The Palestinian Center for Human Rights reports that masked ‘Palestinian ‘gunmen’ burned down a child and family care center in Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, 12 April 2009.

Early that morning, unknown gunmen set alight the Child and Family Care Center in the al-Fukhari Village east of Khan Younis. The Center was established by the Canaan Institute of New Pedagogy in cooperation with the al-Fukhari Association for Rural Development.

This is the second time in two days that the Center has been attacked. This incident is part of the security chaos currently plaguing the Gaza strip, from which Isreal withdrew in 2005.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights’ (PCHR) investigations indicate that, at approximately 03:00am on 12 April 2009, a number of masked gunmen set fire to tents belonging to the Child and Family Care Center. During the attack, the gunmen detained the Center’s security guard in a nearby field. Mr. Al-Bahdari, director of the Center, stated that fire destroyed the six plastic tents which formed the Center, along with their contents and equipment.

The Child and Family Care Center had been subject to a similar attack in the early morning of Saturday, 11 April 2009.

The Child and Family Care Center is one of five established by the Canaan Institute of New Pedagogy in cooperation with several benevolent associations across the Gaza Strip. These centers aim to help and support children who live in areas affected by the recent Israeli operation.

PCHR strongly condemns the attack on the Child and Family Care Center, noting that this attack constitutes part of the continuing security chaos plaguing the Palestinian territory.

Of course, since this attack cannot be blamed on the Jews (except to the extent that the ‘continuing security chaos’ and the ‘recent Israeli offensive’ can be blamed on the Jews), it’s not going to be of much interest to the ‘international community.’ But perhaps it ought to be.

The key to this story is “The Center was established by the Canaan Institute of New Pedagogy in cooperation with the al-Fukhari Association for Rural Development.”

The Canaan Institute of New Pedagogy describes itself as a Palestinian non-profit organization [established] by “ the Palestinian Forum of Education for Development-PFED”, supported by the consortium of the French NGOs, member of the platform of the French NGOs for Palestine [ Members of the Consortium of French NGOs are: Refugee Children of the World (ERM), Active Methods Training Centers Association (CEMEA), Les FRANCAS, Leo- Lagrange League and Retired Educators Association (GREF) ].

Canaan addresses the needs of professional training programs for the workers, and volunteers in the field of socio-cultural education, and promotes New Education based on the right to participation, freedom of choice, choice – responsibility and non-violence.

Through its programs, Canaan meets the requests coming from other organizations for professional training and/or consultancy in designing, implementing and developing advanced educational activities and social programs.

Why would ‘masked gunmen’ want to destroy this kind of center? Perhaps because it is competing with Hamas’ ‘charitable works,’ and Hamas views that as a danger.

In any event, the story shows again how “Apologists say the brutal tactics of the military regime were necessary to combat terrorist threats.”

The T-word has been so successfully implanted in the psyche of the Western, and in particular the American mind by corporate media that it makes even some liberal groups, like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch look the other way when these atrocities take place.

Despite indicting the criminal Fujimori, by the way, I will be much happier to see the present neo-liberal government in Peru replaced by a Hugo-Chavez-style administration that would never give Fujimori’s daughter the opportunity to pardon this murderer.

And by the way, it you need more information about Lori Berenson, please visit the website for the Committee to Free Lori Berenson at: http://www.freelori.org/

So my question is, when are they letting her out?

But why do you refuse to say why they were actually carried out? To violently strike down the left consensus among the people and introduce radical freidmanite, anti-democratic capitalism to these Latin American countries, just as the Bush regime’s crimes allowed them to create a privatized ‘security’ bubble and create instant wealth here and for the contractors hired to (not) rebuild Iraq. The economic motivation for these crimes has to be included.