She looked like any normal three-year-old: big round youthfuleyes, curly brown hair, and pudgy fingers.
Then you get to her legs and the innocent aura of the child ishauntingly extinguished. Her tiny legs are gone. Now you only seeonly stumps with narled scars at the ends. The girl’s hut was blownto the ground by a U.S. missile. This was one of many imagesdisplayed at the recent Children of War panel discussion held inthe Campus Center June 11.
The forum focused on the United States’ combative involvement inthe Middle East with specific attention on Iraq, Afghanistan andPalestine.

The first speaker was Solomon Hayek, a former De Anza student,currently at San Jose State. Hayek shed some light on the depleteduranium warheads used in the first Gulf War that have increasedbirth defects and cancer among Iraqi mothers and children eversince.
“Two times a day in every single hospital a child is born horriblydisfigured. Lacking skin, lacking a heart, half a brain,” he said.”These children were compared to the children of the Gulf WarVeterans and there were a lot of similarities.”
According to Hayek, the effects of the depleted uranium have alsobeen found in American soldiers who fought in the first GulfWar.
“Depleted uranium lasts for 4 billion years, it’s a dust particle,it can imbed in your lungs, brains, testicles,” Hayek said.
Abu Baker Mojadidi discussed the situation in Afghanistan. Mojadidigave an in-depth account on a child’s perspective of war. In 1978,as a 10-month-old infant in Afghanistan, his home was ransacked bySoviet troops. Mojadidi’s parents, siblings, grandparents, auntsand uncles were arrested. Before troops could find Mojadidi, he washidden in an oven and thus evaded being taken by the Soviets. Fortwo months, his mother, in prison, did not know whether he was deador alive.
“She told me that she wished death upon me, instead of beingcaptured and brainwashed by her enemies,” he said.
For the first couple years of his life, he only knew his mother asa stranger.
Mojadidi said, “This is stuff that people don’t know that war does.To this day, I do not know the whereabouts of my father, mygrandfather or any of my father’s brothers.”
While Mojadidi professed complete love and devotion to the UnitedStates, he is still troubled by the ongoing sanctions that aretaking place in the Middle East.
“Five thousand children die every month in Iraq. It happensmonth after month [for] the last ten years. I have my references …[but] we have to look for the truth.”
When a spectator in the audience asked Mojadidi how the war couldbe stopped, he answered, “We have to establish programs that informpeople what is happening out there. We have to tell people what wardoes. Tell a co-worker, tell a neighbor.”
The final speaker was Dr. Basil Hantash, a representative of thePalestine Children’s Relief Fund. The PCRF is a non-profit,non-political American organization that was founded in 1991. Sincethen, over 100 Palestinian children who have been injured due tocombat have been treated and helped.
When proper medical attention can only be provided in the countrysuch as the United States, travel expenses, room and board alongwith the actual medical treatment can be expensive. Hantash saidthat the PCRF does what it can, but it only flies a child to theUnited States once every three months.