Question: How old is a draft-age Palestinian? Answer: As of today, 16.
The new Palestinian conscription policy was announced yesterday by Yasser Arafat spokesman Yasser Abed Rabo. The change came in response to this query by B'Tselem, a normally pro-Palestinian human rights organization: Why has Arafat been using children in his fight against Israel?
Why, indeed? The answer can be found in the first sentence of yesterday's New York Times story out of Israel. "Clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli forces continued today with a 14- year-old boy shot dead in the northern West Bank town of Tulkarm. ..."
The Times article is typical. Since the start of the Al-Aksa intifadeh five weeks ago, the American media have duly reported, and often highlighted, the extreme youth of many Palestinian casualties.
And that, of course, is the point. The Palestinians are waging a public-relations war that pits soldiers against children (or, in the Muslim media, Jews against True Believers).
Like all effective public-relations campaigns, this one isn't wholly false. Since the end of September, about 175 Palestinians have been killed, most of them in their late teens and many younger than that. These casualties have been presented as martyrs in the struggle for an independent Palestine.
Some correspondents, sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, have aggressively pushed this portrayal. But the majority of reporters are uncomfortably aware that the Palestinian children's crusade is, in large part, a media war, staged for their benefit.
The problem is that journalistic convention prevents them from saying what they know to be true — that they, themselves, are a major part of the story.
The antidote to this dilemma lies in the application of intellectual rigor. For example, Palestinian casualties are routinely referred to as "demonstrators," a lazy and misleading phrase.
"Demonstrators" in the American idiom means people marching with posters and chanting slogans, not hurling rocks and screaming for blood. This distinction is as true in the West Bank as it is in South Central L.A.
Another misused term is "protest." The intifadeh is commonly said to be a mass protest against the Israeli occupation. But anyone who has actually spoken with the "protesters" knows that their actual intent is to block peace (thus prolonging the occupation) and escalate the war against Israel.
This is the official position of Hamas, Arafat's coalition partner, and the almost universally expressed viewpoint of the "protesters" themselves. It is not, however, a staple of American reporting.
Which brings us back to the question of Palestinian conscription. For weeks now, Arafat's spokesmen have claimed that the uprising in the West Bank and Gaza — a pure violation of the Oslo accords — is simply a case of uncontrollable grass-roots rage.
The "children of the stones" spontaneously attacked armed troops because even a child can see the injustice of the situation (since Arafat has turned down the offer an independent Palestinian state — the very thing the "protesters" are said to want — it might be more correct to say that only a child can see it).
For the most part, the American press has accepted this version of events.
That is, until yesterday, when B'Tselem got Arafat's spokesman to admit that the Palestinian Authority actually controls conscription to the street-fighting gangs.
It is good news that young children will no longer be used in the front lines. But it is bad news — in both senses — that it was a human rights group, and not the press, that challenged the official Palestinian line and got the real story.