Israel Admits Torturing Palestinian Children

The shocking part of the title is that Israel finally admits their crime against the children of Palestine. It seems like their guilt is getting to them.

United Nations Special Committee’s Chairperson for Human Rights, Ambassador Palitha T.B. Kohona of Sri Lanka, stated:

“According to testimony received, Israel uses solitary confinement against 12 per cent of Palestinian child detainees. This is especially troubling when one considers that Israel arrests about 500 to 700 Palestinian children every year.”

The self described “most moral army in the world” behaves in the most immoral manner towards the most vulnerable of our society.

A recently published 71 page report entitled, ‘Children and Youth – Soldiers Testimonials 2005-2011’ details the many horrific ordeals faced by children, some as young as 5 years old. The damning expose states:

“Israeli children enjoy the protection of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Israel is signatory, whereas Palestinian children grow up without protection”

Why is the same rule not applied to Palestinian children?

One soldier testifies:

“At first, you point your gun at some five-year-old kid, and feel bad – saying, it’s not right. But that changes when you go into the village and they throw stones at you.”

In other words this soldier justified pointing a gun at a five year old just because he threw some stones!

Another Israeli soldier testified:

“That specific kid who actually lay there on the ground, begging for his life, was actually nine years old. I mean, a kid has to beg for his life? A loaded gun is pointed at him and he has to plead for mercy? This is something that scars him for life. But I think if we hadn't entered the village at that point, then stones would be thrown the next day and perhaps the next time someone would be wounded or killed as a result."

Israeli soldiers have guns with bullets pointing towards infants and Palestinian children are seen as the ones who are the dangerous killers. Surely Israeli soldiers have the mental capacity to realise that it’s not the stones that kills or breeds hatred amongst children but it is the bullets used by the army of the Zionist State. Whether they shoot the bullets or not, their actual presence in Palestine can do nothing but increase the hatred.

One soldier admitted that sometimes children were arrested and interrogated, not because they had committed a crime, but to find out information on older family members or neighbours. Imagine the outcry if Hamas arrested a Jewish child living in Israel to find out information about an older relative.
Gerald Horton of Defence for Children International has said that Palestinian children are routinely arrested at night, handcuffed, blindfolded, mistreated and denied access to their parents or a lawyer.

Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Richard Falk of the UN said in July:

“Israel’s use of solitary confinement against children flagrantly violates international human rights standards. However, using solitary confinement as a punishment for Palestinian children who wish to peacefully protest their situation, including by commencing a hunger strike against conditions of detention, is an appalling abuse of child prisoners. I again condemn Israel’s harsh arrest operations and procedures.”

The question is now that Israel has admitted its crime to the whole world, will the international community do anything about this? In the West, children cannot even be questioned in custody without the presence of a parent or guardian. Why is there such a difference is the laws of the West and the laws which the Zionist State uses in its treatment of the children of Palestine? Maybe because it is a racist state, one rules applies for their people and another set of rules for the Palestinian Arabs.

Israel’s evil treatment of the Palestinian children has been condemned by the UN, but it is not enough just to condemn violence against children, it must be stopped.

Will the West tell Israel to stop? Will the West take any action against the Zionist State to make them stop?

What will you do so that this abuse against children stops? These children are depending on you! Are you going to let them down too? Write to your MP and tell them that Israel’s abuse of children must be stopped.

Do it for the children of Palestine.

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing” – Edmund Burke.