Four Palestinian children, ages 5 to 9, were cuffed and detained for over an hour by Israeli soldiers during a protest against Israel’s occupation in the West Bank village of Kfar Qaddum.
The detention of these children, who witnesses say had their hands cuffed behind their backs and were held without an adult or parent present, comes against the backdrop of a recent UNICEF report entitled, “Children in Israeli Military Detention.”
The report found widespread abuse of children who come into contact with the IDF and its military justice system, concluding:
It is understood that in no other country are children systematically tried by juvenile military courts that, by definition, fall short of providing the necessary guarantees to ensure respect for their rights.
[…]
Ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system appears
to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized. This conclusion is based on the
repeated allegations about such treatment over the past 10 years and the volume,
consistency and persistence of these allegations.
While this report found the IDF’s practice of awaking children at night, blindfolding them and escorting them, unaccompanied, to interrogation centers most troubling, it also highlighted Israeli soldiers’ practice of binding children and holding them to be of concern.
The children who were cuffed and detained on Friday were, according to an Israeli military spokesperson, suspected of preparing to alight a tire, and that the children were detained to “prevent mayhem.” However, witnesses say that Israeli troops’ presence at the weekly protest is what sparked clashes, and that soldiers began rounding up children after stun grenades were thrown toward them.
According to The Convention on the Rights of the Child, the use of instruments and methods of restraining children should only occur if they pose “an imminent threat to themselves or to others, and all other means have been exhausted.”
All too often, young children (below 12 years old) are detained by authorities in ways that contravene international norms. And while Israel has attempted to amend some of its practices after the UNICEF report, abuses still remain all too prevalent.
They are abuses which not only violate basic human rights, but create an ethos of enmity. An ethos on both sides – amongst the young soldiers detaining children, and the children being detained – which continues to feed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A conflict which must end.
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David Harris-Gershon is author of the memoir What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?, just out from Oneworld Publications.
Follow him on Twitter @David_EHG.
They arrested a 16-year old boy of the resistance this week too and will probaly keep him in a jail for many years! Are precious children need to blow off steam against The Occupation everywhere from Ramallah to Gaza to Haifa!
Some would argue that the adults who perpetuate the Palestinian culture of incitement should perhaps be held responsible by those who claim to care so much, but not me! Especially since we have warriors for justice like you, doing the things that you do!
Israel needs to stop attacking children! Thank you David for exposing these tragedy!
Oh, that paragon of journalistic awesomeness, Ma’an!
Color me unsurprised that David Harris-Gershon, of all people, is happily slurping up their Jew-hating Kool Aid, on a site which links to Mondoweiss, no less.
Oh my god, detained for two hours and then released???11! What possible just response can there be to this other than stabbing someone in the neck to death while they sleep on a bus?
They should try to roll flaming tires at Hamas security forces during riots. My suspicion is that they would suffer a much harsher fate, like perhaps being dragged down Main Street behind a motorcycle, and such.
Or hell, they should even try to roll flaming tires at a group of American police during a riot. See if a squad of Philadelphia or New York or Los Angeles or Chicago police would simply laugh such an act off as ‘boys will be boys.’
I suspect they wouldn’t.
But only Israel comes in for such ‘criticism’ from Mr. Harris-Gershon. I wonder why that is?
David’s blatant attempt to justify the stabbings of teenage soldiers in the necks while they sleep is disgusting. I would say ‘shame on him,’ but it’s quite clear he has none.
I was expecting a defense of the brutalization of children and Jay, you did not disappoint. I do feel sorry that you live your life filled with such hate and denial, but as a Christian, do I dare say, “It is your cross to bear?”
Nope. You can’t defend the murder of teenagers on a bus that easily, nor can you defend Harris-Gershon’s sick justification of it.
Thank you very much for your truly touching concern, Jim. However, don’t worry too much about me.
I expected someone to show up and defend a weak justification of murder, while prancing about in their silly self-righteous moral mask, and you did not disappoint.
Ah look, it’s Jim aka Celtic Merlin – the guy who pretends to care about the plight Palestinians for the rubes at Daily Kos while simultaneously posting blatantly antisemitic filth at other sites! Just the kind of person that Harris-Gershon loves to enable.
I feel the sender of irony when Jim using hid identity ad s Christian to highlight Jewish brutaity. Looking back st history I don’t really have to spell it out.