On Wednesday, May 23, the Taliban used poison spray to incapacitate 122 students and three teachers at an all-girls school in Talokhan, Afghanistan.
It wasn’t the radical Islamist insurgents’ first attack on a girls’ school. In April alone, 170 women and girls were hospitalized after drinking poisoned well water at a school in the same province.
These two most recent attacks against girls’ schools in Afghanistan come as no surprise. They are in perfect keeping with the Taliban’s interminable campaign against the female sex. The Taliban disapproves of educating girls because the dissemination of knowledge might expose fertile minds to “rabid” concepts like equality and self-empowerment.
But just when you think you understand insanity, the insane go one step further.
Earlier this month, 400 boys who drank water from a well at school fell ill. Health officials suspect the Taliban in this incident as well. This means that neither gender is safe from the Taliban’s tentacles.
When UStroops pull out of Afghanistan, which is President Obama’s plan, chaos will reign not only in the streets and caves but in the small schoolhouses that should elevate the country’s potential. If the Taliban strengthen their bloody foothold in the country, the future of innocent boys and girls will perish with everyone else’s.
Jews have regarded education as an inalienable right through the ages. While cleanliness is often equated with G-dliness, Judaism puts G-d in the text. Strip the children of Afghanistan of their dreams and they won’t just lose sight of the stars. They will never even raise their heads.
Copyright © 2012 by the Intermountain Jewish News
