![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/1613343517-copy-1.jpg\")
\nForget the empty posturing of world leaders in Paris yesterday. This photo<\/a>\u00a0(copyright: Nedal Eshtayah\/Anadolu Agency)\u00a0tells us what the Israel-Palestine “conflict” is really about.<\/p>\n Imagine for a second that the little boy – how old is he, eight, nine? – is your son, trying to adjust his keffiyeh because it keeps falling over his eyes and he can’t see anything. Image your small son surrounded by masked Israeli “soldiers”, or what looks more like\u00a0a Jewish militia than an army. Imagine that the boy\u00a0is likely soon to be bundled into the back of a military\u00a0van and taken for interrogation without his parents or a lawyer present, or even knowing where he is. That he could end up beaten and tortured, as human rights groups have regularly documented<\/a>.<\/p>\n Maybe you can’t imagine any of that\u00a0because you, a responsible parent living in Europe or the United States, would never let your child out to throw stones.<\/p>\n Then you need to know more\u00a0about the story behind this picture.<\/p>\n This photo was taken in Kfar Qaddum last month. The boy and his friends aren’t there to bait Israeli soldiers or indulge a bout of anti-semitism. Jews\u00a0from the violent \u2013 and illegal \u2013\u00a0settlement of Kedumim have taken over their farm lands. Kedumim’s\u00a0expansion has been further used to justify the army closing\u00a0the access road in and out of Qaddum. The village is being choked off at the throat. In short, these villagers are being ethnically cleansed.<\/p>\n Parents living in such circumstances do not have the privilege of concealing from their children what is happening. Everyone in the village knows their community and its way of life are\u00a0being extinguished. Israel is determined that they will leave so that the Jewish settlers next door can grab their land. Israel expects these villagers to join the rest of the aid-dependent Palestinian population in one of the ghettoised towns and\u00a0cities in the bantustans\u00a0of the West Bank.<\/p>\n Even little boys understand the stakes. And unlike your child, this one\u00a0knows that, if he\u00a0doesn’t resist, he\u00a0will lose everything he\u00a0holds dear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Forget the empty posturing of world leaders in Paris yesterday. This photo\u00a0(copyright: Nedal Eshtayah\/Anadolu Agency)\u00a0tells us what the Israel-Palestine “conflict” is really about. Imagine for a second that the little boy – how old is he, eight, nine? – is your son, trying to adjust his keffiyeh because it keeps falling over his eyes and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-2413","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-occupation","8":"tag-settlements"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}