Showing posts with label Israeli child abuse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israeli child abuse. Show all posts

1 February 2018

Jeremy Bowen Interviews Likud’s Oren Hazan and Bassam Tamimi - over that famous Slap!

Oren Hazan – Likud MK – ‘If I'd been the soldier Ahed would have ended up in hospital’



At last the BBC recognises world-wide outrage over Ahed Tamimi as Jeremy Bowen interviews Bassem Tamimi, the father of Ahed and Likud MK, Oren Hazan.  Hazan is one of the most virulent racists in Israel’s Knesset and that is quite an achievement.

Hazan last month boarded the bus of visitors to Palestinian prisoners in Israel in order to  abuse them, calling them ‘insects’.  However what Hazan does and says meets no criticism from the Israeli government or Netanyahu or indeed the Israeli Labour Party ‘Opposition’.
We see in this short video  the reality of Israel’s visceral racist violence.  Hazan says that if he had been one of the soldiers then Ahed would have landed in hospital and he would have kicked her in the face.  If Hazan was a Palestinian and had made these threats against someone who is Jewish he would have already have been arrested.
Bassem Tamimi

When Hazan denied that there is no such a thing as the Palestinians he was saying no more than what Golda Meir said in 1969 in an interview with the Sunday Times:  ‘"There was no such thing as Palestinians. . . They did not exist"

Either way it is another Zionist own goal!
Hazan on a bus abusing the families of prisoners

Child Rights Briefing:  January 2018

News and updates on the situation of Palestinian children.
Israeli forces killed 17-year-old Ali Omar Nimer Qinu on 12th January, shooting him in the head when clashes broke out in Iraq Burin village, south of the West Bank city of Nablus.

Year-in-review: Worst abuses against Palestinian children in 2017

Ramallah, January 18, 2018—Last year marked 50 years of Israeli military occupation, with no signs of abatement in Palestinian children’s vulnerability to injury and abusive military arrest in the West Bank. Rapidly devolving living conditions in the Gaza Strip put in jeopardy the most basic human rights, as children became collateral damage in an internal Palestinian political standoff. Read more »
Palestinian boy holds a poster  of Musab Tamimi, who an Israeli soldier shot in the neck with live ammunition from a distance of approximately 70 meters (76 yards) during clashes on January 3 in the Ramallah-area town of Deir Nitham 

Israeli forces shoot dead two Palestinian teens, injure another

Ramallah, January 12, 2017—Israeli forces opened fire, killing two Palestinian teenagers and seriously injuring a third, during clashes in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) on January 11. Read more »

Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian teen in violent start to 2018


Ramallah, January 8, 2017—Israeli forces killed a 16-year-old Palestinian and critically injured another teen in two apparent instances of excessive use of force against Palestinian children. Read more »

1 January 2018

Feminist silence over Ahed Tamimi exposes the racist consensus at the heart of western feminism

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Show trial and gaol looms for 16 year old Palestinian girl for defending herself





UPDATE

In the 10+ years that this blog has existed I've posted over 2,200 different stories.  This post has recorded the highest number of hits.  Some 70000 and rising.  Don't ask me why!

Consider this – a 16 year old girl, Ahed Tamimi, whose 14 year old cousin Mohammed has just been shot in the head by an Israeli soldier, challenges two Israeli soldiers who invade the grounds of her home.  After being assaulted by one of them she slaps them back and is immediately demonised in the Israeli press for attacking an armed goon.  Israel’s press doesn’t even mention the fact that her cousin was nearly killed nor the fact that she was assaulted first. 

Ahed Tamimi surrounded by 4 burly prison guards 

At 4 am the following morning Ahed is seized from her bed by armed Israeli soldiers and taken to an unknown destination.  On the way she is almost certainly assaulted since abuse and torture of Palestinian children is routine.  She is denied food, sleep and verbally and physically abused by Israel’s heroes.  She is put in a cold cell and when she comes to her remand hearing she is looking dazed and suffering from sleep deprivation.

The hearing is conducted in Hebrew and the translator, who is piss poor, walks out in the middle.  Her father is obstructed from even seeing her by 3 military officials.  Because she is a Palestinian child she is tried in a military court that has a 99.74% conviction rate.
It goes without saying that a Jewish child of her age would not even appear in a military court and nor would they be imprisoned..  A Jewish child would have immediate access to a lawyer and their parent.  A Jewish child would never be put into a damp dark cell (apparently orders were given that Ahed should be placed in the ‘darkest’ cell available.
Labour's Zionist Shadow Secretary Emily Thornberry is a supporter of Labour Friends of Israel - she has kept quiet about Israel's child abuse but voluble about the 'right' of a racist state of exist
And what is the reaction of Western feminists?  The Jess Phillips and Harriet Harmans and all those Labour Party feminist clones who are so hot about abuse on social media?  Where is the voice of Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry who believes that those opposing the right of a racist Israeli state to exist should be expelled?  Nothing, absolute silence, because of course Ahed Tamimi is one of them, the other.  Thus western feminism buys into a racist Orientalist discourse. 
Ben Caspit, Ma'ariv journalist, makes thinly veiled rape threats
Consider the reaction of one, well known, ‘liberal’ Israeli, a journalist Ben Caspit from Israel’s Ma’ariv.  He shared the outrage of his Israeli audience, women included, about the affront to national pride. Caspit wrote  that:
“In the case of the girls, we should exact a price at some other opportunity, in the dark, without witnesses and cameras” 
There is only one way to interpret this, call to ‘exact a price... in the dark without witnesses and cameras.’  It is a call to rape and sexually abuse Ahed.  Yet still the silence of the Jasmine Beckett’s and Labour’s right-wing feminists is inaudible.  The call to use rape in Israel’s military and Orthodox echelons is common.
Michael Oren MK is a Zionist 'moderate'

Or consider this comment from Michael Oren, a member of Israel’s Knesset and a member of the governing coalition, as well as former Israeli Ambassador to the United States.  He is a ‘moderate’, a member of the ‘centrist’ Israeli party Kulanu.  Centrism in Israel however means somewhere to the right of UKIP in Britain.
‘The Tamimi family – which may not be a real family – dresses up kids in American clothes and pays them to provoke IDF troops on camera.’

Usually Israeli politicians like the Defence Minister Eli Dahan are more straightforward.  In a radio interview he observed that ‘To me, they [Palestinians] are like animals, they aren’t human.” Before going on to enlighten his interviewer about the nature of the human soul, being a Rabbi, that “A Jew always has a much higher soul than a gentile, even if he is a homosexual,” . 

What Oren was saying was two things.  Firstly Palestinians, because they are not human beings don’t have families like we do. They also don’t have feelings but react like animals.  Secondly that being a Muslim, Ahed should have been in a chador or burka, veiled like her mother not dressed in the clothes of a western teenager.  Her appearance is therefore a trick, designed to deceive westerners and because she is white, this is further proof that they are not the same family. The racism oozes out of these people like dirty oil and yet, despite these attacks on a symbol of a woman standing up to Israel’s colonialist military and despite the petition below attracting 200,000 signatures, no prominent feminist or feminist group has raised their voice against the forces of Zionism because in Israel there is a consensus, including amongst women, that Ahed should be punished for her ‘crimes’.
‘There has been a curious lack of support for Ahed from Western feminist groups and human rights advocates
Harry's Place and the racist Sarah Brown
Consider the pro-war site Harry’s Place, which is widely quoted by the media, including the Labour Right.  In an article Ahed Tamimi and Ben Caspit their ‘liberal’ Zionist moderator Sarah Brown, who likes to present herself as reasonable and not a frothing at the mouth Zionist first quotes the viciously racist Miri Regev as saying that ‘‘When I watched that, I felt humiliated.’ 

Regev, Israel’s ‘Culture’ Minister (culture as in Goebbels) is one of the true Judeo Nazi members of the Israeli Cabinet. She likened the Black African refugees in South Tel Aviv, who are now facing deportation  to 'cancer' and when people protested apologised to cancer victims for comparing them with refugees! Indeed in her viciously racist speech to a demonstration in South Tel Aviv Regev single handedly provoked a pogrom and physical assaults against these refugees from Eritrea and Sudan mainly.

In other words Regev is the Katie Hopkins of Israeli politics except that, even the Daily Mail eventually sacked Hopkins, whereas Miri Regev was promoted to Israel's cabinet. What is Ms Brown's reaction? Feminist solidarity with a 16 year old woman, who is still a child? Outrage at the suggestion by Ben Caspit that she should have something horrible happen to her in a 'dark place'? No apologetics throughout for her favourite racist regime.
Sarah AB also mentioned that ‘others praised the soldiers’ restraint’ quoting Avi Buskila, Chairman of Peace Now as saying that “The soldiers acted heroically, exactly how is expected from them.”  
Peace Now, for those who don’t know, is an Israeli Labour Party front organisation, which 35 years ago organised a demonstration of 400,000 in the wake of the Sabra and Chatilla massacres.  Today it is a shadowand an apologist for Israeli colonisation. In other words this racist discourse was framed entirely from the standpoint of the racists and colonialists.  None of it from the eyes of Ahed.

Of course Sarah AB is a Zionist feminist and one can expect little better from racists like her but she is indicative of a wider phenomenon amongst western feminists.  Israel is still seen as an island of women’s liberation in the medieval Middle East rather than an imperialist force which, together with the United States, helps preserve the most reactionary and backward regimes and social relations in the area – from Saudi Arabia to Egypt and Iran.  Again this is the Orientalist discourse.

There is a petition for Ahed.  We want to obtain at least ¼ million signatures though really it should be ten times this amount.  So please share this on social media and demonstrate some real solidarity with Ahed Tamimi and all the Palestinians, men and women, that she represents.  The case of Ahed is indicative because it demonstrates that womens liberation is not a western phenomenon based around sexuality, gender and lifestyle but it is bound up with the liberation of humanity from racism and imperialism and the violence it engenders.  Womens liberation is not separate from human liberation and the forces of exploitation and is not based in academic ivory towers and interesting dissertations. 

Show trial and jail sentence for mocking a soldier

Please sign the open letter below and forward to your contacts
AVAAZ open letter to sign plus two articles from Al Jazeera

Add your name to this open letter targeting all world leaders:

 248, 895 had signed at the time of posting. The aim is to get 250,000 signatures.
“We demand that Ahed and all Palestinian children are released from Israeli prisons now."
Ahed with her mother and father
The international community must put an end to the ill-treatment and detention of Palestinian children. Enough is enough.

To Ahed and all the children in Israeli jails: We stand by your side, and are holding you in our hearts. We will not give up until you are free. You are not alone.”

More information:

Ahed Tamimi was dragged out of her bed in the night and arrested.
Ahed is a child, and like thousands of Palestinian children she could be humiliated and abused if we don’t get her out fast.
Ahed’s been on the frontline defending Palestine since she was 7 years old. Now Ahed needs us to stand up for her. 
Add your name to free Ahed and all child prisoners, it will be delivered to leaders worldwide and to Ahed’s lawyer, to give to Ahed in prison to give her strength as she faces the Israeli military’s terrifying interrogation tactics.


Palestinian activist Ahed with her mother Nariman. Photo by Al Jazeera

By Shenila Khoja-Moolji, Al Jazeera
December 28, 2017

Ahed Tamimi, a 16-year-old Palestinian girl, was recently arrested in a night-time raid on her home. The Israeli authorities accuse her of “assaulting” an Israeli soldier and an officer. A day earlier she had confronted Israeli soldiers who had entered her family’s backyard. The incident happened shortly after a soldier shot her 14-year-old cousin in the head with a rubber bullet, and fired tear-gas canisters directly at their home, breaking windows.

Her mother and cousin were arrested later as well. All three remain in detention.
There has been a curious lack of support for Ahed from Western feminist groups, human rights advocates and state officials who otherwise present themselves as the purveyors of human rights and champions of girls’ empowerment.

Ahed, like Malala, has a substantial history of standing up against injustices.

Their campaigns on empowering girls in the global South are innumerable: Girl Up, Girl Rising, G(irls)20 Summit, Because I am a Girl, Let Girls Learn, Girl Declaration.

When 15-year-old Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by a member of Tehrik-e-Taliban, the reaction was starkly different. Gordon Brown, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, issued a petition entitled “I am Malala.” The UNESCO launched “Stand Up For Malala.”
Malala was invited to meet then President Barack Obama, as well as the then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and addressed the UN General Assembly. She received numerous accolades from being named one of the 100 Most Influential People by Time magazine and Woman of the Year by Glamour magazine to being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013, and again in 2014 when she won.

State representatives such as Hillary Clinton and Julia Gillard as well as prominent journalists such as Nicholas Kristof spoke up in support of her. There is even a Malala Day!

But we see no #IamAhed or #StandUpForAhed campaigns making headlines. None of the usual feminist and rights groups or political figures has issued statements supporting her or reprimanding the Israeli state. No one has declared an Ahed Day. In fact, the US in the past has even denied her a visa for a speaking tour.

Ahed, like Malala, has a substantial history of standing up against injustices. She has been protesting the theft of land and water by Israeli settlers. She has endured personal sacrifice, having lost an uncle and a cousin to the occupation. Her parents and brother have been arrested time and again. Her mother has been shot in the leg. Two years ago, another video featuring her went viral – this time she was trying to protect her little brother from being taken by a soldier.

Why isn’t Ahed a beneficiary of the same international outcry as Malala? Why has the reaction to Ahed been so different? There are multiple reasons for this deafening silence. First among them is the widespread acceptance of state-sanctioned violence as legitimate. Whereas hostile actions of non-state actors such as the Taliban or Boko Haram fighters are viewed as unlawful, similar aggression by the state is often deemed appropriate.

This not only includes overt forms of violence such as drone attacks, unlawful arrests, and police brutality, but also less obvious assaults such as the allocation of resources, including land and water. The state justifies these actions by presenting the victims of its injustices as a threat to the functioning of the state.

Once declared a threat, the individual is easily reduced to bare life – a life without political value. Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has described this as a time/place sanctioned by sovereign power where laws can be suspended; this individual can therefore now be made a target of sovereign violence. Terrorists often fall within this category. Thus, the execution of suspected terrorists through drone attacks without due judicial process ensues without much public uproar.

The Israeli police have deployed a similar strategy here. They have argued for extendingAhed’s detention because she “poses a danger” to soldiers (state representatives) and could obstruct the functioning of the state (the investigation).

Casting unarmed Palestinians like Ahed – who was simply exercising her right to protect her family’s wellbeing with all the might of her 16-year-old hand – in the same light as a terrorist is unfathomable. Such framings open the way for authorising excessive torture – Israel’s education minister Naftali Bennett, for instance, wants Ahed and her family to “finish their lives in prison.”

Ahed’s suffering also exposes the West’s selective humanitarianism, whereby only particular bodies and causes are deemed worthy of intervention.

Anthropologist Miriam Ticktin argues that while the language of morality to alleviate bodily suffering has become dominant in humanitarian agencies today, only particular kinds of suffering bodies are read as worthy of this care.This includes the exceptionally violated female body and the pathologically diseased body.

Such a notion of suffering normalises labouring and exploited bodies: “these are not the exception, but the rule, and hence are disqualified.”

Issues of unemployment, hunger, threat of violence, police brutality, and denigration of cultures are thus often not considered deserving of humanitarian intervention. Such forms of suffering are seen as necessary and even inevitable. Ahed, therefore, does not fit the ideal victim-subject for transnational advocacy.

Relatedly, girls like Ahed who critique settler colonialism and articulate visions of communal care are not the empowered femininity that the West wants to valourise. She seeks justice against oppression, rather than empowerment that benefits only herself.

Her feminism is political, rather than one centred on commodities and sex. Her girl power threatens to reveal the ugly face of settler-colonialism, and hence is marked as “dangerous”. Her courage and fearlessness vividly render all that is wrong with this occupation.

Ahed’s plight should prompt us to interrogate our selective humanitarianism. Individuals who are victims of state violence, whose activism unveils the viciousness of power, or whose rights advocacy centres communal care, deserve to be included in our vision of justice.

Even if we don’t launch campaigns for Ahed, it is impossible for us to escape her call to witness the mass debilitation, displacement and dispossession of her people. As Nelson Mandela said, “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”


Ahed Tamimi and her parents Nariman (also now arrested) and Bassem. Throughout their show trial in Ofer military court, police officers stood in front of him so that he could not see them and they could not see him.  Photo by Jaclynn Ashly, Al Jazeera


By Jaclynn Ashly, Al Jazeera
December 26 2017

Bethlehem, occupied West Bank – On a day when millions of people around the world spent time with their families, laughing and exchanging gifts, Bassem Tamimi sat for hours in an Israeli court anticipating the fate of his daughter, wife and niece.

For the second time in less than a week, the Tamimi women’s detentions were extended for another four days as the police prosecution continues an investigation into a case that has attracted worldwide attention.

Bassem told Al Jazeera that the court sessions, held in Israel’s Ofer detention centre in Ramallah, went on for more than six hours on Monday.

“Ahed looked so tired,” he said, referring to his jailed 16-year-old daughter, and expressed worry concerning her treatment in Israeli jail.

Three Israeli officials stood in front of Bassem the entire court proceeding, blocking his view of Ahed.

“I wasn’t even allowed to see her,” he said. Bassem attempted to speak to his daughter, eager to hear her familiar voice that could assure him she was continuing with the strength the teenager is famous for.

However, “any time I tried to speak to her, the Israeli officers would tell me to shut up and would threaten to kick me out of the court”, he explained.

“They just want to show us that Israel controls everything.”

Multiple arrests

Ahed was detained by Israeli forces on Tuesday following a raid on the family’s home in the village of Nabi Saleh in the occupied West Bank during the pre-dawn hours.

Hours later, his wife Nariman travelled to the Binyamin detention centre, where Ahed was being held, to check on her condition and insist on being present while her daughter was being interrogated.

She too was arrested upon arrival. Israeli authorities are accusing Nariman of “incitement” for filming a video showing Ahed slapping and kicking two Israeli officials outside her home.

Ahed’s 21-year-old cousin Nour, who studies journalism at Al Quds University, was also arrested during a raid on her home the following morning.

An Israeli army spokesperson previously told Al Jazeera that Ahed was suspected of “assaulting a soldier and an IDF officer”.

Tear gas canisters collected by residents of Nabi Saleh village [Jaclynn Ashly/Al Jazeera]

The video went viral and spurred an Israeli social-media campaign demanding the arrest of the teen, who has been an icon for the village’s long-standing resistance since she was 13.

Nour also appeared in the video. Following the arrests, Israeli authorities summoned Bassem for interrogations and questioned him for two hours about the video.

According to Bassem, Ahed and Nour were attempting to push the soldiers away from their home in the video after their 15-year-old cousin Mohammad was struck point-blank in the face with a rubber bullet, which left him in a coma for 72 hours.

The Tamimi women have not yet officially been charged with a crime.

According to Gabi Laski, Ahed’s lawyer, the women are also being investigated for other incidents unrelated to the recent video.

Laski said the teen is being held in the first section of Israel’s HaSharon prison in Israel, which holds child “security prisoners”.

No change of clothes

Nariman and Nour are being held together at HaSharon in the third section designated for Palestinian women prisoners, Laski said.

Ahed has not been provided with a change of clothes since she was detained almost a week ago, Laski told Al Jazeera.

Since her detention, Ahed has also been transferred between several prisons in Israel.

According to Laski, such Israeli policies are meant to “break your spirit”.

Palestinian detainees are typically handcuffed and have their feet shackled during prison transfers. 

The trip between prisons is often uncomfortable and can result in serious physical and emotional exhaustion.

These prison transfers occur despite being a violation of international law, which prohibits the transfer of Palestinians from the occupied territory into Israeli territory.

Nevertheless, 60 percent of Palestinian child detainees are transferred into Israel from the occupied territory, according to prisoners’ rights group Addameer.

Addameer has reported that many Palestinian children are interrogated while “sleep deprived and often bruised and scared”, and called the process “coercive”.

‘Abuse and humiliation’
According to the group, Palestinian children are often “shown, or made to sign, documentation written in Hebrew”, despite most Palestinians in the occupied territory not understanding the language.

Defence for Children International – Palestine noted in a new report that out of 520 cases of Palestinian children being detained by Israel between 2012 and 2016, 72 percent faced physical violence and 66 percent experienced “verbal abuse and humiliation”.

Nour’s father Naji told Al Jazeera that the threats his family has received from Israelis have left him anxious and concerned about Nour’s safety in prison.
The idea of rape as a weapon of war is widely held among certain sections of Israel's security establishment

According to Naji, Israelis have demanded that the Tamimi women be held in the “darkest cell” of Israel’s prisons and have expressed their hope that the women “get raped”.

“What if some right-wing Israeli is working in the prison, and they actually follow through with these threats?” he said.

In the early morning hours on Monday, as the Tamimi families were resting before another long day at an Israeli court, Israeli forces crept into the village once again and raided Naji’s home.

Manal Tamimi, a relative of the women, told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces broke into Naji’s home and ransacked the place, before raiding two more homes in the village.

Izz al-Din and Mutasim Tamimi, both 20 years old, were detained during the raid.
Both had previously spent time in Israeli prison – between five to eight months, according to Manal.

Neither of the youths was involved in the case that Ahed, Nariman, and Nour are being held for.

Residents interrogated

Manal said that for the past two weeks, Israeli forces stationed at the checkpoint positioned at the entrance of Nabi Saleh have been stopping the young residents of the village and interrogating them for hours.

“This has nothing to do with anyone breaking the law. This is just harassment and collective punishment on the village,” she said.

Bassem agrees, telling Al Jazeera that the Tamimi women’s court proceedings are a form of Israeli “propaganda”.

“Israel wants to show the world that they have a trial, a court, and a legal system. They want people to believe they have laws and a democracy,” Bassem said.

Bassem said that the village did not see Israel’s courts as “legitimate”.

“It’s all fake. The courts are just another component of the occupation. There’s no difference between this court and an Israeli settlement,” he told Al Jazeera.

“They are targeting us because we are Palestinian and we resist Israeli occupation and its colonisation of Palestinian lands. They want to break Nabi Saleh.”


By Lara Friedman, Forward
December 20, 2017

The video is striking — no pun intended. A 16 year-old Palestinian girl in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh grapples with Israeli soldiers in full combat gear and armed to the teeth. Despite the fact that she swats and kicks at them, the soldiers, likely hardly older than their tormentor, show admirable restraint, doing nothing to escalate the situation from a scuffle into something much worse. 
Days later, more video emerged, this time of the IDF raiding Nabi Saleh in the middle of the night to pull this same teenager, Ahed Tamimi, from her bed and arrest her. Since then, her mother and a female cousin have also been arrested.

In Israel, and among defenders of Israel, two questions dominate the debate: How could any Palestinian have been permitted to abuse and humiliate the IDF in this manner? And what can Israel do to ensure that it doesn’t happen again?

Israel’s Minister of Education, Naftali Bennett and Defence Minister Avigdor Leiberman, both of whom support pardoning an Israeli soldier who was caught on video killing a Palestinian who no longer posed any threat, have ideas. Bennett called for Ahed and those who joined her in the attack to be jailed for the rest of their lives. Lieberman threatened ominously:

“Everyone involved, not only the girl but also her parents and those around them, will not escape from what they deserve.”

Knesset member Oren Hazan, from the Likud party, suggested that the soldiers’ failure to react with force was a mistake:

“Restraint is a failed and dangerous policy. Next time it must end differently.”

Knesset member Bezalel Smotrich, of the Jewish Home party, called on the IDF Chief of Staff

“to order that every encounter or friction between the enemy and our troops end with a painful and decisive outcome.”

All of these reactions gloss over the key question: How did Israeli soldiers come to be grappling with this Palestinian teenager in the first place? Were they minding their own business, taking care of the security of Israel or Israelis, when Ahed and her relatives suddenly turned up to “provoke” them? Or rather, since the action in the video takes place in the front yard of Ahed’s house, were the soldiers in Nabi Saleh at the Tamimi residence to arrest someone, hunt for weapons or foil a planned attack against Israel?

The answer to all of these questions is: no. The reason IDF soldiers are regularly in Nabi Saleh, and regularly haunt the Tamimi family — week after week, for nearly the past decade — has nothing to do with the security of Israel.

It is because the inhabitants of this village, in existence since long before the establishment of the modern state of Israel, refuse to submit quietly to the Occupation. They refuse to cease protesting against an authority that over time has taken their lands and resources for the benefit of settlements, and has seen soldiers, year after year, arrest, injure and kill village residents and especially Tamimi family members as they engage in unarmed protest.

To be clear: this isn’t just about Nabi Saleh. What is happening in this one village encapsulates the ineluctable and self-defeating logic of Israeli occupation. According to this logic, all Palestinian protest, including unarmed protest, is intolerable, undermining the IDF’s absolute authority and its deterrence.

Consistent with this logic, quashing Palestinian protest is a top priority of the IDF, not because such protest threatens Israel’s security, but because occupation requires that the Palestinians never forget who is in charge. In support of this logic, Israel maintains laws in the West Bank that render virtually all Palestinian protest illegal and permit Israel to impose heavy penalties on those who refuse to submit.

And as a consequence of this logic, unarmed or non-violent protest — including by young Palestinians like Ahed Tamimi — represents in many ways an even greater challenge to the IDF than armed attacks; as one senior Israeli defence official admitted, “We don’t do Gandhi very well.”
If Israel continues to seek military solutions to quash Palestinian resistance to the occupation, the results will be predictable and tragic. While Israeli leaders worry about the political costs of videos showing soldiers abusing, or being abused by, Palestinian children, Israelis as a whole will continue to pay the ever-growing costs — moral, financial, social, security, and diplomatic — imposed on them by governments that prioritize occupation over virtually all else and undermine the humanity of the nation’s own sons and daughters by sending them on missions the sole purpose of which is to humiliate, subjugate, and break the spirit of fellow human beings.

And as the costs to Palestinians continue to be measured in blood — deaths and injuries — and time lost in Israeli jail, Palestinian grievances will only deepen, and the determination to resist will only grow stronger. In short, Nabi Saleh and villages like it are where Israel’s occupation logic hits a wall (no pun intended): there is no military answer to Ahed Tamimi or others of her generation, who see that they have no hope and no future under Israeli rule. The only solution is an end to occupation.
Lara Friedman is the President of the Foundation for Middle East Peace (www.fmep.org).


PLUS,  read
Haaretz Editorial, December 23rd, 2018

The government has to start caring more about what the international community thinks and less about extremists on the far right, which is why the detained 16-year-old Palestinian girl should be released…….
and


22 December 2017

Why do we tolerate Labour MPs Joan Ryan, Louise Ellman and Ian Austin - all of whom support Israel’s abuse and torture of Palestinian children?

The Silence of Labour Friends of Israel and the Jewish Labour Movement Apologists for Israel is Deafening

On the 6th January 2016 the House of Commons held a debate on Child Prisoners and Detainees: Occupied Palestinian TerritoriesDuring this debate there were two Labour MPs who were determined to defend Israel’s army and its abuse of children – Ian Austin and Louise Ellman. 

Austin tried to intervene no less than 7 times.  Most of the time other MPs wouldn’t give way to his asinine comments. Austin sought to blame the Palestinians for Israel’s child abuse.  His most substantive contribution was the following:

‘As a psychologist, will the hon. Lady comment on the likely impact on children of the Palestinian Authority’s glorification of terrorists who have murdered Israelis, presenting them as role models? What is the likely impact on children of Palestinian schools using textbooks that glorify violence and of countless examples of hatred and anti-Semitism being promoted on children’s television programmes on official Palestinian Authority TV in the west bank?’

Using  standard Zionist propaganda points, Austin argued that but for the Palestinian Authority’s ‘glorification of terrorists’ and the content of their school books, Palestinians would just love the Occupation, the check points and the confiscation of their land!  It was only ‘incitement’ that stopped Palestinians falling in love with their occupiers, settlers included!
Ian Austin MP heckling Jeremy Corbyn in the debate on the Chilcott Report
Given that the PA acts as the Palestinian arm of Israel’s security forces, such mind numbing stupidity is difficult to understand even from a member of Progress.

Austin merits a special page in the annals of infamy.  During the debate on the Silcott Inquiry, when Jeremy Corbyn was introducing the debate, Austin repeatedly heckled him telling him to 'shut up' and 'sit down'.  Clearly it was painful for him to listen to someone who had bee proven right over the Iraq War.  I don't often agree with Owen Jones, but his comment that Austin was an 'astonishingly unpleasant person' just about sums it up.  His deselection is long overdue.

Louise Ellman made 3 contributions. She too blamed the Palestinians for Israel’s use of torture, beatings, night-time arrests of children, the use of blindfolds and of course painful plastic  hand cuffs. 
Louise Ellman, the Liverpool Riverside and Tel Aviv South MP
When I accused Ellman of appearing to be act as the MP for Tel Aviv South than Liverpool Riverside the Jewish Chronicle’s idiot columnist, Marcus Dysch, accused me of racial abuse no less.   I can’t recall such comments when we accused Tory MPs such as John Carlisle and Julian Amery of being the MPs for Pretoria in the days of South Africa apartheid.  Mention Israel and your automatically accused of 'antisemitism' - unless of course you actually are an anti-Semite.

Joan Ryan, the Chair of Labour Friends of Israel, has acted as the standard bearer for the Israeli state and its military.  Despite LFI's ‘support’ for a 2 States Solution, which is a smokescreen for denying the 5 million Palestinians under occupation any democratic, civil or political rights, Ryan is a strong supporter of Israel’s military occupation, including its settlements.
One wonders whether calling Ryan the MP for Jerusalem Central is also anti-Semitic given she's not Jewish?  Ryan's main claim to fame is claiming the most expenses of any MP in 2006-7 and being the runner up the year before

There has grown up in recent years a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement whose aim is to put pressure on Israel. Israel has screamed blue murder.  It is ‘anti-Semitic’ etc. Yet historically BDS has been the weapon of the oppressed.  From the Boycott of Captain Boycott in Ireland to the Boycott of Slave Grown Sugar in the West Indies, to the Jewish Boycott of Nazi Germany and the Boycott of South Africa, Boycott has been a weapon of the oppressed.

Ironically Israel is all in favour of Boycotts.  It enforces a Boycott of Gaza through its military siege but that is one boycott that Ryan supports.
When Martha Osamor came out in support of the BDS Ryan immediately penned an open letter with the usual Zionist talking points about ‘demonising the only Jewish state in the world.’  As if not having a religious state was some kind of sin.  I responded with my own open letter which, for some reason, Ryan hasn’t responded to.
 
This week the issue of Palestinian  children has come to the fore with the night time arrest of Ahed Tamimi, a 16 year old girl who had been videod slapping an Israeli soldier in order to prevent him entering her house, after her 14 year old cousin had been shot in the head.
I explain why Dysch's suggestion that referring to Ellman as  a Tel Aviv MP is no more racist than calling John Carlisle and Julian Amery the MPs for South African constituencies
Marcus Dysch's hatchet job in the Jewish Chronicle - I have written to him but he doesn't seem eager to cross swords with me!  Hacks rarely do
She and indeed the rest of her family has now been arrested and the treatment of this brave 16 year old school girl has gone viral.  See We Are All Ahed Tamimi.  The time has come to root out of the Labour Party those who offer their support to Israel’s occupiers.  We need to turn the witch hunt on the real witches, such as Ryan, Austin and Ellman.

Amira Hass, Ha’aretz   Dec 21, 2017
The incidence of reported physical violence against child detainees has risen since a 2013 UNICEF report on the matter. Other aspects of detention, such as access to a lawyer, have improved
Michael Oren, former Israeli Ambassador to the USA and Knesset Member suggests that Ahed Tamimi 'dresses up in American clothes' - this racist can't handle the fact that Ahed comes across as a normal teenager in the abnormal situation of an occupation reacting as any kid would to armed soldiers
About two thirds of the 70 Palestinian minors who testified about their arrest and incarceration in 2017 reported that they were subjected to violence and physical abuse by soldiers during their custody.

The kinds of violence reported were slaps, kicks, pinches, blows with various objects, pushing and being forced to sit in painful positions, according to the October report published by Military Court Watch, a group of lawyers and social activists that monitors the treatment of children in Israeli military detention.

The 70 minors, ages 12 to 17, are but a sample of the hundreds of Palestinian minors arrested this year by the Israeli army. The final figures for 2016 and this year haven’t been submitted yet.
According to Israel Prison Service figures, by June 2017, 318 Palestinian minors were classified as security detainees in Israeli prisons. Since 2013, when the survey was first taken, the number of arrested minors who reported physical abuse against them rose from 60 percent to 64 percent.
The 540 minors whose testimonies were taken from the beginning of 2013 to the end of November 2017 represent about 14 percent of all the minor detainees during those five years.
In 2013, UNICEF published a report on Palestinian children arrested by Israel, concluding that “the ill treatment of children who come in contact with the military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized throughout the process, from the moment of arrest to indictment of the child, the conviction and issuing of the verdict.”

The report confirmed claims of Palestinian child protection organizations that children in custody were systematically abused. Night arrests, cuffing and blindfolding, failure to inform detainees of the right to remain silent, denial of access to lawyers and parents prior to interrogation were part of the routine, in addition to violent treatment of the children by soldiers, the report found.

After the UNICEF report’s release, Israeli officials promised to improve the situation. The Military Advocate General distributed a memorandum among brigade and battalion commanders, reminding them of the proper arrest rules. Among other things the memorandum stressed that using physical violence was prohibited.

The IDF reported to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel in 2014 that the memorandum says the commander of an arrest unit must make sure the detainee is held in “reasonable conditions,” including a place protected from intense heat or rain, provision of food and water and access to toilets, with a prohibition on physical and verbal violence, as well as other forms of abuse.
Following the report’s release, a number of lawyers and activists set up Military Court Watch to check whether the army was upholding the international standards for the arrests of minors.
As the organization’s monthly reports have shown, some improvement has taken place since then only in a few procedures – 21 percent of the minors whose testimonies were taken in 2017 said they were allowed to consult with a lawyer – compared to 0 percent in 2013 and 12 percent in 2016. In 2013 none of the detainees received a summons prior to his arrest, compared to 10 percent who received a summons in 2015 and 7 percent this year.

However, no improvement was made regarding the minors’ physical abuse. The children reported slaps (51 percent ), kicks (19 percent), pinches (14 percent), being beaten with various objects (9 percent) pushing (6 percent) and painful sitting positions (1 percent). The number of minors who reported verbal violence on the soldiers’ part declined from 49 percent in 2013 to 41 percent this year.

Most of the children, 61 percent, reported this year that the soldiers and policemen threatened them, compared to 47 percent in 2013 and 38 percent in 2014; more than half, 56 percent, reported that they were made to sit down on the jeep floor when they were driven from their home to interrogation, compared to 78 percent last year. Almost all, 93 percent, reported that their hands were cuffed and 79 percent reported that they were blindfolded. The large majority, 79 percent, reported that they were made to sign documents written only in Hebrew – another procedure branded by human rights organizations as illegal.

Free the Tamimi Family

Tuesday morning at 3am, Israeli forces invaded my home and arrested my daughter.  They dragged Ahed out of bed, handcuffed her and put her in the back of their military jeep. She is 16-years-old.

The next morning, my wife went to the police station to be with our daughter as she was interrogated. But Israel took her into custody as well. The following day, they arrested my 21-year-old niece Nour. 

All of this started with last Friday when soldiers in my village shot 15-year-old Mohammed Tamimi directly in the face with a rubber coated steel bullet. Following surgery, Mohammad had to be placed in amedically-induced coma. Then the soldiers came to our home. Ahed and Nour slapped the soldiers in the face and pushed them back, yelling that they could not enter our home. 

The Israeli military is threatened by our regular protests, by our refusal to live with occupation. 
Ahed appeared in court yesterday. Her detention was extended because she is refusing to talk. No cooperation with the occupation! Nour and my wife, Nariman, appeared in military court today. Their detention was also extended until at least Monday. Ahed, Nariman and Nour arebeing held Hasharon prison. Ahed is being held with Israeli prisoners and Nariman and Nour are being held with Palestinian prisoners. Even though Ahed is not in the same section of the prison as her mother and cousin, she is remaining strong and determined. 

It is our responsibility to resist the soldiers who enter our village and settlers who occupy our land and resources. For our family’s work, I have been recognized by the European Union as a Human Rights Defender. At the age of 13, my daughter won the Handala award for Courage in Turkey. Amnesty International, during one of my imprisonments, declared me a prisoner of conscience. Each week, my wife helps lead our anti-occupation demonstration. Now her resistance takes place from the inside of an Israeli jail. 

People and organizations around the world from Youth Against Settlements in Palestine to Jewish Voice for Peace, CODEPINK and others in the US are supporting us. They are writing press releases, making phone calls and standing by our side. Tomorrow at 12pm EST, (7pm Palestine time) there will be a twitter storm with the hashtag #FreeAhedTamimi. I thank everyone for their support and hope my family will be free soon.

Towards freedom, 
Bassem Tamimi, 

Human Rights Defender