Israeli warplanes attack Gaza refuge
Rami Almeghari, The Electronic Intifada, 22 December 2010
Palestinian men clean up the remnants of a destroyed dairy in Khan Younis after it was bombed by an Israeli air strike. (Ismael Mohamad/UPI/Newscom)
A heap of ruins and dust is all that remains of a dairy that Israeli warplanes destroyed yesterday in the central Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis. The ruins of the dairy are adjacent to an amusement park in the Asdaa grounds which serves as a refuge to residents of the besieged Gaza Strip.
Adjacent to the amusement park in the Asdaa grounds in the central Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis stands a heap of ruins and dust. It is all that remains of a dairy that Israeli warplanes destroyed yesterday.
Before the bombing, the dairy had three production lines on 400 square meters. It produced milk, cheese and butter, providing income for forty Palestinian families in Gaza and distributing goods to various parts of the Gaza Strip.
At dawn, the dairy was hit by at least two jet-fired missiles, scattering machines and equipment several meters away and rendering the factory into a pile of rubble. The attack on the dairy comes amidst increased Israeli military activity across the Strip. Israeli warplanes also hit other targets on Tuesday, injuring four Palestinians, including a guardsman in Asdaa.
While inspecting the damage, Shadi al-Batsh, the dairy’s chief engineer, told The Electronic Intifada “This dairy was a dream and then became a reality but it finally turned to be a nightmare — not only for me but also for the forty workers who all have worked hard to make something under a crippling Israeli blockade.”
Standing amidst the rubble, al-Batsh described how the Asdaa dairy used to distribute its products across Gaza and the impact of the attack on the local economy, already straining under Israel’s 42-month-long siege.
“Our financial losses from this attack are estimated at about $300,000. Besides these direct financial losses, there is an indirect loss represented by the people who used to provide us with raw materials, plastic packs and those who used to carry the products in vans and distribute them to grocers in many parts of Gaza. We really wonder as to why such a place was targeted by the Israeli warplanes. It is a dairy and does not manufacture weapons or homemade rockets,” explained al-Batsh.
Al-Batsh added “This is the first time that the Asdaa facility was targeted. Today we had about fifteen buses of school children, on a field trip in which school children enjoy some time at the amusement park and this public garden. We are afraid that such trips would start to decrease after such a shelling.”
The Asd’a facility was built on the grounds of a former Israeli settlement. In addition to the dairy, it includes an amusement park, a fishery, a turkey pen and a public garden. The public garden features some wild animals, including monkeys, and a small train for children runs through the grounds; the train now passes by the ruins of the dairy. Since the facility was established, it has become an attraction for Gaza’s residents, who relish the opportunity to spend time outdoors in spite of Israel’s crippling siege.
Rusaila Hammad is a teacher from a nearby school who brought 120 children to the Asdaa gardens after the attack. “We learned earlier that the Asdaa facility was targeted. However, we in the school administration insisted that we should take the children on the scheduled school trip,” Hammad explained.
She added “Where should we go? To the sea or to Gaza’s closed borders? Do the Israelis think that by targeting such places they are doing the right thing? Such actions will only fuel hatred and these children have the right to enjoy their childhood as normally as children worldwide.”
Hammad explained that Asdaa is “one of the rare places for our children to release the stress they have to endure under the Israeli blockade and attacks on us.”
One of Hammad’s pupils, 14-year-old Marwa Zain, expressed her anger. “What do they want us to do? Every place in Gaza has become vulnerable to Israeli attacks. What do we children have to do with such violence? What do they want? We are determined to continue to come here; we have little choice because Gaza is a very small place and Israel is besieging it from all sides, including the coast.”
At another corner of Asdaa’s public garden, Fatma al-Hadidy asked a similar question. “If we stop visiting such a place out of fear of Israeli attacks, then where can we go? It is really a shame on them to attack such a place.”
Rami Almeghari is a journalist and university lecturer based in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli air strikes kill five Palestinians in Gaza
Report, The Electronic Intifada, 22 December 2010
Archive: The destruction caused by an Israeli air strike on Rafah in March 2010. (Hatem Omar/MaanImages)
In an ongoing assault on the occupied Gaza Strip, Israeli fighter jets struck the southern city of Rafah early this morning, injuring four. The IMEMC reported that four Palestinians were wounded in the attack, which destroyed an alleged “training base” for the armed wing of the Hamas party (“Army bombards Rafah,” 22 December 2010).
Today’s air strikes come after Israeli fighter jets attacked the Gaza Strip early morning yesterday in a coordinated assault on Khan Younis in the south and Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, Jabaliya refugee camp and Zeitoun in the north, according to a report from Al-Jazeera English (“Israeli fighter jets attack Gaza,” 21 December 2010).
Ma’an News Agency reported that two Palestinian fighters and one security guard were injured in the missile strike on Khan Younis after Israeli warplanes destroyed a dairy and an entertainment center (“Israeli jets hit Gaza for 2nd time in day,” 21 December 2010). Israeli jets also struck tunnels at the southern border with Egypt. The tunnels are used by Palestinians to bring in essential items, including food, medicine, cement and thousands of other goods from Egypt and the outside world. Israel has imposed a years-long blockade on Gaza, rarely opening the border crossings and maintaining severe restrictions on the movement of people and goods.
Hours later, another Israeli warplane struck Khan Younis again, injuring two more in a missile strike.
These attacks follow similar Israeli airstrikes on Saturday, 18 December, in which five Palestinian men, all around twenty years old, were targeted by an Israeli missile in Deir al-Balah, according to Ma’an (“Medics recover bodies of 5 killed in Gaza strike,” 19 December 2010).
Israel claimed that the five young men were affiliated with an armed resistance group called the Jaljalat, and they were planning to launch a rocket over the boundary with Israel.
On Sunday, armed Palestinian resistance groups responded to Saturday’s attacks by firing a series of homemade rocket shells into Israel. The shells landed in the Negev desert, causing no injuries or damage, according to the International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) (“Eight separate Israeli airstrikes reported throughout Gaza; 2 injured,” 21 December 2010). Additional rocket fire was reported on Monday as well, causing no injuries.
On Tuesday, following Israel’s overnight airstrikes, Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth (Ynet) reported that a Gaza-fired rocket landed near a kindergarten in a kibbutz near Ashkelon, just north of the boundary with Gaza. A 14-year-old Israeli girl was lightly injured, Ynet reported (“Qassam explodes near kindergarten,” 21 December 2010).
Speaking to Ma’an News, an Israeli military spokesperson said Israel’s attacks on Gaza were “in response” to 13 homemade projectiles launched across the boundary with Israel this week (“Palestinian sources: Israel warplanes raid Gaza,” 21 December 2010). The spokesperson said that the military attacked four “Hamas tunnels,” a “smuggling tunnel” near Rafah, a “weapons manufacturing facility” and a “terror activity center.”
However, The Electronic Intifada’s correspondent in Gaza, Rami Almeghari, reported that the buildings targeted by the Israeli Air Force were not centers for “terror activity.”
“They targeted a dairy and an entertainment center in Gaza … Israel did not target some sort of proclaimed facilities for homemade rockets,” he stated.
Almeghari added that Israel’s latest attacks are a “systematic targeting” of the Palestinians inside Gaza in order to weaken the popular support for the elected Hamas government.
He added that the failure of the US-brokered peace talks allows Israel to continue attacking Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. By not addressing Israel’s ongoing violations of international law, including the ongoing confiscation of Palestinian land for settlement construction in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the international community is culpable for the situation across Palestine, Almeghari said.
“Israel only attacks for the sake of attacking, and by squeezing Palestinians in Gaza at the political level to accept Israel’s terms for peace,” Almeghari said.
Workers under fire
Meanwhile, Israel’s attacks on fishermen, industrial workers and shepherds have continued. As The Electronic Intifada has reported, industrial workers are frequently shot while collecting raw materials near Israel’s so-called “buffer zone” — a 300-meter-long militarized area along the northern, eastern and maritime boundaries.
On 10 December, Suhaib M., a 15-year-old Palestinian boy, was shot and injured while he collected wood inside the no-go zone alongside the northern boundary with Israel. Defense for Children International-Palestine Section reported that the boy and his brothers have been collecting raw materials in order to supplement their family’s income for the last five months. Suhaib and his brother Belal were loading pieces of wood from uprooted olive trees into a small cart when he was shot in the leg by an Israeli sniper (“Report: Voices from the Occupation ,” 18 December 2010 [PDF]).
Additionally, a man in his thirties was shot in his foot on 20 December by Israeli snipers as he collected stones in the northern Gaza Strip, according to Ma’an. Israeli forces opened fire on the man near the town of Beit Hanoun (“Worker injured in north Gaza,” 20 December 2010).
A 19-year-old shepherd, Ijmeian Abu Ihweishel, was shot by Israeli snipers on 19 December as he herded his flock of sheep in the same area, reported Ma’an (“Palestinian teen reported injured in north Gaza,” 19 December 2010).
Gaza’s health ministry reported that there have been 103 Palestinians shot by Israeli forces near the no-go zone since March 2010, Ma’an added.
Two days earlier, on 17 December, a Palestinian teenager died after being shot on a fishing boat off the southern Gaza coast by Israeli warships permanently stationed in the Mediterranean Sea. Agence-France Presse and Ma’an reported that Israeli forces fired on the small fishing boat, capsizing it and injuring 15-year-old Ziad Samir al-Bardawil, who died after being treated at a local hospital (“Gaza teen dead after Israel fires on fishing boat,” 17 December 2010).
In an article following al-Bardawil’s death, the right-wing Israeli daily The Jerusalem Post quoted Israeli military sources who refuted the Ma’an report. The Israeli military said that it “does not recognize the event” and claimed it had nothing to do with the death of the Palestinian boy.
Rights organizations decry humanitarian situation
Although Israeli government officials have placed emphasis on the so-called “easing” of the blockade, Israel has done little to change the humanitarian situation for Palestinians inside the Gaza Strip, according to a new report signed by 22 major international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International UK, Oxfam International and the International Federation for Human Rights (“Dashed Hopes: Continuation of the Gaza Blockade ,” 30 November 2010 (PDF file)).
The report states that the inflow of construction materials, for example, is only at 11 percent of pre-blockade levels, food imports are only at 35 percent and the import of raw materials is still restricted.
Additionally, there is a strict ban on exported goods, a policy that has debilitated Gaza’s struggling economy. IMEMC reported that Israel has allowed only the exports of strawberries and carnations from Gaza this week, under the auspices of a Dutch governmental program to assist Gaza’s local farmers (“Israel opens only Kerem Shalom border,” 21 December 2010).
Jeremy Hobbs, director of Oxfam International, said in a press release related to the “Dashed Hopes” report that “only a fraction of the aid needed has made it to the civilians trapped in Gaza” (“Six months on: Little sign of improvement in Gaza since Israeli easing of blockade, shows report from aid and human rights groups,” 30 November 2010).
He added that “Israel’s failure to live up to its commitments and the lack of international action to lift the blockade are depriving Palestinians in Gaza of access to clean water, electricity, jobs and a peaceful future.”
Religious Jews make midnight pilgrimage into occupied village
Ma’an – 17/12/2010
KIFL HARIS, Salfit — Shortly before midnight on Friday morning residents of the Salfit-district village of Kifl Haris reported dozens of Israeli military vehicles and bus-loads of what were described by locals as “settlers” entering the area.
Locals estimated some 3,000 “settlers” – religious Jews, many from settlements in the occupied West Bank – entered the area as protecting troops set up checkpoints and barricades around a small tomb in the village.
Locals say the tomb belongs to a sheikh from the village, while religious Jews visiting the site say it is the final resting place of Joshua ben Nun, leader of early Jewish tribes.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said there were 800 visitors accompanied by Israeli soldiers. The group stayed in the area from midnight to 5 a.m.
According to Israeli news site Ynet, the visitors found the tomb “desecrated” by Arabic graffiti with slogans like “we are the defenders of the national project” and “conciliation, speak to you enemy through bullets.”
GA Prison Inmate Strike Enters New Phase, Prisoners Demand Human Rights, Education, Wages For Work
By Bruce A. Dixon | Black Agenda Report | December 15, 2010
The historic strike of Georgia prisoners, demanding wages for their labor, educational opportunities, adequate health care and nutrition, and better conditions is entering a new phase. Strikers remain firm in their demands for full human rights, though after several days many have emerged from their cells, if only to take hot showers and hot food. Many of these, however, are still refusing their involuntary and unpaid work assignments.
A group that includes relatives, friends and a broad range of supporters of the prisoners on the outside has emerged. They are seeking to sit down with Georgia correctional officials this week to discuss how some of the just demands of inmates can begin to be implemented. Initially, Georgia-based representatives of this coalition supporting the prisoner demands included the Georgia NAACP, the Nation of Islam, the National Association for Radical Prison Reform, the Green Party of Georgia, and the Ordinary Peoples Society among others. Civil rights attorneys, ministers, community organizations and other prisoner advocates are also joining the group which calls itself the Concerned Coalition to Protect Prisoner Rights.
Prisoners have stood up for themselves, and the communities they came from are lining up to support them. Today, at a groundbreaking for a private prison 300 miles southeast of Atlanta in Millen GA, residents of that local community opposed to the private prison are greeting the governor and corrections brass with a protest. They will be joined by dozens more coming in from Atlanta who will respectfully urge state authorities to talk to the prisoners. We understand that one person there has been arrested. Black Agenda Report will have photos and footage of that event on Thursday.
The broad-based Concerned Coalition to Protect Prisoners Rights fully supports the heroic stand of Georgia’s prisoners. “This isn’t Attica,” one representative of the coalition explained. “No violent acts have been committed by any of the inmates involved. We hope state corrections officials will be as peaceful and respectful as the prisoners have been, and start a good faith dialog about quickly addressing their concerns.”
Right now, the ball is in the hands of state corrections officials, and reports are that in some of the affected prisons, authorities are fumbling that ball, engaging
“They transferred some of the high Muslims here to max already,” one prisoner told Black Agenda Report this morning. “They want to break up the unity we have here. We have the Crips and the Bloods, we have the Muslims, we have the head Mexicans, and we have the Aryans all with a peaceful understanding, all on common ground. We all want to be paid for our work, and we all want education in here. There’s people in here who can’t even read…
“They’re trying to provoke people to violence in here, but we’re not letting that happen. We just want our human rights.”
The transfers are intended to deprive groups of leadership and demoralize them. In some cases they may be having the opposite effect, stiffening prisoner morale and making room for still more leaders to emerge.
“The prisoners insist that punitive transfers are an act of bad faith, the opposite of what we should be doing,” said Minister Charles Muhammad, of the Nation of Islam in Atlanta. “The coalition supports them and demands no punitive transfers, either within or between institutions, and absolutely no transfers to institutions outside Georgia.”
Members of the public should continue to call the prisons listed below, and the GA Department of Corrections and the office of Georgia’s governor, Sonny Perdue. Ask them firmly but respectfully to resolve the situation non-violently and without punitive measures. Tell them you believe prisoners deserve wages for work and education. Ask them to talk to prisoners and the communities they come from.
It’s simple. With one in twelve Georgia adults in jail or prison, parole or probation or other court and correctional supervision, prisoners are us. They are our families. They are our fathers and our mothers, our sons and daughters, our nieces and nephews and aunts and uncles and cousins. Most prisoners will be back out in society sooner, not later. It’s time for us all to grow up and realize that warehousing, malnourishing, mistreating and abusing prisoners does not make us safer. Denying prisoners meaningful training and educational opportunities, and forcing them to work for no wages is not the way to do.
It’s time to fundamentally reconsider prison as we know it, and America’s public policy of mass incarceration.
See also:
Elaine Brown on GA Prison Strike, December 14 Democracy Now Video Interview
Obama’s Show Trials
Why prosecute a terrorism suspect if life imprisonment is the only possible outcome?
Jacob Sullum from the January 2011 issue of Reason
In October a federal judge threw out a key witness against Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the former Guantanamo inmate who is accused of participating in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The witness, who was identified through Ghailani’s coerced statements, was supposed to testify that he sold the defendant the TNT used to blow up the embassy in Tanzania. But U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan concluded that the testimony was too closely tied to information the CIA had obtained from Ghailani while holding him at a secret prison where he says he was tortured.
Conservatives who think terrorism suspects should never receive civilian trials said the exclusion of this testimony showed they were right. So did civil libertarians who argue that the federal courts are perfectly capable of handling terrorism cases. But whether or not the system is working, Kaplan’s ruling suggested it is ultimately irrelevant.
“It is appropriate to emphasize,” Kaplan wrote, “that Ghailani remains subject to trial on the pending indictment, that he faces the possibility of life imprisonment if convicted, and that his status as an ‘enemy combatant’ probably would permit his detention as something akin to a prisoner of war until hostilities between the United States and Al Qaeda and the Taliban end even if he were found not guilty in this case.” Barring a formal surrender by Al Qaeda, these “hostilities” will continue indefinitely, so detention for their duration amounts to a life sentence—the same punishment Ghailani is apt to receive if he is found guilty.
If Ghailani is convicted, in other words, he will be imprisoned for life, and the same thing will happen if he is acquitted. Even with the benefit of the Fifth Amendment’s ban on coerced self-incrimination and the exclusionary rule, Ghailani has zero chance of regaining his freedom. So what exactly is the point of the trial?
In a New York Times op-ed piece published after Kaplan’s ruling, Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith, an assistant attorney general during the Bush administration, noted that “trials are perceived to be more legitimate than detention.” But Goldsmith, who favors military detention of suspected terrorists, added that “a conviction in a trial publicly guaranteed not to result in the defendant’s release will not be seen as a beacon of legitimacy.”
Asked whether Ghailani will be returned to military custody if his trial does not turn out the way the government wants, Attorney General Eric Holder dodged the question, saying, “We intend to proceed with this trial.” Holder’s coyness was not really necessary, because the administration already has publicly stated that it reserves the right to detain terrorism suspects who are acquitted.
“If you have the authority under the laws of war to detain someone,” Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson told the Senate Armed Services Committee in July 2009, “it is true irrespective of what happens on the prosecution side.…If there’s an acquittal…we would have the ability to detain him.”
One reason for nevertheless going through the motions of a trial, Goldsmith suggested, is the possibility of capital punishment. But the Justice Department is not seeking the death penalty in Ghailani’s case, and in any event President Barack Obama claims he can kill suspected terrorists without permission from a court.
Under his policy of “targeted killings,” Obama can authorize the summary execution of anyone he unilaterally identifies as a member or accomplice of Al Qaeda, including American citizens. Since this administration, like the last one, views the entire world as a battlefield in the war on terrorism, that means enemies of the state can be killed anywhere at any time—except, presumably, if they have been taken into custody and are being prosecuted in federal court.
Which suggests a third option for Ghailani, in addition to life imprisonment upon conviction and indefinite detention upon acquittal. The government could simply let him go—and then kill him.
Senior Editor Jacob Sullum (jsullum@reason.com) is a nationally syndicated columnist.
Israel’s War on Children
1,500 Arrested in a Year
By JONATHAN COOK | CounterPunch | December 13, 2010
Israeli police have been criticised over their treatment of hundreds of Palestinian children, some as young as seven, arrested and interrogated on suspicion of stone-throwing in East Jerusalem.
In the past year, criminal investigations have been opened against more than 1,200 Palestinian minors in Jerusalem on stone-throwing charges, according to police statistics gathered by the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI). That was nearly twice the number of children arrested last year in the much larger Palestinian territory of the West Bank.
Most of the arrests have occurred in the Silwan district, close to Jerusalem’s Old City, where 350 extremist Jewish settlers have set up several heavily guarded illegal enclaves among 50,000 Palestinian residents.
Late last month, in a sign of growing anger at the arrests, a large crowd in Silwan was reported to have prevented police from arresting Adam Rishek, a seven-year-old accused of stone-throwing. His parents later filed a complaint claiming he had been beaten by the officers.
Tensions between residents and settlers have been rising steadily since the Jerusalem municipality unveiled a plan in February to demolish dozens of Palestinian homes in the Bustan neighbourhood to expand a Biblically-themed archeological park run by Elad, a settler organisation.
The plan is currently on hold following US pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.
Fakhri Abu Diab, a local community leader, warned that the regular clashes between Silwan’s youths and the settlers, termed a “stone intifada” by some, could trigger a full-blown Palestinian uprising.
“Our children are being sacrificed for the sake of the settlers’ goal to take over our community,” he said.
In a recent report, entitled Unsafe Space, ACRI concluded that, in the purge on stone-throwing, the police were riding roughshod over children’s legal rights and leaving many minors with profound emotional traumas.
Testimonies collected by the rights groups reveal a pattern of children being arrested in late-night raids, handcuffed and interrogated for hours without either a parent or lawyer being present. In many cases, the children have reported physical violence or threats.
Last month 60 Israeli childcare and legal experts, including Yehudit Karp, a former deputy attorney-general, wrote to Mr Netanyahu condemning the police behaviour.
“Particularly troubling,” they wrote, “are testimonies of children under the age of 12, the minimal age set by the law for criminal liability, who were taken in for questioning, and who were not spared rough and abusive interrogation.”
Unlike in the West Bank, which is governed by military law, children in East Jerusalem suspected of stone-throwing are supposed to be dealt with according to Israeli criminal law.
Israel annexed East Jerusalem following the Six-Day war of 1967, in violation of international law, and its 250,000 Palestinian inhabitants are treated as permanent Israeli residents.
Minors, defined as anyone under 18, should be questioned by specially trained officers and only during daylight hours. The children must be able to consult with a lawyer and a parent should be present.
Ronit Sela, a spokeswoman for the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), said her organisation had been “shocked” at the large number of children arrested in East Jerusalem in recent months, often by units of undercover policemen.
“We have heard many testimonies from children who describe terrifying experiences of violence during both their arrest and their later interrogation.”
Muslim, 10, lives in the Bustan neighbourhood and in a house that Israeli authorities have ordered demolished. His case was included in the ACRI report, and in an interview he said he had been arrested four times this year, even though he was under the age of criminal responsibility. On the last occasion, in October, he was grabbed from the street by three plain-clothes policemen who jumped out a van.
“One of the men grabbed me from behind and started choking me. The second grabbed my shirt and tore it from the back, and the third twisted my hands behind my back and tied them with plastic cords. ‘Who threw stones?’ one of them asked me. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. He started hitting me on the head and I shouted in pain.”
Muslim was taken into custody and released six hours later. A local doctor reported that the boy had bleeding wounds to his knees and swelling on several parts of his body.
Muslim’s father, who has two sons in prison, said the boy was waking with nightmares and could no longer concentrate on his school studies. “He has been devastated by this.”
Ms Sela said arrests had risen sharply in Silwan since September, when a private security guard at a settler compound shot dead a Palestinian man, Samer Sirhan, and injured two others.
Clashes between the settlers and Silwan youths came to prominence in October when David Beeri, director of settler organisation Elad, was shown on camera driving into two boys as they threw stones at his car.
One, Amran Mansour, 12, who was thrown over the bonnet of Mr Beeri’s car, was arrested shortly afterwards in a late-night raid on his family’s home.
Also in October, nine rightwing Israeli MPs complained after stones were thrown at their minibus as they paid a solidarity visit to Beit Yonatan, a large settler-controlled house in Silwan. Israel’s courts have ordered that the house be demolished, but Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat, has refused to enforce the order.
In the wake of the attack, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, the public security minister, warned: “We will stop the stone-throwing through the use of covert and overt force, and bring back quiet.”
Last month police announced that house arrests would be used against children more regularly and financial penalties of up to $1,400 would be imposed on parents.
B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, reported the case of “A.S.”, a 12-year-old taken for interrogation following an arrest at 3am.
“I sat on my knees facing the wall. Every time I moved, a man in civilian clothes hit me with his hand on my neck … The man asked me to prostrate myself on the floor and ask his forgiveness, but I refused and told him that I do not bow to anyone but Allah. All the while, I felt intense pain in my feet and legs. I felt intense fear and I started shaking.”
In a statement B’Tselem said: “It is hard to believe that the security forces would have acted similarly against Jewish minors.”
Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, denied that the police had violated the children’s rights. He added: “It is the responsibility of parents to stop this criminal behaviour by their children.”
Jawad Siyam, a local community activist in Silwan, said the goal of the arrests and the increased settler activity was to “make life unbearable and push us out of the area”.
The 60 experts who wrote to Mr Netanyahu warned that the children’s abuse led to “post-traumatic stress disorders, such as nightmares, insomnia, bed-wetting, and constant fear of policemen and soldiers”. They also noted that children under extended house arrest were being denied the right to schooling.
Last year the United Nations Committee Against Torture expressed “deep concern” at Israel’s treatment of Palestinian minors, saying Israel was breaking the UN Convention on the Rights of Children, which it has signed.
Over the past 12 months, Defence for Children International has provided the UN with details of more than 100 children who claim they were physically or psychologically abused while in military custody.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His website is www.jkcook.net.
British parliament debates Palestinian children prisoners
By Renee Bowyer | Middle East Monitor | 12 December 2010
I visited the family of a twelve year old boy arrested on a Sunday morning. They lived in a small room on the outskirts of Balata refugee camp bordering the city of Nablus. The mother of Salim spoke to me first reminding me how the last time I had visited her, her son Salim had been there. Of course I remembered; he’d greatly enjoyed trying out his few English words with me and had very excitedly told me how he and his mother had been to Ramallah the week before. It was Sunday evening and as I sat with Um Salim she recounted to me how she had woken in the night as Balata camp was invaded. She listened to the sound of tanks and jeeps, of sound bombs detonating at random. But then Um Salim told me how the night-terror became her terror when her front door was pushed in and soldiers were everywhere. They were calling for Salim and Um Salim began to sob as she explained to me how a mother’s worst nightmare began.
Salim was twelve years old but in many ways he was older than his years. He had witnessed an uncle shot and killed by invading Israeli forces and he had not seen his father, a prisoner, for eight years. But this night Salim became the child again. When his name was shouted out Salim in terror rushed behind his mother and fell on the ground. He held the skirt of his mother and cried up to her ‘Mama; save me’. Um Salim told me how her son was ripped out of her arms as he cried for her to protect him. She was pushed to the ground and Salim was dragged from the house.
Six months later I visited Um Salim again. She had not seen Salim since the night he had been dragged from her arms. She still had no idea why he was taken, for how long he would be held or even when there would be a court hearing for him. She said she had learnt to live without him but would never learn to forget the words he had cried out to her when the soldiers had pushed in their door: ‘Mama; save me’. Um Salim looked at me and said ‘I couldn’t protect him. I couldn’t protect my son.’
Last week in Britain; a far cry from the poverty-stricken streets of Balata refugee camp and the occupied territories of the West Bank; Sandra Osborne, MP for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock, secured a debate on the detention of Palestinian children by Israel in the British Parliament. Having worked with Addameer in the West Bank, (a Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Association mentioned by Ms Osborne in her presentation) I can appreciate in full the horrifying account Ms Osborne gave of the plight of Palestinian children prisoners. Details of Hebrew confessions signed by children under physical or emotional torture, of solitary confinement, of beatings and threats and months without seeing or hearing from family are all realities that thousands of Palestinian children are facing now. One can only imagine the horror of families whose children have been taken and are being subject to these violations. While working with Addameer I spoke to mother after mother whose child had been imprisoned and every one of them spoke of the constant fear gripping their hearts knowing their child was unprotected in a hostile and violent place and how they knew that no law was governing the treatment of their child.
The taking of Palestinian children by Israeli forces and the terrorizing of them seems to be a calculated policy of Israel in their attempt to destroy the very fabric of Palestinian life. The Occupation of Palestine is much more than a military exercise and as constantly cited by Israeli officials ‘a necessary step to insure Israeli security’. Every aspect of the occupation, from the invasions and assassinations to the humiliating abuses of the soldiers standing at checkpoints is geared towards making Palestinian life unbearable. The strategically placed settlements and the free-reign given to settlers to attack, kill and steal land from the Palestinians, the invasions of villages and the constant curfews imposed on them, the house searches and indiscriminate shooting, the verbal inanities shouted at women and children by soldiers in roaming army jeeps are all focused on grinding down the will to survive and resist that the Palestinian people show.
I cannot recall how many times I asked the question ‘why are you doing this?’ When I was living in the Occupied Territories; watching some ridiculous flying checkpoint being set up on some small mountain path and three or four teenage soldiers smoking and forcing old women to empty their shopping bags on to the dusty road. ‘Why are you doing this?’ as I watched a tank roaming through a village and stopping in front of the village high school for boys and some sun-glassed soldier throwing a sound bomb over the wall. Acts that have no meaning to them except to terrorize and humiliate and make the lives of the Palestinian people harder than they already are.
‘It’s the Wild West’ an anonymous soldier states in Breaking the Silence; ‘serving in the West Bank is like being in the Wild West’.
And this is because the Israeli government has a goal beyond taking land; it seems increasingly obvious that the real agenda of the Israeli government is to ‘cleanse’ the land of Palestinians and the first step to do this is to make the Palestinian people stop resisting; not just with arms but in every other way. There is too much life still being lived under occupation; there is too much will to survive this occupation and siege. There are still festivals and marriages being celebrated in ruined houses alongside the burying of the dead; there are still lessons being taught to children in schools that have been bombed to rubble; there is still music in Palestine. And this is what Israel fears.
There are plenty of times when the reality of life under occupation and siege yields a sense of despair and helplessness among the people of Palestine, but it doesn’t stay; only in the cases of the mothers of child prisoners does it stay. There was a look of desperation and despondency on the face of Um Salim when she told me how Salim had cried to her to protect him that I had not seen before, and when I visited her months later and she had still not heard from her son that look was still there; etched now on her face.
By stealing the children of Palestine and trapping them inside a prison where they have no contact with family, Israel is attempting to systematically destroy the future of Palestine. They are breeding despondency inside Palestine that even invasions and killings did not produce. If this is not Israel’s aim, why else would they go to such lengths to violate every law set in place to protect children from this kind of soul-destroying treatment?
Ms Osborne last week made a plea to the British government to intervene because she was horrified by what she had witnessed in a military court hearing of Palestinian children. (And surely what she witnessed was a toned down version of what normally happens). The plea Ms Osborne made was supported by extensive detail and factual information and clearly exposed the policy of Israel in respect to Palestinian child prisoners and how it seems that the policy of Israel encourages these violations.
The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Alistair Burt, responded to Ms Osborne in the sort of way that western governments are responding to Israeli violations every time they come to prominence: by stating that Israel may have gone too far in some respects but that their security issues necessitate certain actions and that Israel continues to have the full support of these governments. Alistair Burt agreed to raise the issue with Israel and to write to the members of Parliament who had attended the debate. And that is all.
A letter in a month or two explaining that the issue has been raised with Israel?
While Um Salim waits to hear what prison her twelve year old son has been dragged to, while another mother and another are woken in the night to the sound of their child’s name being shouted by soldiers who batter down their doors, and while children shiver alone in prison cells, are forced to sign confessions of guilt in Hebrew and are beaten and shackled; our Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs will raise the issue with Israel.
On the 21st November this year two Israeli soldiers were given suspended sentences and demoted for using a Palestinian child as a human shield during their attacks on Gaza on 2008/2009. They scarred the nine year old child for life when they forced him to search for booby traps in the ruins of his town and they were given two months probation and were not sent to prison. At the same time countless Palestinian children are serving sentences in Israeli prisons for throwing stones at tanks.
It is time that our secretaries of state do more than write letters about this. If they as representatives of our governments do not help protect these children than who will?
Israeli Troops Kidnap Former Palestinian Minister in Jenin
By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies – December 11, 2010
Palestinian sources reported Friday that Israeli soldiers kidnapped former Minister of Detainees, Wasfy Qabha, while heading to visit his family in Barta’a village, near the northern West Bank city of Jenin. He was moved to an Israeli hospital later on due to a sharp increase in his blood sugar level.
Fuad Al Khoffash, head of the Ahrar Center for Detainees Studies and Human Rights, stated that, under an illegal Israeli military order, Qabha is not allowed into his own village, but was allowed into the village last week after his father died.
The Israeli Authorities granted him forty days, but on Friday morning Qabha was stopped at a military roadblock at the entrance of his village and the soldiers kidnapped him.
Due to his health condition, he was moved to Al Khodeira hospital, inside the 1948 territories, and a decision for his arrest was issued by the army.
His wife told the Ahrar Center that soldiers, manning the Barta’a roadblock, detained him for two hours and ordered her to leave the area.
He is currently at the Khodeira hospital, and his family was officially notified that he is “under arrest”.
Al Khuffash stated that Qabha was imprisoned by Israel for a total of seven years, and that several months ago he was released from an Israeli detention facility after spending a three-year sentence.
There are eleven elected legislators and ministers currently imprisoned by Israel.
Al Khuffash voiced an appeal to human groups and the International Red Cross to intervene and ensure the release of Qabha, especially due to his health condition.
Latest Israeli bombing plunges Gaza into darkness
Rami Almeghari, The Electronic Intifada, 10 December 2010
Air strikes by Israeli warplanes at dawn on Thursday caused serious damage to the Gaza Strip’s only power plant, plunging the territory — which already suffers from frequent outages — into darkness.
Media reports said the air strikes hit two sites belonging to Hamas near the Gaza power plant in Moghraqa village, central Gaza.
Engineer Darar Abu Sisi, director of operations for the Gaza plant, told The Electronic Intifada that at 2:47am an Israeli air attack on a Hamas site near the power plant scattered rocks and debris into the air. A rock crashed into the a current transformer and voltage transformer in a substation, causing the unit to shut down.
The damage forced the plant to reduce production from its usual 65 megawatts daily to about 35 megawatts, Abu Sisi said, far short of current needs. Unless the damage is repaired it may lead to even longer outages than the power cuts people in Gaza already live with.
“I believe that the Gaza power company has been able to coordinate with the Israeli side and we hope that this time they will be able to bring the needed spare part through Israeli land crossings, which are closed of course because of the Israeli siege,” Abu Sisi told The Electronic Intifada.
Even before Thursday’s bombing, Gaza residents face prolonged power outages of six to eight hours per day, adding to the severe hardships caused by the prolonged Israeli siege that prevents people and goods from moving freely in and out of Gaza. Abu Sisi estimated that the outages would increase to eight to ten hours per day.
The power shortages cripple daily life and the already devastated economy, and effect everything from students having no light to study, to households having no power for daily needs, and badly affect hospitals, sanitation and water supply systems.
Another effect is severe noise and air pollution from ubiquitous gasoline-powered generators that people use to cope with the shortages. In 2009 alone, 75 persons died in Gaza from hazardous handling of generators.
In 2006, Israel bombed and severely damaged the power plant’s three turbines which supplies about a third of the electricity used by Gaza’s 1.5 million residents. Since the 2006 bombing, Israel has further crippled electricity supplies by severely limiting the transfer of spare parts and fuel into Gaza.
According to the UN-commissioned Goldstone report into Israel’s winter 2008-09 attack on Gaza, approximately half of Gaza’s electricity supply came from Israel, seven percent from Egypt and a third from the Gaza power plant, leaving a deficit of about eight percent. The electricity deficit reached up to 41 percent at times due to Israeli fuel restrictions, according to other UN sources cited by the Goldstone report.
With no end in sight to the Israeli siege, Thursday’s bombing has just made the lives of Gaza’s population, half of them children, even darker as the longest nights of winter approach.
Rami Almeghari is a journalist and university lecturer based in the Gaza Strip.
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From the Archives
A sample of vaccine and injectable medication tragedies during my lifetime
This is what happens when you demand speedy production in an era of politicized regulation
By Meryl Nass, MD | February 12, 2022
All these tragedies have been due to failures of testing or failures in manufacturing processes. Most occurred before vaccine manufacturers were given virtually complete protection from liability in 1987.
With the duration of patent exclusivity determining how much new products earn, products are rushed to market as quickly as possible, most using a shortened path for FDA review. Recalls and market removals of approved products are much more common than they used to be. We can only expect more of these disasters in the future, especially if the products are mandated for everyone. … continue
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