Kyle Janiga

26 years ago today :: Another Palestinian child never comes home, throat cut by an occupation bullet. On October 29, 2000, Associated Press photographer Laurent Rebours captured one of the most famous images of the Second Intifada. A 14-year-old Palestinian boy, Faris Odeh, stood alone in front of an Israeli tank near the Karni crossing in Gaza, preparing to throw a stone at it. Faris was born in Gaza City in December 1985, one of nine children. He loved football, got into trouble at school and repeatedly ignored his parents' desperate attempts to keep him away from confrontations with Israeli soldiers. Ten days after the photograph was taken, on November 8, Israeli troops shot him in the neck near the same crossing. He died before his fifteenth birthday. The photograph turned Faris into a symbol of Palestinian resistance, but his mother, Anam Odeh, struggled with the celebrations of her son's courage. She had repeatedly gone looking for him at the crossing, sometimes several times a day, terrified that he would be killed. After his death, people called him a hero, painted his image on walls and printed it on posters. His mother saw something else when his schoolmates came to visit: children who were still alive, growing up, going to school, while her son never would. Faris became a symbol to millions. To his family, he was a boy who never came home. Children can be reckless in the face of injustice, much too young to realize just how cruel and brutal their oppressors will act or what their loss does to their families. We now know that killing children is not accidental and that Israel has made it a cornerstone of its strategy to break any population which refuses to step aside for the dream of greater Israel.