In the Gaza Strip, children bear psychological scars of conflict with Israel
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"Fatima still dreams about Ahmed. Sometimes they’re playing with toys as they used to do. But in other dreams, she’s looking over the edge of the balcony at her brother’s smashed and bloodied body, his pink brain spilling from his skull, her father screaming through his tears.
Ahmed was 7 when he was killed by an Israeli airstrike during the 2008 Israeli invasion of Gaza. Fatima was 8 at the time — but that was “old enough to remember,” said her father, Osama Mohamed Qurtan.
Four years later, Fatima has been through therapy. She has taken what her father calls “strong” medications to manage the flashbacks. Their new apartment is darker and more cramped than the old one, but the Qurtans needed to get away from the scene of the trauma, the doctors said.
Fatima’s listlessness and spontaneous aggression had started to improve, Qurtan said — until war struck again in November.
This time, the explosions felt just as personal as they did previously; the possibility of death just as likely. When Israeli airstrikes rattled the buildings for a week during the Jewish state’s latest confrontation with Hamas, the eight surviving Qurtan children hid in the stairwell, as Gaza schools have taught children here to do.
Gazans often talk about the inescapability of war and the symptoms of their suffering. They cast Gaza as a prison — both physical and psychological, where Israeli bombardment comes every so often and there is little to do but bear it."
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I forgot the 'they made us do it!' defense 
for 17 year-old Muhammad Salaymah here on this thread
http://www.democraticunderground.com/113425659
in fact I can not remember seeing a more extraordinary outpouring of compassion in recent memory 