was the summer kite-making. We made kites from plastic or paper collected from the dump; the frame was dry bamboo sticks tied or glued together from discarded electrical or metal wires. The only real cost was the line, if we weren’t lucky enough to find a fishing line or a sewing spool in the dump, we had to buy it. I never could have imagined that my cheapest favorite childhood toy could one day be labeled “Armed Activity.”

On August 23, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and War Minister Israel Katz ordered the children of Gaza to stop flying their paper kites, or face death. These are toys made by young boys and girls in a strip of land where there is little else left to do.

On August 23, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and War Minister Israel Katz ordered the children of Gaza to stop flying their paper kites, or face death. These are toys made by young boys and girls in a strip of land where there is little else left to do.

The psychological torment inflicted on these children is yet another layer of Israel’s terror. Local neighborhood committees urged parents to stop their children from making or flying kites. A mother said her children fly kites every summer to entertain themselves, but she will not allow it anymore. A child’s joy in Gaza is dangerous because it is a distraction from submission. Ordinary happiness, in a place that is supposed to have none, becomes an existential threat to Israel.

Yet, there was a precedent for banning a child’s kite: the Taliban banned kite-flying in Afghanistan in the mid 1990s. Now, it is the Israeli “Jewish-Taliban.” 

READ: Israeli defense chief renews threat to punish Gaza for flying kites

The kite panic is not the only Zionist’s concoction. It is........

© Middle East Monitor