Children are
innocent, but many of them are in Israeli prisons.
Shidi is 13 years old. He was 12, on December 30, 2015 when
Israel arrested him, forced him to stand naked in a freezing cold prison cell
for hours. No parent, no lawyer. His mother saw him across the court room at
his “trial,” his hands and feet in shackles. He will spend the next two years
in an Israeli prison because Israel says, “He would have stabbed an Israeli, if
he had a knife.”[i]
Gideon Levy said, “There is nothing more Israeli than a
court that gives a soldier who killed a Palestinian in cold blood a sentence
fit for a bicycle thief.”[ii]
An 18-month jail sentence handed
down to an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) recruit for the killing of a wounded
Palestinian has prompted for widespread criticism for its apparent leniency in
light of the severity of his crime…Yet, the ruling was a landmark case insofar
as no member of the IDF has been prosecuted for actions carried out in over 12
years... The sentence he received is less than a Palestinian child gets for
throwing stones.[iii]
Dr. Jess Ghannam, professor of psychiatry and global health
sciences at the University of California School of Medicine notes:
Palestinian children in Gaza are
exposed to more violence in their lifetime than any other people, any other
children anywhere in the world. If you look at children right now who are 10
years old, they’ve been through Cast Lead in 2008 and 2009, the invasion in
2012 and the invasion and destruction in 2014. In addition to the siege, if you
look at the statistics, even before Cast Lead, 80 percent of Palestinian
children in Gaza have witnessed some sort of violence against them, a friend or
a family member. And now they’re getting to the point where probably close to
99 percent of children in Gaza are being exposed to a level of violence where
they have seen family members be killed, murdered, burned alive. There’s
nothing like the levels of traumatic exposure that any child in the world has
ever been exposed to on a chronic and daily basis.
According to Middle East Children’s Alliance, “Palestinian
children are subject to attacks by the Israeli occupation forces and Jewish
settlers on an almost daily basis, 1,518 have been killed since the outbreak of
the second intifada in September 2000 up to April 2013, that’s one every three days for thirteen years. Almost 250
Palestinian minors, like Shadi, are being held in Israeli prisons.
Shadi’s friends described him as full of life, loved by
family, neighbors, friends and classmates. They said that he loved to dance and
sing and swim. He excelled in math. Shadi sounds like a delightful kid. But, I
wonder what he will be when he is released after years in an Israeli
prison? How much hate can Israel control
by force. Children do grow up.
Thomas Are
March 19, 2017
[i]
Farihan Farah, I am a Proud Woman and a Humanitarian. I am also the Mother of the
Youngest Palestinian Prisoner in an Israeli Jail. Mondoweiss, March 8, 2017.
[ii]
Haaretz, Who Needs the Hague when you
have Israeli Army Justice, February 23, 2017
[iii]
Bethan McKernan, Five Children Get Longer
Sentences for Throwing Stones than Israeli Soldier who Shot Incapacitated
Palestinian Dead. The Independent, February
22, 2017.
Who benefits from "anti-Semitism"? The State that calls itself "Israel" benefits. It is the only beneficiary. Anti-Semitism is their thing. They may not have invented anti-Semitism, but they have perfected it. Have you ever wondered who makes and fires those "homemade" unguided rockets into "Israel"? Those rockets never do anything except provoke devastating Israeli military attacks with the latest high tech weapons that kill scores of defenseless women and children and old men and which destroy homes, schools, hospitals, power generating stations, and water and food stores. I suppose if we believe the Israeli line, Palestinians are dumb enough to do that. Israelis think Palestinians are üntermenschen. Israelis think the rest of us are pretty stupid too. We let them get away with anything. We give them billions of dollars each year. We let Israelis run the United States government. We veto anything the United Nations tries to pass to condemn documented, criminal, Israeli conduct. Nothing is too good for “Israel” and its citizens. We ARE pretty stupid. You must agree they are right about that!
ReplyDeleteThomas,
ReplyDeletePLEASE consider using the proper name for the political entity you are describing. The name of that nation-state is "State of Israel", NOT "Israel". Like: "State of New York", "State of Texas", "State of California", et cetera, ad nausea. Get it????