Opinion Editorials, October 2010

 Israeli Terrorism Against Palestinian Minors

By Adib S Kawar

Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, October 8, 2010

The following story by journalist Nora Barrows-Friedman entitled “Amir, ten years old, abducted by Israeli soldiers from his bed” is not unique of Zionist occupation, racism, atrocities and crimes against humanity, is a similar Zionist terrorism against the Palestinian Arab children under the most savage and inhuman occupation, similar to the story of Karam Khaled Daana a 13 years old child, who like Amir, who is also from Hebron old city, who never threw a stone on anybody, still who, according to “the most moral army in the world”  “threatens the security of the state of Israel”!!!. Both children were abducted by the Zionist army either from their beds in the middle of the night or on their way from or to school.

The military “Israeli” court issued an order to separate him from his family, and put him under house arrest, but far from his family… One of the strangest, harshest and most painful Zionist occupation court rulings. The only witness on Karam’s “crime” is a Zionist colonialist otherwise called “settler” who lied claiming that the child threw a stone on his car! The court of law didn’t take into consideration that the occupying colonizer was lying.

The minor Karam told “Assafir” with a voice shivering with fear: “I was on my way from school to home, suddenly they abducted me and took me to Ofar prison, I was shivering from fear”. With these few words he told his  father before going to bed, in spite of the pains resulting from his broken leg from a previous accident, but he told his father: “I want to return home to play with my brothers, and sleep in my  room”.

The child’s father confirmed that in the beginning the court was satisfied with the child paying a fine and return home, but the military  court refused the ruling; so the judge took a new ruling to fine him and send him away from his home to his uncle’s home for five months away from ’Kiryat Arba A’  colony where he shall be under house arrest. The father said: “I didn’t have the money, US $600, I have ten children, and I earn 70 shekels per day (US$ 17) so I had to borrow the money to cover the bail.”

The war prisoner’s club condemned the ruling of sending the child away from his parents, and the president of the club, Kadourah Faris, said: “Arresting a child, not to mention sending him away from his family, forms a very strange precedent that had never been recorded in history”, pointing out that such a “ruling like this is a naivety and comical, whether it is related to the ruling or who took it.”

The rest of the details of the two cases are identical; so we see no need to translate the rest of Karam’s tragedy’s article. Both stories are two of thousands of acts of violence, terrorism and inhumanity against Palestinian Arab children whom Zionist claims to become terrorists… Such words are said by invaders who occupied and stole a land from its owners, and all of this is to complete the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs from their homeland, Arab Palestine.

Targeting Palestinian Arab children is a symbol  of Zionist cowardice hiding behind the power of arms, and support of western colonialism.

Amir, ten years old, abducted by Israeli soldiers from his bed
Nora Barrows-Friedman writing from Hebron, occupied West Bank,

Live from Palestine, 8 March 2010

Amir al-Mohtaseb smiled tenderly when I asked him to tell me his favorite color. Sitting in his family's living room last Thursday afternoon, 4 March, in the Old City of Hebron, the ten-year-old boy with freckles and long eyelashes softly replied, "green." He then went on to describe in painful detail his arrest and detention -- and the jailing of his 12-year-old brother Hasan by Israeli occupation soldiers on Sunday, 28 February.

Hours after our interview, at 2am, Israeli soldiers would break into the house, snatch Amir from his bed, threaten his parents with death by gunfire if they tried to protect him, and take him downstairs under the stairwell. They would beat him so badly that he would bleed internally into his abdomen, necessitating overnight hospitalization. In complete shock and distress, Amir would not open his mouth to speak for another day and a half.

In our interview that afternoon before the brutal assault, Amir said that on the 28th, he was playing in the street near the Ibrahimi Mosque, on his way with Hasan to see their aunt.

"Two of the soldiers stopped us and handcuffed us," Amir said. "They brought us to two separate jeeps. They took me to the settlement and put me in a corner. I still had handcuffs on. They put a dog next to me. I said that I wanted to go home. They said no, and told me I would stay here forever. They refused to let me use the bathroom. They wouldn't let me call my mother. They blindfolded me and I stayed there like that until my father was able to come and get me late at night."

Amir's detention inside the settlement lasted nearly ten hours. "The only thing that I thought about was how afraid I was, especially with the dog beside me. I wanted to run away and go back to my house," he said.

Amir and Hassan's mother, Mukarrem, told me that Amir immediately displayed signs of trauma when he returned home. "He was trying to tell me a joke, and trying to laugh. But it was not normal laughter. He was happy and terrified at the same time," she said. "He wet himself at some point during the detention. He was extremely afraid."

Amir revealed that he hadn't been able to sleep in the nights following his detention, worried sick about his brother in jail and extremely afraid that the soldiers would come back (which, eventually, they did). Today, approximately 350 children are languishing inside Israeli prisons and detention camps, enduring interrogation, torture and indefinite sentences, sometimes without charge. The number fluctuates constantly, but thousands of Palestinian children between the ages of 12 and 16 have moved through the Israeli military judicial system over the past decade since the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada. Israel designates 18 as the age of adulthood for its own citizens, but through a military order, and against international law, Israel mandates 16 as the age of adulthood for Palestinians. Additionally, Israel has special military orders (#1644 and #132) to be able to arrest and judge Palestinian children -- termed "juvenile delinquents" -- as young as 12 years old.

"This way, they have a 'legal' cover for what they are doing, even though this is against international laws," said Abed Jamal, a researcher at Defence for Children International-Palestine Section's (DCI-PS) Hebron office. "However, in Amir's case, they broke even their own laws by arresting and detaining him as a ten-year-old boy. These laws are obviously changeable according to Israel's whim. We have yet to see a prosecution for crimes such as these."

I asked Amir and Hassan’s father, Fadel, to describe how one is able to parent effectively under this kind of constant siege.

"It's not safe for the children to go outside because we've faced constant attacks by the settlers and the soldiers," he explained. "This by itself is unimaginable for us. And now, we have one son in jail and another traumatized ... they're so young."

On Sunday, 7 March, exactly a week after Hassan’s arrest and Amir's detention, the family and members of the local media made an early-morning journey to Ofer prison where Hasan had been held since his initial arrest. After a lengthy process in which the Israeli military judge admitted that the boy was too young to stay in prison, Hasan was released on the condition that he would come back to the court to finish the trial at a later date. This trial followed the initial hearing last Wednesday at Ofer, where Maan News Agency reported that the judge insisted that Fadel pay the court 2,000 shekels ($530) for Hassan’s bail. According to Maan, Fadel then publicly asked the court, "What law allows a child to be tried in court and then asks his father to pay a fine? I will not pay the fine, and you have to release my child ... This is the law of Israel's occupation."

Consumed by their sons' situations, Mukarrem and Fadel say they are trying to do the best for their family under attack. "What can we do?" asked Fadel. "We lock the doors. We lock the windows. We have nothing with which to protect our family and our neighbors from the soldiers or the settlers. If a Palestinian kidnapped and beat and jailed an Israeli child, the whole world would be up in arms about it. It would be all over the media. But the Israelis, they come into our communities with jeeps and tanks and bulldozers, they take our children and throw them into prison, and no one cares."

DCI-PS's Jamal reiterates the point that international laws made to protect children under military occupation have been ignored by Israel since the occupation began in 1967. "Most of the time, we try to do our best to use the law, the Geneva Conventions, the UN Convention for the Rights of the Child as weapons against this brutality," said Jamal. "All of these laws exist, but Israel uses their own military laws as excuses to defy international law. As Palestinians, we have to work together to create solidarity against this brutality. Through our work, we try to tell the international community what's going on with Palestinian children to create a wide berth of support against this situation. We believe that the only way this will stop is through the support of the international community."

Amir slowly began speaking again 36 hours after the beating by Israeli soldiers. Zahira Meshaal, a Bethlehem-based social worker specializing in the effects of trauma in children, said that Amir's "elective mutism," a symptom of extreme psychological shock caused by his beating and detention, is a common response, but that it is a good sign that he began talking again. "This is a reaction of fear on many levels. Amir's house and his family are his only source of security," said Meshaal. "This was taken away from him the moment the soldiers invaded his home. It's easy to attend to the immediate trauma, but the long-term effects will undoubtedly be difficult to address. He'll need a lot of mental health services from now on."

Meshaal comments on the nature of this attack in the context of the unraveling situation inside Hebron. "We are talking about a place that is on the front lines of trauma," she said. "This is an ongoing and growing injury to the entire community. Parents have to be a center of security for their children, but that's being taken away from them. Especially in Hebron, the Israeli settlers and soldiers know this, and use this tactic to force people to leave the area. It's a war of psychology. This is a deliberate act to make the children afraid and force people to leave so that their children can feel safer."

At the end of our interview last Thursday, Amir sent a message to American children. "We are kids, just like you. We have the right to play, to move freely. I want to tell the world that there are so many kids inside the Israeli jails. We just want to have freedom of movement, the freedom to play." Amir said that he wants to be a heart surgeon when he grows up. His mother and father told me that they hope Amir's own heart -- and theirs -- heals from last week's repetitive and cumulative trauma at the hands of the interminable Israeli occupation.

Nora Barrows-Friedman is the co-host and Senior Producer of Flashpoints, a daily investigative newsmagazine on Pacifica Radio. She is also a correspondent for Inter Press Service. She regularly reports from Palestine, where she also runs media workshops for youth in the Dheisheh refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

Opinions expressed in various sections are the sole responsibility of their authors and they may not represent Al-Jazeerah & ccun.org.

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