This is a recorded message of the international Academy Award Winner Shaun Tan in support of Gaza Children Cinema.
Over the next year, this movie and video message package will be shown to over 100 groups of children throughout Gaza. Gaza has always been a challenging environment for children, and especially so over the past two weeks, as the city has been under a sustained and brutal onslaught from across the border. In a city with around one million children, where there are no cinemas, little infrastructure, inconsistent water and power, and a military embargo limiting food, medicines and other essentials, not to mention constant military threat, a simple event like watching a movie, can be a vitally therapeutic and impactful event.
You can donate to the Gaza Children’s Cinema via THIS LINK
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‘When Israeli forces destroyed the cultural centre, they thought they would also destroy our dreams’
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BREAKING NEWS… This is difficult to write. Gaza Children’s Cinema team is mourning the destruction of the Said Al-Mishal Cultural Center which was levelled to the ground yesterday after Israeli fighter jets struck the five-story building with 10 rockets. The second largest cultural centre in Gaza was a venue for theatre and music performance in the besieged and isolated Gaza Strip. This cultural centre was one of the main places where Gaza Children Cinema team organised movie screening for children. The Said Al-Mishal Cultural Center provided spaces of entertainment and joy for generations of children and young people in Gaza; it is in total ruins now.
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Dear Gaza Children Cinema friends and supporters,
First and foremost, we would like to repeatedly extend our sincere gratitude for your kind and generous support to our Gaza education community-based initiative: Gaza Children Cinema.
We have been silent in the last few months but invariably busy with organising fundraising events to extend the wonderful momentum of the project to further reach to children communities in Gaza. We also have been minutely working with our partner in Gaza, Tamer Institute for Community Education to plan for the second phase of cinema workshops implementation across the enclave Gaza Strip.
Children in Gaza need our help and support to heal. Please consider contributing to Gaza Children Cinema to provide spaces of fun, creatively temporary escapism through basic human engagement: watching a movie in a safe environment.
According to a recent study by Gaza-based university professors of psychological health, Dr Jamil Tahrawi and Dr Sanaa Abu-Dagga, “Drawings of Palestinian Children after the War on Gaza,” 82.3 percent of 445 children surveyed have drawn images related to war. These include: fighter planes, destroyed homes and mosques, Israeli rockets and missiles, dead Palestinians, various military vehicles, and fighters. The drawings showed fear, terror, and sadness over the those killed and wounded. The study is available in Arabic here.
But there is still hope. Dr. Tahrawi explained that art could be used as a bridge to a better future and that despite the gruesome content of many of the children’s pictures the drawings could help the children overcome their grief and move on.
“The children can relieve their stress by expressing their feelings instead of repressing them. I was surprised at the bright and cheerful colors used by certain children. I expected them all to use bleak colors such as black and brown. But the rainbow of colors is proof of their resilience,” according to Dr. Tahrawi.
“If they are given the chance and the same opportunities as other children they can overcome Gaza’s tragic history and circumstances. Unfortunately we don’t have sufficient people qualified in art therapy in Gaza,” added Tahrawi.
You can help in a number of ways, and all are greatly appreciated:
By sharing this update with your networks, you will increase the coverage of the work done by ‘Gaza Children Cinema,’
By donating via the crowdfunding link earlier in this page. Even the smallest contribution helps, and
By sharing contributing any special skills, time, energy or resources you may have. Please feel free to get in touch! Your input can help make the world a better place for some children who need it
Gaza’s children need consistent and age appropriate interventions, in order to grow and flourish, is an environment of such severe ongoing conflict. Ahmed Ashour, the team leader of Gaza Children Cinema in Gaza, indicated that the impact of cinema sessions on children as “beyond description” and that children are always waiting for more screenings.
Through Gaza Children Cinema sessions, children are encouraged to draw their feelings and tell stories in images. Children are also encouraged to play out their experiences in supervised play sessions. These approaches enable the children to find ways to externalise the trauma, rather than letting it fester like an internal time bomb.
Thank you so much for making this initiative real.
According to the country currently housing migrant children in cages, the body responsible for upholding international standards for human rights, the UN Human Rights Council, is no longer “worthy of its name.”
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This is a message of gratitude and appreciation for making this initiative real. Without your generous donations, we wouldn’t be able to reach many of children across the Gaza Strip, and offer them some moments of peace, dialogue, and entertainment. We are determined to continue in this track, this time with more commitment and enthusiasm. We always appreciate your input and feedback. If you wish to know more, please contact us on info@gazachildrencinema.org.
Yours Sincerely, Ayman Qwaider and Mohammed Al-Rozzi For Gaza Children Cinema Team
Gaza Children Cinema – Update March 2018
In a local library in Rafah, South of the Gaza Strip, children are busy working on a white cardboard. They are creating their cinema’s box office. Others are allocating number stickers to the seats. Another group of children are in charge of distributing popcorn in preparation of a film screening. Children then line up to get their tickets before entering the screening venue; they stay quite as their eyes gaze at the screen; but once the movie ends, they are eager to talk about what they just saw and reflect on their first cinema experience. Some talk, some sing, some dance and some draw.
This is only a brief scenario of one of the 160 screenings we have managed to implement across the Gaza Strip in 2017 thanks to your generous donations. Below is an update of some of the major outcomes of the cinema’s Project activities last year.
Gaza Children Cinema:
The idea was to create a peaceful, creative space where kids could be just kids—a space where a child can live a joyful moments while surviving the bitter reality of siege loss, hardship and war. The result was the Gaza Children’s Cinema, a project was born out of a desire to create a safe haven for children, and it is evidence of the magic of cinema—of how film can relieve suffering and provide light to literally one of the darkest places in the World.
The Cinema in 2017:
In 2016 and early 2017, we managed to raise 7800 AU$ through our online fundraiser page and through other fundraising events in support of the Gaza Children Cinema project.
In April 2017, we partnered with the Tamer Institute for Community Education, Gaza, in order to facilitate the implementation of the cinema screenings and to allow the initiative to be led by the local community, especially young volunteers. This partnership was important for building on the existing community resources in reaching more children. We did not want to re-invent the wheel, no one does want!
Besides targeting marginalised areas for the screenings, we have successfully managed to engage libraries and to promote regular screening within library settings across the Gaza Strip.
In preparation of the screenings, the Tamer Institute held two training workshops for the librarians and the young volunteers from Tamer Institute. The workshops focused on brainstorming the best ways to make the screening a successful enjoyable experience for the kids, the choice of the films and training the librarians to use arts as a tool of expression for the children to reflect on their inner thoughts and emotions.
About 160 cinema screenings were held with the children throughout 2017. We have managed to reach out to hundreds of children each month through organizing several screenings at several locations. The screenings were held across the Gaza Strip in Gaza, Rafah, Khan Younis, Maghazi Refugee camp, Jabalia refugee camp, amongst many other locations.
Gaza Children Cinema activities have been carried out across the Gaza Strip including border areas, marginalised children communities and refugee camps.
We have seen children join the cinema sessions with their parents in inclusive and entertaining settings. With the support of Gaza Children Cinema volunteer team, these children had the opportunity to engage into stimulating and interactive discussion prior and after the film screenings.
In September, and as part of our attempts to reach the most marginalized children in the most remote areas, we launched a call for proposals for initiatives around cinema and children. To our surprise, we received about twenty proposals from grassroots community groups. This has assured us that the impact of the Gaza Children Cinema is invaluable and is growing.
This project has been fully funded by charitable fundraiser events that we have voluntarily carried out here in Perth, Australia. Either through food stall markets, various movie screenings or an online fundraiser page, we have managed to raise enough funds to keep this initiative going and growing. And today we are hoping to raise funds to sustain this project for another year.
Here are some photos from 2017 and early 2018 screenings:
A photo of children watching a movie screening in a Library in Khan Younis, South of the Gaza Strip.
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A photo of a cinema workshop, where we try to take the student through an imaginative cinema experience. The children here are performing buying their tickets to enter the movie screening.
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“What would a cinema theatre look like??” a photo of children in a pre-screening workshop on cinema in Rafah, South of Gaza. The children are watching photos of cinema theatre and imagining what would the cinema look like. Most of these children would have never experienced a real cinema setting.
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A photo of children creating a movie poster for the movie they are going to watch. This workshop was held in the Red Crescent library in Gaza City. And it shows part of the activities Children engage in before or after each screening.
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A photo of children creating a movie poster for the movie they are going to watch. This workshop was held in the Red Crescent library in Gaza City. And it shows part of the activities Children engage in before or after each screening.
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During a cinema workshop with the children aged (12-15) implemented in Atfalona Society for Deaf Children. This picture is for the children while they are standing in a line to take the cinema tickets.
The following links were sent to me from Australia. They are all important and will give you an idea how YOU can help the children of Gaza during these most difficult days for them. Please take the time and click on every link posted below.
The following note was sent along with the links by a dear friend and Brother, Ayman Qwaider, from Gaza now living in Perth, Australia:
I am writing to share one of my passionate community education projects called Gaza Children Cinema which I founded in Gaza back in 2013. I often say that only hope left in Gaza is the young generation which we need to invest in to build up a better future for Gaza and for the region. The overall situation in Gaza is devastating which has demoralised me personally a lot. However, I often get energized when watching those kids in Gaza still smiling despite the harsh realities.
Mohammad Saba’aneh sends Christmas greetings from Palestine
Palestinian cartoonist, Mohammad Saba’aneh, created these cartoons this morning with a message of Merry Christmas and “Here now it is so sad, no one celebrate”.
"Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become
actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they
become your character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." Lao
Tzu
Cowardice asks the question - is it safe? Expediency asks the question - is
it politic? Vanity asks the question - is it popular? But conscience asks
the question - is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a
position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take
it because it is right. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
"A scholar without activism is only a mercenary of knowledge. An activist
without knowledge is just a mercenary of charity. Beware, it is neither
knowledge nor charity, but justice that brings the kingdom." Santiago
Slabodsky
Corollary: Action without rational thought based on critical thinking can
be dangerous, but education, rational thought, and spoken words remain
sterile without ACTION (my words)
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And the reality of what has to be changed ..... (Click on link to see photos)
Trader Joe’s decision to carry this product violates an international boycott against Israel for its violence against Palestinians and decades-long oppression. Israel regularly invades Palestinian communities and has perpetrated a blockade against Gaza’s inhabitants for over ten years.
Image by Carlos Latuff
Trader Joe’s Promotes Israel’s Snack To ‘Fight Hunger’, While Gaza’s Children Suffer
Trader Joe’s Promotes Israeli Snack To ‘Fight Hunger’, While Gaza’s Children Suffer
In violation of the international boycott of Israel over its human rights abuses, which have caused stunting of Gazan children, Trader Joe’s is promoting Bamba, an Israeli-made snack.
Trader Joes’ has just announced that it will be selling a snack made for it in Israel, “Trader Joe’s Bamba Peanut Snacks.”
The announcement reports that Bamba is “the best-selling snack in Israel” and crows that it’s one of the few grocery stores that carry it: “Bamba is tricky to find in general (most U.S. grocers don’t carry the stuff).”
Trader Joe’s decision to carry this product violates an international boycott against Israel for its violence against Palestinians and decades-long oppression. Israel regularly invades Palestinian communities and has perpetrated a blockade against Gaza’s inhabitants for over ten years.
The company that produces Bamba in Israel, Osem, calls itself “as Israeli as Israeli can be.” Osem’s website says:
Osem’s history and the stages of its development are directly and closely intertwined with the growth of the State of Israel as a whole. The warmth, kindness, solidarity, and courage that are characteristic of Israel are all building stones of Osem Group.”
Osem says it works “to strengthen and advance the Israeli food industry and the story of the State of Israel as a whole.”
The company has been operating in the U.S. since the early 1960s. Among its many brands are Sabra and Veggie Patch.
Osem & Nestlé, subject of another boycott
In the 1990s the Osem group began partnering with Nestlé, a company that originated in Switzerland but “became over time a world-wide international holding company.”
In 1998 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave Nestlé the Jubilee Award, “the highest tribute ever awarded by the State of Israel in recognition of those individuals and organizations, that through their investments and trade relationships, have done the most to strengthen the Israeli economy.” Nestle now holds Osem and is part of the Osem Group.
Nestlé has been boycotted since 1977 “because it contributes to the unnecessary death and suffering of infants around the world by aggressively marketing baby foods in breach of international marketing standards.”
Oscar-winning director Danis Tanovic produced a film about a former Nestlé baby milk salesman who opposed the industry when he realized that babies were dying as a result of his work pressuring doctors to promote formula.
Osem’s website says: “when the Israeliness of Osem Group meets the international strength of Nestle, together they become invincible.”
Progressive Except Palestine
Trader Joe’s is often seen as a progressive company, and recently announced a project to help “fight hunger throughout New England.”
Perhaps at some point Trader Joe’s will be equally concerned about children in Palestine, where humanitarian agencies have found that due to Israel’s blockade of Gaza, “ten percent of children under 5 have stunted growth due to prolonged exposure to malnutrition. Anemia, caused by an iron-deficiency, affects 58.6 percent of schoolchildren, 68.1 percent of children nine to 12 months old and 36.8 percent of pregnant mothers.”
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It is commonly said that the all worst nightmares move silently in the dark and wear military uniforms and escaping with light steps along the asphalt street. This night in the village not even the engine sound of the armoured vehicle distracts. The vehicle remains there, without moving, in the night, and next to it there is a street light with a faint light. The man is watching, and with each movement he seems to be counting steps, three forward, one to the side, and again three paces backwards, without taking his eyes off the houses, with his rifle under his arm, and the barrel kept at eye level, ready to interrupt the silence. It is totally silent, and the silence seems almost begging to be interrupted by a roar, a scream, or a lament, while from behind a curtain a child, one of the numerous children, records the scene with his cell phone.
Palestine, the cat and the mouse, and the trapped children
By Antonietta Chiodo, Translated by Milena Rampoldi and edited by John Catalinotto, Tlaxcala.
He is careful to cause not the least noise, to keep his hand steady, hoping that nobody will see him. This child is afraid, it is afraid of what it will document unconsciously. The soldier lowers his mitre and approaches the gate by opening it easily without causing the least noise.
From the dark of a street disappearing behind the corner of a big, white house another two soldiers appear suddenly, walking speedily. Under their arms they hold a handcuffed boy who is trying to keep up with them. They push him into a vehicle, lowering his head with the palm of the hand, and a couple of seconds later the car’s tailgate closes violently.
Like cats in the night they move lightly, with the gesture of an arm. One of them makes a gesture to a second patrol next there, that everything is OK. The silence is interrupted by the roar of the engines, and the cars disappear along the asphalted streets and then vanish, taking with them another fragment of freedom, a splinter of life who has just become 13 years old.
In the West Bank, what seems to be the plot of an action movie is every day realityd. Here children are the first ones being arrested by Israeli soldiers without any official trail and without any logical reasoning.
Tonight it was his turn, tomorrow it could be mine, everyone thinks here. The project “Pace dei Bimbi” (Peace for Children) has chosen to care about a village between Bethlehem and Hebron, where the incursions and abductions of children are part of their all day lives.
For two months we have written stories invented by us by considering the initial limitations of these children who do not feel free and are afraid of being put on trial. In the context, the mediation offered by their teacher Omar revealed itself to be fundamental. Being in front of a journalist was difficult for them at the beginning, because on one hand they wanted to trust me, and on the other hand they did not think this trust was possible. The days passed by, and their smiles started to take shape, and so did the smile of the small and thin Raiyed, arrested a couple of days ago without charges, dragged from his home, and wrenched away from the arms of his family.
Like many other children, Rayied spent 24 hours in jail, only because his family name is connected to a tradition of resistance against Israeli occupation. I remember that during my encounters the child who is only 13 years old talked about stars. For me, his smile is unforgettable, while he imagined a fabulous story talking about an azure light taking him to another planet. A planet full of peace and magic animals.
Raiyed knows very well that this will not be his only trip to jail, and many other visits like this will follow during his life. However, we perfectly know that psychologically destroying a child by obligating him to live in fear is much more lethal than any bullet. During my stay the moments were not rare where the teacher Omar and I were forced to use makeshift roads because of the blocks around the village because stones had been thrown from under the shadow of the olive trees surrounding the houses. Here people live like trapped mice, while deceitful cats, protected from their own violations of human rights, play dice with these lives and the fear of their victims fuels their thirst for power and injustice.
Shraeh, a Palestinian man, tells us that during the last three days three children between 11 and 13 years were arrested at their homes and also about his brother. He has been in Israeli jail for 16 years now, without authorisation for family visits. And being visited in jail is an undeniable right. It is just the right to look at his eyes, the right to smile at him, and to check his health situation, as we usually do in a so-called “democratic” country.
There are places in this world more oppressed than others, but sometimes here young boys are labelled inattentive. They are said to play with their lives. However, here it is completely normal to imagine a soldier shooting into the chest of a young boy because he threw a stone and to hear words of support for the soldiers. And all this is a sign of the tragic end of human rights. Our world has chosen globalisation, thus replacing the real value of life and innocence with money.
For 60 years, the establishment, media and courts have colluded to hide the truth about this ugly affair that dismantles the Zionist story we like to tell ourselves.
How it continues ….
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Related history ….
Time for Israel to Admit: The Yemenite Children Were Systematically Kidnapped
If the issue of the missing Yemenite Jewish children did not involve an ethnic as well as a criminal angle, it would have been resolved a long time ago. But who will dare admit that many Jewish children were abducted from their parents by other Jews, in a phenomenon with racist overtones, right after the Holocaust? Thus, the story is buried deep underground, evidence is destroyed and the public is lied to for over 60 years.
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There were abductions of Yemenite Jewish children, and these were deliberate and systematic. One can learn about them first of all from the testimonies of the parents. Anyone disbelieving them should examine the filters through which they allow reality to permeate their consciousness. I immediately believed these parents when I first interviewed them in 1994 on Israel Radio. Their testimonies were clear and incisive, unless you believe that Yemenite Jews are chronic fantasizers. That would dovetail with statements such as “we established this state and you should be grateful that we’ve brought you here,” which I’ve been hearing lately.
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When a woman gives birth to a healthy baby who is shown to her, and right after that a doctor comes in and tells her that since she “pressed too hard” the baby was stillborn, one doesn’t need a high school diploma to realize that the baby was kidnapped. When 40 babies are sent together from the Atlit transit camp to Jerusalem for “immunization” and they never return, any reasonable person understands that what happened was not “immunization.” If three Yiddish speakers arrive at the baby dorms at the Ein Shemer camp in the evening hours, after most staff members and mothers have gone, and collect babies from their cribs before disappearing forever, even a Yemenite speaker can understand that something is rotten.
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There are many more such testimonies. One can add to these reports by Knesset members in the 1950s and 1960s, telling of sales of children for money and a “black market for children.” There are also the words of Justice Shneur Zalman Cheshin in that period, describing fictitious adoption papers that were granted by wily ruses. One realizes that this was a covert and comprehensive scheme.
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It’s not as far-fetched as it may sound today. It’s hard to convey the depth of racism toward immigrants from Yemen felt by leaders of the Jewish community, among them, David Ben-Gurion himself, as well as various administrators who dealt directly with immigration and absorption of newcomers. Horrified caregivers and nurses reported that Yemenites don’t feed their children unless there are leftovers after the adults finish eating; that they give them coffee (their coffee was made from the caffeine-free husks of coffee beans, laced with cinnamon and ginger, but nurses heard ‘coffee’ and passed out); that Yemenites don’t really care if they have one child more or two less. Thus you get “moral legitimization” for transferring babies from “unfit” parents to those who are fit, as if people who considered themselves gods were handling babies as if they were playing Lego.
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The media were overall sympathetic to the establishment, gleefully disseminating the same racist message, as if the state’s leaders, doctors, nurses and heads of the medical establishment all sprang out of the same ideological womb, with a common heart beating in all of them. The media thereby legitimized the removal of these children from their parents.
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One could of course argue that all the committees set up to examine the issue determined that none of this really happened. Let’s ignore the first two, in 1967 and 1988, irrelevant committees that had no authority, and focus on the state commission of inquiry. Never has there been a commission of inquiry in Israel which has gone to such great lengths to pursue a clear objective of not finding anything. Paradoxically and woefully, it revealed numerous findings that pointed to systematic and deliberate abductions. However, the commission made great efforts to ignore these findings, submitting an embarrassing and shameful report in 2001, limping along with excuses and meanderings only for the purpose of absolving the state from any responsibility for the affair, while avoiding greatly shaming it.
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Behind the scenes of this commission there was an apparatus meant to conceal evidence, one which would do honor to any totalitarian state: Archives were destroyed, documents were falsified, witnesses reported that they had been threatened and important testimonies were heard behind closed doors. Aside from a handful of journalists, such as Ehud Ein-Gil from Haaretz and Kalman Liebskind from Makor Rishon, no one bothered reading the commission’s report, let alone examining its veracity.
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Thus, the families were thrice betrayed: Once by the powerful, violent and arrogant establishment of the 1950s, then, by the courts and finally, by the media. Three power hubs, which in a democracy are supposed to sustain a system of checks and balances, instead embraced each other in a hug, unparalleled in the annals of the state, and which only Yemenite immigrants who had “arrived from the Middle Ages” could have generated. Human rights groups and enlightened fighters for the liberty and welfare of Palestinians, foreign workers, and virtually anything that moves joined in the arrogance of power brokers, suffering from a blind spot that has persisted for over 60 years.
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This affair is not a “Yemenite Jews affair” but a black stain on the blue and white flag. It reflects collective guilt and a comprehensive and ongoing moral failure.
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This is what needs to be done now: Expose the entire truth, analyze it, understand it, mourn it and cry out over it. Ultimately, forgiveness may follow. This will be painful. The kidnapping affair dismantles the Zionist story we like telling ourselves, of the miraculous State of Israel, moral and gracious. The continued whitewashing of the affair shatters everything we believe we are today.
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The writer is a journalist and a member of Achim Vekayamim, a forum for families of kidnapped children.
An Israeli soldier searches a 15 year old boy in Hebron. One of the many incidents that takes place in Hebron that many Israelis don’t know about.
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This video shows Israeli occupation forces raiding the home of Karam Maswadeh in the West Bank city of Hebron.
Combatants from the Israeli Border Police enter the house and demand the whereabouts of Maswadeh’s son. Unable to find the child, the soldiers seize two other boys, aged 11 and 12.
Israeli soldiers raid house looking for 8-year-old
This video shows Israeli occupation forces raiding the home of Karam Maswadeh in the West Bank city of Hebron.
It was filmed on 10 August by an international volunteer and published by the human rights group B’Tselem on Monday.
Combatants from the Israeli Border Police enter the house and demand the whereabouts of Maswadeh’s son. Unable to find the child, the soldiers seize two other boys, aged 11 and 12.
The boys are then marched over to a checkpoint where an Israeli settler armed with a rifle is waiting with his son.
The Border Police commander asks the settler and his son if they recognize the Palestinian boys. When they say they do not, the boys are released.
According to B’Tselem, occupation forces later picked up three other Palestinian children, aged 8, 11 and 13, and repeated the same procedure.
This was in connection with a fight that reportedly took place earlier that day between Palestinian children and Israeli settlers.
“Fights between Palestinian and settler children are commonplace in downtown Hebron, where Israel imposes a regime of segregation, causing systematic and extensive harm to the Palestinian population,” B’Tselem states.
In July, an Israeli soldier was filmed assaulting a Palestinian girl and confiscating her bicycle apparently because she was playing on a street that Israel has designated for the exclusive use of Jews.
According to Maswadeh’s testimony to B’Tselem, the Israeli soldiers later came back to his house at 2am to arrest his 8-year-old son. The father and son were then driven to the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba where occupation forces wanted to interrogate the boy without his father present. Maswadeh said he refused.
“The video footage – showing Israeli security forces working in the service of the Hebron settlers and launching a night-time raid to locate an 8-year-old boy – highlights the disregard shown by Israeli authorities for the legal rights afforded to minors,” B’Tselem states. “Children below the age of criminal responsibility must not be detained for questioning, and certainly not in the middle of the night.”
The group also condemned Israel’s attempt to interrogate Maswadeh’s son without his parents present.
Sharp contrast
B’Tselem adds: “The immense efforts mounted to locate Palestinians suspected of harming settlers contrast sharply with the near absence of action to protect Palestinians from violence by settlers, be they minors or adults, or to uphold the rights of Palestinian children below the age of criminal responsibility.”
Recently, B’Tselem announced it would no longer cooperate with Israeli investigations into attacks by its soldiers and settlers on Palestinians, calling the military law enforcement system a sham.
“As of today,” B’Tselem executive director Hagai El-Ad wrote on 25 May, “we will no longer refer complaints to this system, and we will call on the Palestinian public not to do so either.”
“We will no longer aid a system that whitewashes investigations and serves as a fig leaf for the occupation.”
Abuse of children
The raid into a family home seen in the video above is routine in Hebron, as are night raids.
Harrowing video filmed last year shows Israeli soldiers raiding the bedrooms of Palestinian children in the middle of the night.
After forcing the children – at least one as young as four – out of their beds, the video shows the soldiers in full combat gear, armed with rifles and hand grenades, photographing and interrogating them.
Former Israeli soldiers have revealed that such raids in villages around the West Bank are often part of “mapping missions.”
Armed soldiers surround a Palestinian family’s home in the dead of night. A squad bangs on the front door, waking everyone up. Once inside, the soldiers gather the residents into a single room.
The family’s ID cards are inspected and recorded, as is how everyone is related, and their phone numbers.
These tactics rarely make headlines, but they are part of the fabric of a regime of seemingly permanent Israeli military rule over millions of Palestinians.
These kinds of abuses against children prompted 20 members of Congress to write to President Barack Obama earlier this year urging him to hold Israel accountable.
The lawmakers wrote of their “profound concern” regarding Israel’s ongoing abuse of Palestinian children, especially during their arrest, interrogation and imprisonment, adding that “ignoring the trauma being inflicted on millions of Palestinian children undermines our American values.”
Every year, the Israeli military arrests and prosecutes around 700 Palestinian children. For 25 Years, our lawyers have defended thousands of these children in the Israeli military court system. This is Osama’s story.
Israeli “counterterrorism” means abuse and torture of children
“It was the worst feeling to be far away from family and friends,” Osama says. He spent four months in an Israeli prison for allegedly throwing stones.
In a report released at the end of July, Human Rights Watch lists Israel among six countries that have adopted far-reaching “counterterrorism” policies that have led to sweeping arrests of children.
Israel joins Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Nigeria and Syria as governments Human Rights Watch describes as “trampling on children’s rights in a misguided and counterproductive response to conflict-related violence.”
“The indefinite detention and torture of children needs to stop,” said Jo Becker, the organization’s director of children rights advocacy.
Not a week goes by when about a dozen to as many as 38 Palestinian children from the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are arrested.
Israel appear to be increasing the use of solitary confinement against Palestinian child detainees to pressure them during interrogations. One 16-year-old boy spent 22 days in isolation.
“The practice of using solitary confinement on children, for any duration, is a clear violation of international law, as it amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and in some cases, torture,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP.
Israel doesn’t use solitary confinement for disciplinary, protective or medical reasons, according to DCIP’s documentation, but as an interrogation tool.
Children are confined in cells that barely fit a mattress while they undergo lengthy interrogations during which Israeli authorities attempt to extract confessions or more information on other people, according to DCIP.
“The cell was closed tightly and had no windows, except two ventilations gaps,” 17-year-old Rami K. told DCIP.
“The walls were gray, which hurt my eyes, and the surface was coarse, so I could not lean on them. The cell had a sink and a toilet, but the toilet had a nasty smell. The lights were on the entire time.”
Rami was held for 16 days in isolation while being interrogated. The interrogation was drawn out over hours, during which his wrists and ankles were bound to a metal chair.
Amit Heumann, the legal adviser to Israel’s UN mission, blamed Palestinians for Israel’s treatment of them.
“It is the responsibility of leaders everywhere to protect children at all costs, to protect them from the ravages of war and to shelter them in a protective environment, where children can thrive,” he said.
“Unfortunately, the Palestinians are failing at this most critical responsibility.”
“Instead of nourishing their youth with the dreams of a bright future, Palestinian children are fed a steady diet of hatred for Israel and glorification of violence in the lessons they learn in school, in the sermons they hear in the mosque and in the streets that are named after terrorists.”
Such debunked claims that “incitement” – rather than the reality of Israel’s military occupation – are to blame for violence, have long been a staple of Israeli government propaganda.
In its report, Human Rights Watch criticizes Israel’s treatment of Palestinian children under its occupation regime in the West Bank, where 500 to 700 children are brought before military tribunals annually, and an average of 220 children are held in prison each month.
But the line between Israeli civil and military law regarding children has become increasingly difficult to discern since violent confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli forces escalated in October 2015.
Last week, the Israeli parliament passed a new law allowing the imprisonment of children as young as 12.
Israel’s military regime in the occupied West Bank has always allowed the detention of 12-year-old Palestinians.
According to DCIP’s statistics, of the 440 Palestinian children in Israeli prison in February, 104 were between the ages of 12 and 15. This represents a four-fold increase from the number of young teens in prison prior to October 2015.
And though the law ostensibly applies to Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel alike, it was explicitly created to target Palestinians.
Imprisoning 12 and 13-year-olds will be permitted in cases where the child is convicted of so-called terrorism, a charge that almost exclusively applies to Palestinians.
“This law was born of necessity,” said Likud lawmaker Anat Berko, who proposed the measure. “We have been experiencing a wave of terror for quite some time. A society is allowed to protect itself. To those who are murdered with a knife in the heart it does not matter if the child is 12 or 15.”
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel warns that the Israeli parliament may soon allow life sentences for children under 14.
This is the latest amendment to Israel’s penal code that expands the criminal culpability of Palestinian children in order to allow harsher penalties.
Last year, the Israeli parliament imposed mandatory minimum sentencing and extended the maximum sentence on people who throw stones at traffic.
Israel also revived administrative detention against Palestinian children ostensibly living under Israeli civil law in the last year.
Amid escalating violence, the number of Palestinian children held in Israeli military detention is now the highest since April 2010. At the end of October, 307 Palestinian children were imprisoned in the Israeli military detention system. From the moment of arrest, these children encounter ill-treatment and in some cases torture at the hands of Israeli forces.
Israeli Military Torturing Palestinian Children ~viewer discretion~
Palestinian children’s rights group says ‘ill-treatment is still widespread, systematic and institutionalized’ in IDF detention system; IDF source denies allegations.
Israel cages Palestinian children outdoors during freezing weather By Latuff
NGO accuses Israel of systematic abuse of Palestinian kids
A West Bank-based children’s rights group on Wednesday accused Israeli security forces of widespread abuse of Palestinian minors in the West Bank.
The IDF swiftly denied the allegations, outlined in a report by a group called Military Court Watch (MCW).
The study estimates that since Israel seized the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War, “up to 95,000 children” have been detained by Israeli forces in the territory.
The report, submitted to the UN special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, looks at 200 cases in which minors were detained since 2013.
In its conclusion, MCW found that in spite of recent developments in the military detention system, “ill-treatment is still widespread, systematic and institutionalized.”
Citing the testimonies, it said 187 of them had their hands bound during the first 24 hours of arrest, 165 said they were blindfolded and 124 complained of physical abuse.
“Aggressive behaviour, threats and violence are also sometimes utilized during the interrogation, including threats to beat, rape, hold in solitary confinement, electrocute or shoot the minor,” it said.
Only eight of the 200 said they were given access to a lawyer prior to interrogation and just seven had a parent present during questioning.
A source in the IDF Prosecutor’s Office told AFP there was no legal requirement for either a lawyer or a parent to attend questioning; not for Palestinians and not for Israeli suspects.
But a defendant facing trial was provided with legal counsel and the parents had the right to attend court hearings, the source told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Regarding allegations of threats and physical abuse, he said defendants or their parents were free to make complaints in open court but “almost never” did.
He said the entire interrogation process, conducted in Arabic, was videotaped and the recordings were made available to the defense.
In the report, a copy of which was seen by AFP, MCW said a “significant number of minors” had been arrested during the night in “terrifying military raids on their homes”.
Most children were arrested in areas close to Jewish settlements or to roads used by settlers, which are often a target for children throwing stones.
Israel doesn’t abuse children, it just murders them
By Khalid Amayreh
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Throughout its unglamorous history, the UN issued many scandalous reports and adopted many scandalous resolutions reflecting lack of justice and absence of moral honesty.This ever-existing symptom also reflected western hegemony over the international organization.
However, none of these reports and resolutions seems more scandalous than this week’s report which kept Israel off the List of Shame, which includes states and entities that abuse children.
This particular report is manifestly scandalous precisely because Israel is probably one of the most obscene abusers of children under the sun.
Indeed, there are a few countries in this world that can be compared to Israel in this respect.
At the top of the list of shame sits the Nazi-like Syrian regime of Bashar el-Assad which habitually and routinely murders children (and other civilians) in large numbers, either by dropping crude barrel bombs on residential neighborhoods and crowded streets or using deadly chemical agents against heavily populated areas.
To be sure, Israel uses neither crude barrel bombs nor chemical weapons to annihilate Palestinian children. Instead, the Jewish state achieves the same results by using huge laser guided bombs and missiles to destroy residential multi-story buildings, packed with civilians, including children.
Needless to say, the ultimate result of such barbarity is a little Auschwitz.
Exterminating from high altitudes is, of course, Israel’s preferred way of murdering Palestinian children and casting shock and awe in their hearts.
But it is by no means the only way. In its last year’s blitzkrieg in Gaza, Israel obliterated entire neighborhoods, such as Shujaiyya, utterly annihilating everything, including human, building and plant.
According to eyewitnesses, the scene at the bombed-out neighborhood very much looked as if borrowed from the German city of Dresden in 1945.
Killing knowingly is killing deliberately
In its last year’s aggression on the Gaza Strip, Israel murdered at least 500 Palestinian children, in addition to hundreds of other civilians, including many entire families.
In earlier rounds of aggression, Israel had murdered and maimed hundreds of children.
Israel has a long history of premeditatedly murdering Palestinian children. In light, one would exaggerate little by saying that Israel boasts the highest per capita rate of child-killers in the world.
Israel readily acknowledges that it kills Palestinian children knowingly.
A few years ago, this writer spoke with an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokeswoman who said that “Yes, we do know that Palestinian children are being killed as a result of our military activities, but we don’t do it deliberately.”
But this is a sheer lie, because in the final analysis killing knowingly is killing deliberately.
Indeed, mistakes in wars do occur and innocent civilians get killed. However, mistakes happen a few times not hundreds of times because in this case killing civilians becomes de facto policy.
This has always been and continues to be Israel’s policy. They kill the innocent civilians first and then, only then, the Israeli foreign ministry and other mouthpieces of Israeli hasbara (propaganda) get busy justifying the Nazi-like atrocities, mainly by concocting every conceivable lie and inventing fabulous narratives that have absolutely no iota of truth.
This reminds me of routine communiqués issued by the Israeli security forces during the first Palestinian intifada which started in December of 1987. Then the Israeli army spokesman would issue statements like this following the murder of Palestinian boys in the streets of the West Bank.
“IDF soldiers fired into the air to disperse Palestinian rioters. Palestinian sources reported five youths killed.” The wording of the Israeli army statements made many foreign observers, utterly affronted by the brutal ugliness of Israeli dishonesty, wonders if Palestinian boys had wings and could fly.
Moral bankruptcy
The clarion failure of the UN to condemn brazen Israeli criminality and brash violation of international law underscores the moral bankruptcy of the world body.
Consequently, more states and peoples will lose confidence in the ability and willingness of the UN to foster peace and justice throughout the world. Unfortunately, this is becoming more evident as time passes.
Eventually, this could transform our world into a real jungle, an unmistakable portent signaling ultimate self-destruction.
Netanyahu ‘apologised’ to the ‘Arabs’ in Israel for the racist remarks he made on Election Day.
He was worried that the ‘Arabs were voting in droves’ to unseat him. The following two videos might explain why they wanted him unseated …
Where is the apology to these children?
This video was shot during a night raid on ten homes in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron. B’Tselem does not say who shot the video, but typically the videos it releases are made by Palestinians.
Children terrorized
Masked soldiers enter Palestinian homes in Hebron in dead of night, order residents to wake their children, and photograph the children.
Late at night on 23 Feb. 2015 Israeli troops entered 10 neighbouring apartments in Hebron. They demanded that the children be awakened, asked their names and photographed them. B’Tselem volunteers who live there filmed the incident. The military cannot treat civilians–and certainly not children–as potential criminals. Not only is this policy of entering Palestinian homes by night unjust and terrifying. It illustrates how casually and arbitrarily the lives of Palestinians under occupation are disrupted and their rights violated. B’Tselem calls on the military to discontinue this policy without delay.
BookMark this post and watch later if you must …. But DO watch them!
Viewer discretion advised
Israelis torturing non-Jewish children documentary film full length. The still picture shows Palestinian girl Nesreen Hash’hash after being shot in the face by an Israeli soldier.
Israelis torturing non-Jewish children. 2014 Australian documentary film. Viewer discretion.
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And who do you think made that all possible?
Talk by Alison Weir, Executive Director of If Americans Knew, President of the Council for the National Interest, and author of the book “Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel” recorded July 30, 2014 at the Common Good Cafe at University Temple United Methodist Church in Seattle, WA.
TalkingStickTV – Alison Weir – The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel
Desertpeace 