Israel abducting and torturing children

Detainees Committee: “Soldiers Terrorize Children During Arrest, Interrogation”
author Sunday February 08, 2015 04:13author by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC News Report post

   The Palestinian Detainees and Ex-Detainees Committee has reported, Saturday, that Israeli soldiers deliberately terrorize Palestinian children during their abduction, and while under interrogation.













The Committee said the soldiers continuously shout in the faces of the kidnapped children, assault and beat them, and “drag them to their vehicles in a savage manner, treating them like criminals."

It added that, during interrogation, the children are subject to intimidation, physical and psychological torture, in addition to being threatened that the soldiers would harm their families, especially their mothers and sisters.

The Committee further stated that there has been a dangerous increase in the abduction of children in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem, adding that such an escalation indicates deliberate and planned policies.

“The children aren't only beaten and assaulted during the abduction” it stated, “They are often taken to the nearest station; and that is when they are interrogated, forced to stand for extended hours while handcuffed, legs shackled, and blindfolded; they are frequently threatened of bodily harm on them and their families.”

The Detainees Committee further stated that the kidnapped children are subjected to the same treatment, torture and assaults the adult detainees go through, adding that Israel violates all international treaties and agreements regarding the protection of children.

It called on various human rights and legal groups around the world to intervene, and put an end to Israel’s ongoing, and escalating, violations against the children and the civilians in occupied Palestine.

151 Palestinian Children Currently Imprisoned by Israel
http://www.imemc.org/article/70476

14-year-old Khaled Al-Sheikh is a Threat to Israeli Security
http://www.imemc.org/article/70485

Israeli Court Sentences A Child To Two Months
http://www.imemc.org/article/70324


http://www.imemc.org/article/70507



The children are arrested on the pretext that they are stone throwing, yet everyday those that have to pass 'settlements' ie stolen land, to get to their schools, face a barrage of abuse and stone throwing from the settlers.  The settlers have been responsible for fire bombing palestinian homes and attacking palestinians.  They are accompanied by the IDF, who protect them:

Israeli soldiers did nothing to stop stone-throwing settlers, videos show
According to videos released by the Yesh Din rights group, soldiers simply protected settlers in a clash with Palestinians.

Soldiers present during a confrontation between Palestinians and settlers did nothing to stop the settlers from throwing stones and seemed to be defending them, according to videos released Wednesday by the Yesh Din human rights group.

According to the Israel Defense Forces, some 200 Palestinians and 50 settlers threw stones at each other in an area between the settlement of Yitzhar and the Palestinian village of Urif. The IDF said the soldiers shot gas canisters to disperse the youths, although this isn’t seen in the videos.

The videos do show masked settlers throwing stones at Palestinians, with the soldiers standing by. The soldiers are seen with their guns drawn and pointed at the Palestinians, with their backs to the settlers. At least five soldiers were present when the settlers threw stones.

Yesh Din said the confrontation began before the soldiers arrived and included the throwing of stones and iron bars, as well as the burning of tires. The group said a 13-year-old boy suffered a light head wound from a thrown stone and was treated at Rafidia Hospital in Nablus. The IDF Spokesman’s Office said there were no injuries.

“IDF soldiers have the obligation, based on international law and High Court of Justice rulings, to protect Palestinian residents from violence, and IDF soldiers have the authority to detain suspects, including Israeli suspects, until the police arrive,”  Yesh Din said in a statement.

Attorney Emily Schaeffer Omer-Man of Yesh Din added: “Once again it turns out that IDF soldiers are failing to meet their obligation to protect Palestinians subjected to vicious attacks by settlers near their own homes.”

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.627399



Israeli Settlers attacking, fire bombing and throwing stones = IDF protection

Palestinian children on their way to school, accused of stone throwing when attacked = abduction, imprisonment and torture.

Why are parents allowing their children to throw stones at people?
No excuse from the settelers either, but lets have some honesty here, clearly both sides are teaching each other to hate, which is wrong on every level

Video: Israeli soldiers fire tear gas at 6-year-old children on their way to school

The new school year started four days ago in the occupied West Bank, and Israeli soldiers have fired tear gas and hurled stun grenades at Palestinian elementary school students on at least two occasions already.

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/video-israeli-soldiers-fire-tear-gas-6-year-old-children-their-way-school

In the West Bank children are abducted regularly by the IDF.  They use the 'pretext' that they are stone throwing.   However, when there is video evidence it normally shows no stone throwing, or in the case of children trying to get to school past illegal Israeli settlements, the stones are being thrown at them.  It has reached the point that the UN has to accompany the children to schoold to protect them:


As an EAPPI accompanier in the West Bank city of Hebron, you quickly get used to many occurrences that never would be tolerated in your home country.  Perhaps the hardest thing to get used to is the arrest and detention of children. During our two months here, the EAPPI Hebron team has witnessed several child detentions – we have also heard about numerous other such incidents from fellow international human rights monitors stationed in the city.

Children are most often detained on their way to and from school, but are also taken from their homes in the middle of the night. Mohammad Tareq and Mohammad Bahaa Al-Jabari are 8 and 9 years old. We watched them being detained close to their school on Wednesday, 24 September.

   “We were just running and playing, chasing each other around, when the soldiers came for us. They probably thought we were running away from them.”

On the same day, we also witnessed the Israeli military driving past and stopping the boys outside a shop close to the same school. We know from testimonies of soldiers serving in Hebron that their key task is to make their presence known – stopping children on the way home from school is just one example of this duty.

   They were throwing stones, so now we have to take them to the police station. There their parents can pay a fine to get them released,” – a soldier told the observers upon arrival to the site of the detention.

According to the boys, the soldiers had also been rough in their treatment.

   “A soldier grabbed my face tightly when he wanted me to confess to throwing stones,” one of the boys described.

The boys were taken away in an army vehicle to a police station close to the Ibrahimi Mosque, accompanied by one of the boys’ father. According to the boys, the father wasn’t allowed to speak to them. The boys were found innocent and released a couple of hours later, without the parents needing to pay a fine.

n a separate incident on the 8 September, EAs in Hebron watched when the Israeli army detained a number of young children during clashes involving tear-gas and sound-grenades next to the Salaymeh checkpoint. Children from six schools pass this checkpoint in the mornings and afternoons. According to observers who came to the site before EAPPI, the soldiers simply grabbed children at random – one of the children was Oday Rajabi, aged 7. At this checkpoint, tear-gas is an almost daily occurrence, which continuously disturbs students’ lessons and stops them from even getting to school
Only as a last resort

The detention of children is strictly regulated in international law. In spite of this, Israeli authorities routinely arrest children, and is the only country in the world that systematically tries children in military courts, according to a 2013 UNICEF. In Hebron, at least 41 children and 5 teachers were arrested in 2013 by Israeli forces [PDF – Page 6] on their way to or from school in H2, and in July 2014 as many as 192 children were detained by the Israeli military.

Consistent with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, children should be restrained only if they pose an imminent threat to themselves or to others, when all other means have been exhausted, and only for as long as is strictly necessary.

In the Nablus-area village of Burin, which is surrounded by illegal Jewish-only Israeli settlements, Israeli forces stormed an elementary school Wednesday, firing tear gas and stun grenades at students after a settler’s vehicle traveling nearby the school was allegedly hit with a rock thrown by a Palestinian youth.

Many children were treated at the scene for tear-gas inhalation, reported Ma’an News Agency.

One day earlier, Israeli forces in Hebron fired up to 15 tear gas canisters and five stun grenades at small children as they made their way to school Tuesday morning.

Video of the attack — recorded and posted to YouTube by the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) — shows frightened schoolchildren, who look to be as young as five years old, running for cover with hands over their ears as Israeli soldiers weave in between buildings with rifles out, blanketing the children with suffocating plumes of tear gas smoke. You can watch footage of the assault at the top of this post.

ISM volunteer Ally Cohen described the chaos:

   I was standing with my fellow ISM’er next to two young boys who were both under six-years-old. We saw a few teenagers run towards the checkpoint and throw stones; they then ran away very quickly. The soldiers then threw two stun grenades very close to us. We tried to comfort the two young boys when they [the stun grenades] exploded, but what could we say? They were both terrified. We walked with them down closer to their school and they began to run. At that moment, a tear gas grenade was fired and there were no children throwing stones. The smoke was thick and I began choking, it felt like I couldn’t breathe. I can’t imagine what this sensation would have been like for a child, and there were so many present. From there the situation just seemed to get worse, with so much tear gas in the air, children were unable to reach their schools.

Israeli army attacks against defenseless Palestinian children traveling to school are disturbingly common. During the final month of the 2013-2014 school year, ISM documented 11 tear gas grenades and 13 stun grenades launched against Palestinian school kids as young as 4 years old. And that was just in Hebron alone.

Longlasting trauma

Detention is a traumatic experience for children, regardless of its duration, according to a report from Save the Children in 2012. The research shows that detention has an affect on the psycho-social well being of the child, as well as the parents. This can go on to have a profound impact on the child’s future, especially on their education and career.

*Read more about the affects of the Israeli occupation on Children.

http://blog.eappi.org/tag/un-convention-of-the-rights-of-the-child/


A country that regularly does this to children has lost the right to be called civilised.

Great debate this.