Forum: Keep Families Together
From the U.S.-Mexico border to Palestine, the U.S. and Israel are separating kids from their families and imprisoning them.
Decent people are outraged by the Trump administration’s abusive treatment of children, ripping them from the arms of their parents, and stripping them of their identity.
So, why are we not similarly outraged at Israeli abusive treatment of Palestinian children? Since the year 2000, some 12,000 Palestinian children have been arrested by Israel. Upon arrest, few children or parents are informed as to where the child is being taken, why or for how long. They are prosecuted in the Israeli military court system, and incarcerated in the same facilities as adults. This is a violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Defense for Children International — Palestine and the American Friends Service Committee interviewed some 600 children who were detained from 2012-16.
- 72 percent experienced physical violence following arrest
- 95 percent were hand-tied
- 85 percent were blindfolded
- 45 percent were detained from their homes in the middle of the night
- 66 percent faced verbal abuse, humiliation or intimidation
- 96 percent were interrogated without the presence of a family member
- 25 percent were subject to stress positions
- 38 percent signed documents in Hebrew, a language most Palestinian children don’t understand
Why are Palestinian kids arrested? Many are engaging in acts of resistance. They have lived their entire lives subject to violence and dehumanization by the state of Israel. In some cases, they’ve thrown stones, an enduring symbol of how the weak can challenge the strong. In others, they are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Logic is in short supply in the Occupation.
Why are kids pulled out of their beds, terrorized and arrested in the middle of the night by heavily armed soldiers who have broken in to their homes? If they have committed a crime, why are they not arrested on the spot?
Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) has introduced legislation in Congress, HR.4391, Promoting Human Rights by Ending Israeli Military Detention of Palestinian Children Act. The bill now has 28 co-sponsors.
This bill prohibits U.S. assistance to Israel from being used to support the military detention, interrogation, or ill-treatment of Palestinian children in violation of international humanitarian law or the use against Palestinian children of: (1) torture, inhumane, or degrading treatment; (2) physical violence or psychological abuse; (3) incommunicado or administrative detention; (4) solitary confinement; (5) denial of parental or legal access during interrogations; or (6) force or coercion to obtain a confession.
Every congressperson from Connecticut is thankfully outraged by the family breakups at the U.S.-Mexico border. Why then is not a single one of them a co-sponsor of HR.4391? They should be. All children and their families need our support.
From the U.S.-Mexico border to Palestine, this is #NoWayToTreatAChild.
Read the article online at the New Haven Register Forum site here.
