Customer Reviews

Stolen Youth: The Politics of Israel's Detention of Palestinian

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This book tells an important an often-overlooked story about some of the forgotten victims of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It takes courage to tell the story of the young victims, the Palestinian children detained by the Israeli government. In what other "civilized" society would such human rights violations be tolerated? The book is well written and balanced in its approach to the problem, and presents a clear picture of the hardships the Palestinians, particularly young Palestinians, face.

Israel doesn't want to be at war. Jews spent plenty of time and effort draining swamps and making the deserts bloom again. They didn't do that as a joke. They wanted to be allowed the human rights of life, liberty, and property in their homeland. And live in peace there.

Unfortunately, some Arabs are fighting a war against the Jews. And people are getting hurt and killed in this war. But the authors don't ask for the aggressors to call off their war against human rights. Instead, they blame it all on the Jews.

One of the chapter headings discusses the foundations of "Israel's impunity." The authors appear to wonder how Israel can get away with trying to defend its land and its people. And they have it all figured out! Listen to this:

"The answer lies in part with Israel's ability to manipulate human rights and humanitarian law and the UN bodies responsible for overseeing compliance."

Wow. You sure could have fooled me. I always wondered why the UN invited a notorious terrorist, Arafat, to lecture it in 1974. And why it came up with an embarrassingly inane resolution that Zionism was a form of racism in 1975. I wondered why the UN spent half its time defaming Israel instead of doing something useful or productive. Was it a big Israeli plot to get the UN to do all that?

And have you noticed that even Israel's capital city, Jerusalem, is special? The international community recognizes the capitals of other nations. But most don't recognize Jerusalem. Is that yet another example of Israeli manipulation?

No, all these things were done by those who, um, manipulated the UN to defame Israel and to discriminate against it.

Of course it is sad to see the book's shameless and absurd propaganda. But it somehow makes me wonder about those who are doing the complaining. Given all the demonization of Israel in the UN, just what is it that the authors want? If all this anti-Israeli bias isn't good enough for them, I can hardly imagine what their reaction would be were the international community to suddenly become color-blind and give everyone, even the Jews, rights to life, liberty, and property.

Meanwhile, two generations of Arab youth have been propagandized to damage society rather than trained to help it. And books like this are simply part of the problem.

the premise of this book is wrong.

the facts in this book are wrong.

It is biased, it is one-sided.