Muhammad Ali Dirbas, seven years old, was detained by Israeli police. Photo via Ma'an News Agency.
Tragically, the story contained below is not an isolated incident or some stark anomaly. Rather, it is a common occurrence in a country I love, but a country which continues to fall into a police-state abyss.
The story comes from Jerusalem, a city with a mayor, Nir Barkat, who has allowed (to reference Mayor Bloomberg) his own personal army to routinely and illegally suppress the rights of Palestinian citizens with impunity.
As Yossi Gurvitz in +972 Magazine reports:
Nir Barkat, the de jure mayor of Jerusalem and de facto military governor of Jerusalem, toured Issawiya yesterday, and the locals, taking a dim view, stoned his entourage. Soon afterward…policemen detained Muhammad Ali Dirbas, aged seven, carried him off to a nearby police station, interrogated him for three or four hours, and then released him. Further information, obtained by B’Tselem, shows that Dirbas was was detained by YASAM (riot police) at about 4 P.M., and was then moved to a police station at about 5 P.M. His father came to the police station circa 6 P.M., was kept apart from his child until about 9 P.M., and then Muhammad was interrogated in the presence of his father until around 11 P.M.
Forget for a moment that a child – a first grader – was detained by riot police for throwing stones. Forget for a moment that this child was held, for hours, in isolation with the authorities as his father waited, worried about what was happening to his child in the same building.
And forget that doing so contravened Israeli law, where the age of criminal liability is 12, and where detaining such minors is patently illegal.
Instead, consider that the scene depicted above is replayed time and again. But not only that. Consider this: in the last five years, 835 minors were tried in military courts on suspicion of throwing stones, with 255 being between the age of 12-13. And out of those 835, how many were acquitted?
Only one, which is an acquittal rate of 0.11 percent.
And of those children between the ages of 12-13 charged, 19 of them served jail sentences of up to two months, despite the fact that, in Israel, it is forbidden for minors under the age of 14 to serve time in prison.
Indeed, as B’Tselem reports:
The infringement of the minors’ rights begins from the time of arrest and interrogation. Minors are often arrested in the middle of the night and taken to interrogation alone, without being allowed to consult with an attorney or even their parents, and without a parent being allowed to be present at the questioning. Often they are treated violently. The violation of their rights continues during the course of the court proceeding. Judges order the vast majority of minors to be held in custody until the end of the criminal proceedings, forcing plea bargains. This is because even if the minor is eventually acquitted, he will spend a longer period of time in custody during the course of a full trial than the length of punishment if he pleads guilty in a plea bargain. The military justice system views incarceration as the primary means for penalizing minors, and hardly considers other options. While incarcerated, the minors’ receive almost no family visits and face numerous restrictions on their ability to complete their studies.
It should be noted that Israel is a country which just received a boost in U.S. military aid, thanks to President Obama’s signing of NDAA, and a country to which, according to multiple reports, the U.S. is planning on deploying several thousand troops.
Given the incredible importance Israel plays as a U.S. ally – as a democratic nation in the Middle East – and the astronomical monetary and logistical support with which the U.S. provides Israel on a yearly basis, Israel’s treatment (or abuse) of the Palestinians matters.
It matters just as the human rights record of any nation matters, no doubt. But it matters in this sense: America has the potential to influence behavior, particularly behavior – such as settlement construction – that it wholly opposes, behavior that continues to do harm to any chance of peace and/or a two-state resolution.
What happened to a seven-year-old boy yesterday matters not just because a Palestinian’s human rights were violated. It matters because such violations harm both the primary victims and the secondary victims – Israelis who simply want to live in peace, but who are held captive by both hawkish and centrist leaders alike.
The longer this conflict continues, and the farther we stray from the potential for resolution, the more we creep into an area that looks anything like what is in America’s best interest for the region.
And that fact is reflected through the eyes of a seven-year-old child.
If only David was as passionate about the hundreds children seized and tortured by Syrian authorities in a time where thousands of protesters have been murdered. This invent should be investigated but the Palestinian victim industry would love to blow this out of control.
This is heart wrenching. How can people mistreat children? And what happens to the souls, psychic of those who interrogate children? How will they treat their families and children? Will that anger and meanness continue in their families? What happens to a nation that permits this with impunity?
I have witnessed this in Palestine and I wonder if the Palestinian child will have PTSD for the rest of their lives. I saw a very young innocent, naive 16 year old held in prisons, most in solitary confinement for almost 2 months. He was moved 3 times. He was not the young carefree child who went into prison. He was present when there was a grass fire near his house about 1/2 mile from the settlement of Zitzar, near Nablus. He and another youth his age were taken and punished as an example for the whole village.
The cruelty of the Israeli soldiers will effect the psychic of Israel more and more. Is that what is hoped for?????????
Martha,
Have you witbnessed anything in Syria. bodies of childen have been tossed in the street by secutrty forces afther they ahve been toprtured an mutilated. But the Palestine Victim Industry blinds you to atrocities in the Arab world.
What a horrible story and yes, it is just as horrible in Syria, Canada, and any other place. We need to mobilize around the rights of children as vulnerable people in our society who need protection and not interogation and trauma. thankyou for waking us up again. marcia
It is just as horrible in Syria? Are you kidding me? You must be blind. Children have been captured, tortured and thrown in the streets with body parts missing. Martha has been blind by atrocities in the Arab world by the Palestine Victim Industry. You, know, at least Israel has a law regarding the detention of minors, it allows the case to be brought to court. So I suggest Martha and Marcia open their eyes so the Arab world does not get a free ride.
Don, I am reporting what I experienced and saw with my own eyes.
I am not saying all is well in the Arab world. It is not.
But Israel proclaims to be just and right and it is abusing Palestinian children. If there is an Israeli court case it is a sham. Israel is obliged to follow human rights laws concerning people in Occupied Palestine. They cannot use the excuse that it is worse in the Arab countries.
The USA has passed a law allowing indefinite detention world wide. It violates human decency and human rights. So the USA speaks against human rights violations in other countries and is totally guilty of many human rights violations. All are guilty.
Martha:
“I have witnessed this in Palestine and I wonder if the Palestinian child will have PTSD for the rest of their lives. I saw a very young innocent, naive 16 year old held in prisons, most in solitary confinement for almost 2 months”
You witnessed this? I mean, you wee in prison to see this? You saw this with you own eyes? Do you realize that Gilad Shalit was held in solitary confinement for YEARS. The Red Cross did not see him and he looked malnourished. Did this upset you?
The kid came out a lot better then Koby Mandell who was beaten to death with rocks and then mutilated.
The atrocities committed by Israel have been going on for over 60 years and America still backs them. And the “Palestine Victim Industry” must be the worst industry ever. It doesn’t get anything done…
By the way how was Israel created again? Sheer terror and appeasements from the Western World spawned the demon of the Middle East. Don’t undermine Israeli terror just because other terrible things in the world are worse in proportion.
Read
And look up Rachel Corrie
Mark
By the way how was Israel created again? Sheer terror and appeasements from the Western World spawned the demon of the Middle East. Don’t undermine Israeli terror just because other terrible things in the world are worse in proportion.”
Thanks for displaying your bigoted assessment of the establishment of Israel. Was David Duke your teacher? I can, where do you come up with these things?