Re treatment of children/minors/youth @palestine
Fadi Quran:
Here’s a personal story about Palestinian child prisoners:
In 2012, I was arrested in Hebron while participating in a march to open Shuhada street, which was a main market street for Palestinians until the Israeli military shut it down, and made it for Israeli settlers only. It’s part of the area @JamaalBowmanNY
visited.
Handcuffed and blinded by pepper spray, and thrown in the back of an Israeli humvee after my head was slammed against it, the soldiers drive off. They suddenly stop, run out, and all I hear is a child screaming and crying.
@Sherifazuhur@palestine This is Netanyahu’s Israel. That he continues to get re-elected, has been a constant disappointment. I don’t understand the Israeli political system.
I don’t like Netanyahu or Hamas, and I’m glad these stories are getting press. Far from securing Israels future, he puts it in jeopardy. He is short sighted. Jews are the minority globally, and their narrative will not survive this abuse much longer.
This child is then thrown on top of me, and is handcuffed. I ask him his age, he said 13. I asked him what happened, he says he was walking to his sister’s house and they just stopped and picked him up. He’s in panic mode crying “my sister cooked lunch for me, she’ll be terrified if I’m lost”. I tell him not to worry, we’ll make it out and give him the basic tips: You have a right to remain silent, don’t say anything without a lawyer…etc
@palestine We get to the Israeli military outpost, we’re dragged out of the humvee. The kid’s terrified, telling them not to blind him (He thought I was blinded because of the pepper spray, I couldn’t open my eyes).
They smack the kid around and tell him to shut up.
We wait a bit, then kid is called in for interrogation.
The Israeli military interrogator literally tells him: I’ll let you go home, you just need to confirm the guy with you led the protest and told you to throw the stones at us.
@palestine Kid says I want to call my family/lawyer. Interrogator says ok: Picks up mobile and gives it to kid. Kid puts in his mother’s number. Soldier snatches mobile. The mother answers. Soldier says: Your son is going to go to jail and if he doesn’t talk I’ll come and arrest you too. Puts it on speaker, mother is panicking. Kid starts to panic. Soldier hangs up in her face.
Soldier tells kid: I can make your family’s life hell. But if you say what I told you to say, everything will be ok.
Kid starts sobbing and says: But I don’t know this guy I just met him in the humvee when you picked me up. Sitting outside the room, I yell: Kid, stay strong, say your truth and don’t fall into his lies.
@palestine They come and take me away. Thirty minutes later kid comes out of interrogation shaken. He says the soldier told him he’d shoot his mother. The poor child told me not to worry though, he only said the truth 🥺.
The case brought against this poor kid was stone throwing, with two soldiers “testifying” they saw him throw a stone.
He spent 3 months in prison as court hearings kept getting delayed, eventually he was advised by his lawyer to “admit” to stone throwing because that way he’d spend less time in prison because the lawyer could be able to negotiate his release in 4 months, while waiting for a ruling from Israel’s military courts could take a year.
@palestine - In short, working on this issue in Palestine for 12 years, I can tell you the majority of child arrests in Palestine follow this exact pattern:
Israel wants to teach a Palestinian community a lesson, deterring people from protesting its oppression.
It targets the kids, arresting dozens - up to 700 a year.
Majority of kids get abused and interrogated.
Lawyers and kids know it’s better to “confess” even if they didn’t do the crime, as waiting for a ruling and being in uncertainty/limbo is hell. That’s why you have a 95% conviction rate.
Then the Israeli government, when challenged for the systematic abuse, comes out and says: “These kids are terrorists - they attacked our soldiers and admitted to it.”
And because the lives of Palestinian children don’t matter, the world turns a blind eye again and again and again and again.
@Sherifazuhur@palestine Seeing these teens get released from jail and some of the stories behind it is shocking. The sheer scale has never before been reported as widely. Hopefully this will highlight what has been happening in Palestine for years and finally lead to some sort of resolution which leads to autonomy and peace for all parties to this.
@faab64@Sherifazuhur@nusher@palestine
I knew there was a problem with it but I didn't know the scale of it other than it was a lot of kids are locked up
And again in my head I hear Michelle Alexander quoting a kid in Oakland who had drugs planted on him by the cops, "Good luck finding anybody from my neighborhood they haven't gotten to yet."
No, because organisations like Amnesty International already report on it for decades, because the United Nations has ruled several times on the illegal occupation and actions of Israel in Palestine.
Paul, is it not possible & actually a fact, the UN & Amnesty are bias & hypocritical?
Have you ever been to Israel or Palestine? Have you studied the history of the conflict, or just implicitly accept what you see in the media?
Do you honestly believe you’re helping Palestinians by being against Israel, rather than the true oppressors of Palestinians ie #Iran#Russia & their terrorist proxies?
The #IsraelPalestineConflict has nothing to do with #Palestinian self-determination or liberation… it never did. Extremist death cults like #Hamas#Hezbollah & their masters, do not have any regard for human life —least of all Palestinians, who they use as pawns & human shields for their own selfish ends.
Funny how the #UN & #AmnestyInternational don’t seem at all bothered by #WarCrimes or the oppression & brutality of theocratic & autocratic regimes… but rather ignore & actively enable/empower their hateful ideologies & #crimesagainsthumanity 🤔
I am not against Israel. It has always been a favourite of mine and I was deeply shocked by their scorched-earth approach and apartheid towards ordinary Palestinians and the constant expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank.
I describe my love for Israel as the love that I have for my children. Nothing can take away that love, but when my son kills and destroys, I will condemn his actions, even though that can't take away my love.
@Sherifazuhur@palestine on that last point... there are some weird dynamics here. A close relative was a (n award winning) correspondent in the ME during the various wars, and has said how the editors would not publish, or would heavily reframe, things that could make israel or the IDF look bad. I think this is pretty common in western media. I'm not in media, but it does seem like the "we turn a blind eye" is by design.
its heartbreaking to see it keep happening, for decades.
@Sherifazuhur@palestine Joe Navarro, a former FBI officer, lamented in his book on body-language, that false-confessions are a significant & real thing...
He DIDN'T admit why, though.
You nailed it.
IF authority's ideology-addiction/prejudice guarantees one's conviction anyways,
THEN fighting it, opposing it, means the guaranteed conviction AND the abuse until then, as well, so same conviction PLUS abuse.
THAT is why false-confessions are so common among abused people, world-wide.
I wish Navarro'd had the balls to admit the truth in his book.
I'm corroborating the abuse-method that authority uses, that you're describing there, though I've never been outside of the West ( not this incarnation, anyways ).
To the best of my knowledge, authority uses the same method in most countries, & most cultures, .. some variant of it, at least.
It cannot be considered a specific-to-1-country/nationality/ideology method.
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