Children

Palestinians love children. They love families and relatives and neighbours in general, but children especially. However they love them in a way that might intially seem a little unusual to your western eye, dear reader.

It's not unusual for them to keep pictures on their phone or Facebook page of little kids that are or aren't theirs, sometimes they are almost 'glamour' shots. I had a student show me such a pic and say how beautiful it was, as well as trying to search for an also 'beautiful' little girl singer on youtube whilst his friends were around him.

(beautiful is a favourite word here, everyting is beautiful and if it's not beautiful, it's 'not beautiful.')

I'm pretty certain that there's nothing amiss with this adoration. As Westerners we are unfortunately prone to thinking that almost any imagery of children is suspect, but here of course it's very different. A family will on average have about 7-8 children. There's a variety of cultural and relgious reasons for this, as well as the population war with Israel and the fact that life is generally tenuous here anyway. Most families have lost someone in fighting.

I think that because of this especially the children here are very spoilt and venerated, because the adults know that they don't have much to look forward to. And as an unfortunate result, maybe that's why the students at the age of 18-20 at this University are generally lazy and immature. An infantilised and spoon fed culture, waiting for someone to come and save them! Israel's final victory.


PS - yesterday a student solemly played me a recording of a very young kids voice reciting an anti-occupation diatribe. I tried hard to supress my laughter at the cutesy-poo voice whereas the student was deadly serious.

PPS Credit to a good friend of mine for some of the ideas in this post.