Last month Israeli customs officials in Haifa seized a shipment of 450 singing, dancing Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein dolls. The battery-powered Chinese-made action figures were confiscated under a law banning incitement. "The law doesn’t exactly say that you cannot own a bid Laden doll, but neither he nor Saddam Hussein are exactly good educational role models," one of the customs officials told Reuters news services. Making understatements must have been part of his job description. There’s no way of knowing whether the singing, dancing dolls were rerouted to another country or whether they made it through U.S. ports of entry. We already have watchdog agencies monitoring the safety of toys, but how many toys are scrutinized for political incitement? It’s very possible that as a result of the hectic holidays, amid the flurry and excitement of opening presents and the shrieks of joy, similar dolls began lurking in our children’s toy boxes. While we weren’t looking, Junior’s toy box may have become a tinderbox of terrorism and foreign intrigue. The following warning signals might indicate if singing and dancing terrorist figures have found their way into your home and are influencing your children when you’re not around. The signs might also determine whether a flashing orange light on top of your roof should call for heightened security in your neighborhood. The first indication of trouble might be when unusual accumulations of sand, resembling miniature desert dunes, are found at the bottom of your child’s toy box. Barbie dolls, in fact all of the girl dolls, are covered from head to toe with black burkas. Skimpy doll clothes, such as Malibu Barbie’s two-piece bikini, are inexplicably missing. The G.I. Joe dolls have lost their usual smiles and now have grim, determined looks on their little doll faces and real ammunition in their guns. For some unaccountable reason, your two-year-old can’t say his name, but he knows all of the words to the old Iraqi national anthem, "Al-Salam Al-Jamhouri." Your small children know how to dance the "attan", once very popular in Afghanistan. When your toddler has a temper tantrum, he shakes his fist and calls you a "capitalist infidel." Tiny towers, made with Tinker Toys and resembling oil rigs, are scattered over the floors of your home. Your small son, who is even forbidden to cross a street without an adult present, announces that he would like camels for his next birthday and you have a strong suspicion he’s not talking about a brand of cigarettes. Last but not least, he tells you that if you can’t come up with camels, his second choice would be a dead goat for the Afghan game of "buzkashi." During the course of the game, a dead goat is thrown into a ditch and hundreds of male players on horseback try to grab the goat and carry it to a goal. It’s sort of a cross between American football and working for an animal rendering business. The truly terrifying part of that request would be having the parents look up from their newspapers and automatically respond, "Whatever, son. Just keep up those grades."
