Let's talk about the children By Naomi Ragen (November 2) Although it has become almost a routine sight on our television screens, I cannot help but gasp every time I see it: children in front of tanks, throwing stones at armed soldiers. And nowhere, but nowhere, is there a single mother running to grab their hands and lead them home. Where are the Palestinian mothers? And what in heaven's name are they thinking when they let their children endanger their lives, and the lives of others, day in and day out? Because make no mistake about it, when those kids throw those stones, they are trying to injure and kill our kids. Because those "flak-jacketed army regulars," just a little older than the kids trying to fracture their skulls, are our kids: 18-year-old draftees handed guns and rubber bullets with strict instructions to be very careful not to hurt anyone unnecessarily. True, an 18-year-old is not a 10-year-old. But if my son was 10, you can bet your life I would be out there dragging him off the street and locking him in his room. He'd be grounded forever. And I would wonder, as the wails of mourning mounted in the homes of my friends and neighbors, why it was that my wise and fearless leader, Yasser Arafat, had abandoned the negotiating table and turned to bullets and thus invited bullets in return from those who had extended their hand in peace. I would wonder what in heaven's name he hoped to accomplish, and how many Palestinian children he intended to sacrifice on the altar of his monomaniacal dreams of glory. I know what the well-oiled Palestinian PR machine will say: These young people are so enraged by atrocities on the Israeli side that their parents are helpless to stop them expressing their fury. Please. I have a young son the same age as the rock throwers. He is no less enraged by Palestinian atrocities - buses blowing up near his school, Arabs running amok and stabbing passersby in quiet Jerusalem streets, lynchings, the desecration of Jewish holy places. And I ask myself, why is it that I don't have to keep him from throwing stones at the Arab village that is practically in our backyard? And I ask myself, why is it we don't have to restrain the children of Gilo, who have been subjected to gunfire, from unleashing a rock-throwing rage at Arab Beit Jalla? There is a simple answer, of course, which somehow no one is willing to admit: In the seven years since Oslo, while Israeli children were learning to paint doves and sing songs in praise of peace, Palestinian kids were taken to summer camps where they were taught to shoot and sing patriotic war songs. While my son, and the kids in Gilo, have been subject to an endless barrage of peace programs, dialogues with Arab teenagers, pacifist plays, movies, and songs, all lauding peaceful coexistence, Palestinian preschoolers got treated to a Palestinian version of Sesame Street which taught them the joys of becoming a shihad, or suicide-bomber for Allah. While our children's textbooks were revised to inculcate democracy and respect for all cultures, post-Oslo Palestinian textbooks show no Israel on the map, and systematically demonize Israel and the Jewish people, demanding that children give their lives to free their land from the "depraved Jewish invaders." And everyone has been treated to Goebbels-inspired propaganda films depicting depraved Israeli soldiers raping young Palestinian girls - all produced and broadcast by the Palestinian Authority. Is it any wonder, then, that these kids want to disembowel every Jew and dip their hands in the blood? Or as one crazed Palestinian youngster said on camera (otherwise I wouldn't have believed it): "eat Jewish flesh." Arafat is the director of this production which has turned normal kids into murderous, rock-throwing, gun-shooting rabble. And his show is being swallowed by the world press as if its members had never been to Journalism 101, their purple prose wallowing in the "freedom-fighting kids against evil soldiers" cliche as if it was a Shakespearean tragedy instead of the cheesy and obscene exploitation film it is - one in a series by the same director who brought us the massacre of Israeli schoolchildren in Ma'alot, and the murder of Olympic athletes in Munich. WHAT IS the answer? For starters, what about a call on Palestinian mothers and fathers to exercise a little parental responsibility? To go out there, take those misguided kids by the hand and bring them home? And if these parents are so incompetent or fanatic that they can't or won't try to save their children from harm (for after all, even animals care about their offspring - isn't that what Hanan Ashrawi told Bob Simon?) then I say those kids need to be cared for by public institutions that will take responsibility for their well-being. Perhaps the UN, which has done nothing worthwhile in this region for some time, can start working on a plan to set up UNICEF boarding schools, places where Palestinian kids can be sheltered from exploitation; places where they too can learn to paint doves and sing songs in praise of peace.