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Written by Jonathan Cook
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Friday, 19 June 2009 00:03 |
 The rights of Palestinian children are routinely violated by Israel’s
security forces, according to a new report that says beatings and torture are
common. In addition, hundreds of Palestinian minors are prosecuted by Israel
each year without a proper trial and are denied family visits.
The findings by Defence for Children International (DCI) come in the wake of
revelations from Israeli soldiers and senior commanders that it is “normal
procedure” in the West Bank to terrorise Palestinian civilians, including
children.
Col Itai Virob, commander of the Kfir Brigade, disclosed last month that to
accomplish a mission, “aggressiveness towards every one of the residents in the
village is common”. Questioning included slaps, beatings and kickings, he said.
As a result, Gabi Ashkenazi, the head of the armed services, was forced to
appear before the Israeli parliament to disavow the behaviour of his soldiers.
Beatings were “absolutely prohibited”, he told legislators.
Col Virob made his remarks during court testimony in defence of two soldiers,
including his deputy commander, who are accused of beating Palestinians in the
village of Qaddum, close to Nablus. One told the court that “soldiers are
educated towards aggression in the IDF [army]”.
Col Virob appeared to confirm his observation, saying it was policy to “disturb
the balance” of village life during missions and that the vast majority of
assaults were “against uninvolved people”.
Last week, further disclosures of ill-treatment of Palestinians, some as young
as 14, were aired on Israeli TV, using material collected by dissident soldiers
as part of the Breaking the Silence project, which highlights army brutality.
Two soldiers serving in the Harub battalion said they had witnessed beatings at
a school in the West Bank village of Hares, south-west of Nablus, in an
operation in March to stop stone-throwing. Many of those held were not involved,
the soldiers said.
During a 12-hour operation that began at 3am, 150 detainees were blindfolded and
handcuffed from behind, with the nylon restraints so tight their hands turned
blue. The worst beatings, the soldiers said, occurred in the school toilets.
According to one soldier’s testimony, a boy of about 15 was given “a slap that
brought him to the ground”. He added that many of his comrades “just knee
[Palestinians] because it’s boring, because you stand there 10 hours, you’re not
doing anything, so they beat people up”.
The picture from serving soldiers confirms the findings of DCI, which noted that
many children were picked up in general sweeps after disturbances or during
late-night raids of their homes.
Its report includes a selection of testimonies from children it represented in
2008 in which they describe Israeli soldiers beating them or being tortured by
interrogators.
One 10-year-old boy, identified as Ezzat H, described an army search of his
family home for a gun. He said a soldier slapped and punched him repeatedly
during two hours of questioning, before another soldier pointed a rifle at him:
“The rifle barrel was a few centimetres away from my face. I was so terrified
that I started to shiver. He made fun of me.”
Another boy, Shadi H, aged 15, said he and his friend were forced to undress by
soldiers in an orange grove near Tulkarm while the soldiers threw stones at
them. They were then beaten with rifle butts.
Jameel K, aged 14, described being taken to a military camp where he was
assaulted and then had a rope tightened around his neck in a mock execution.
Yehuda Shaul, of Breaking the Silence, said soldiers treated any Palestinian
older than 12 or 13 as an adult.
“For the first time a high-ranking soldier [Col Virob] has joined us in raising
the issue -- even if not intentionally -- that the use of physical violence
against Palestinians is not exceptional but policy. A few years ago no senior
officer would have had the guts to say this,” he said.
The DCI report also highlights the systematic use of torture by interrogators
from the army and the secret police, the Shin Bet, in an attempt to extract
confessions from children, often in cases involving stone-throwing.
Islam M, aged 12, said he was threatened with having boiling water poured on his
face if he did not admit throwing stones and was then pushed into a thorn bush.
Another boy, Abed S, aged 16, said his hands and feet were tied to the wall of
an interrogation room in the shape of a cross for a day and then put in solitary
confinement for 15 days.
Last month, the United Nations Committee Against Torture, a panel of independent
experts, expressed “deep concern” at Israel’s treatment of Palestinian minors.
According to the DCI report, some 700 children are convicted in Israel’s
military courts each year, with children older than 12 denied access to lawyers
in interrogation.
It adds that interrogators routinely blindfold and handcuff child detainees
during questioning and use techniques including slaps and kicks, sleep
deprivation, solitary confinement, threats to the child and his family, and
tying the child up for long periods.
Such practices were banned by Israel’s Supreme Court in 1999 but are still
widely documented by Israeli human rights groups.
DCI says it has been disturbed by reports from several children of a special
tiny cell, referred to as No 36, at a detention centre near Haifa. The cell has
no windows or ventilation, its walls are dark and a dim light is kept on 24
hours a day.
In 95 per cent of cases, children are convicted on the basis of signed
confessions written in Hebrew, a language few of them understand.
Once sentenced, the children are held in violation of international law in
prisons in Israel where most are denied visits from family and receive little or
no education.
DCI also criticises “a culture of impunity” among the Shin Bet, noting that not
one of 600 complaints of torture filed against its interrogators during the
second intifada has led to a criminal investigation.
Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, reported in November that soldiers too
rarely face disciplinary action over illegal behaviour.
Army data from 2000 to the end of 2007 revealed that the military police had
indicted soldiers in only 78 of 1,268 investigations. Most soldiers received
minor sentences.
Academic studies suggest that Israeli soldiers have been routinely using
violence against Palestinian civilians, including children, for many years.
In late 2007 Israelis were shocked by the testimonies collected by clinical
psychologist Nufar Yishai-Karin from 21 soldiers with whom she shared her
military service during the early 1990s.
The soldiers told her of incidents in which bystanders were shot or assaulted.
In one of the most disturbing testimonies, a soldier said he had witnessed his
commander attacking a four-year-old boy playing in the sand in Gaza.
“He broke his hand here at the wrist. Broke his hand at the wrist, broke his leg
here. And started to stomp on his stomach, three times, and left ... The next
day I go out with him on another patrol, and the soldiers are already starting
to do the same thing.”
Such revelations have grown in number since the Breaking the Silence began
drawing attention to the army’s mistreatment of Palestinians in 2004.
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Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest
books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to
Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's
Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
Source: The National
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