The child stands alone, his hands in the air. The big brown eyes reveal all.

Please. Don’t shoot me. I want to live.

Slowly the robot rolls towards him and drops something shiny and silver. “Pick it up with your left hand”, the voice shouts out, “Keep your right hand high up in the air”. He bends slowly, his right hand straight above him, lest the green-clad figures in the distance, the ones with the guns, think he isn’t complying. He picks up the scissors. The voice shouts to him to cut the gray strap on his left shoulder, the gray strap that holds the big gray explosive belt, which is not unlike the protective metal jackets the green-clad figures are wearing. Please let it not blow up, the child’s eyes say. I want to live. His hand trembles as he cuts the strap.

Please let me not blow up. I’m sorry, ya Mamma. I’m sorry.

Who sends a child to kill and die, for a hundred shekels ($22) and the promise of getting laid in heaven? Who is on the lookout for the slow, unpopular kid, the one the other kids laugh at because he is short and ugly? (Ugly? Can’t they see those beautiful big brown eyes?)

What wickedness is this?

* * * *

Update: I'm hearing that some members of the Western Media are accepting Arab Media claims that this story is some sort of Israeli hoax. How absurd. No one who saw the terror in that poor child's eyes could possibly think such a thing. I heard his mother on the TV. She doesn't seem to think it was a hoax. She seems very angry, and not at the Israelis.