Children in the Line of Fire

Abstract

Children and adults shared the essential experience of the Gulf War—the threat of attack—to an extent to which they had rarely, if ever, shared war experiences in Israel before. In previous wars, with the exception of the 1948 War of Independence, the army had quickly moved the fighting beyond the country’s borders, and the major threat to children was that their fathers and older brothers could be wounded or killed on the front. This threat was horrible, but, except for a few isolated air raids, children themselves were not targets and were relatively safe, along with their mothers and most other members of the household. In the Gulf War they were no safer than anyone else, and all but the youngest knew it.