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The “only democracy in the Middle East” routinely arrests Palestinian children and detains them with no charges. And when it does often charge them, the children are often forced to “admit” guilt under torture.
And what are most Palestinian children charged with: throwing rocks. Israel’s thuggish, terrorist occupation soldiers are “threatened” by the rocks of Palestinian children.
The debate on Israel in America is changing. Time magazine, usually stupid and apologetic toward Israel, recently published this courageous piece on Israeli abuse of Palestinian children [I will quote liberally, because it merits it]:
Walid Abu Obeida, a 13-year-old Palestinian farm boy from the West Bank village of Ya’abad, had never spoken to an Israeli until he rounded a corner at dusk carrying his shopping bags and found two Israeli soldiers waiting with their rifles aimed at him. “They accused me of throwing stones at them,” recounts Walid, a skinny kid with dark eyes. “Then one of them smacked me in the face, and my nose started bleeding.”
According to Walid, the two soldiers blindfolded and handcuffed him, dragged him to a jeep and drove away. All that his family would know about their missing son was that his shopping bags with meat and rice for that evening’s dinner were found in the dusty road near an olive grove. Over the course of several days in April last year, the boy says he was moved from an army camp to a prison, where he was crammed into a cell with five other children, cursed at and humiliated by the guards and beaten by his interrogator until he confessed to stone-throwing.
Walid says he saw his parents for only five seconds when he was brought before an Israeli military court and accused by the uniformed prosecutor not only of throwing stones but of “striking an Israeli officer.” The military judge ignored the latter charge and chose to prosecute Walid only for allegedly heaving a stone at soldiers.
The boy got off lightly: he spent 28 days in prison and was fined 500 shekels (approximately $120). Under Israeli military law, which prevails in the Palestinian territories, the crime of throwing a stone at an Israeli solider or even at the monolithic 20-ft.-high “security barrier” enclosing much of the West Bank can carry a maximum 20-year-prison sentence. Since 2000, according to the Palestinian Ministry for Prisoner Affairs, more than 6,500 children have been arrested, mostly for hurling rocks.
Walid’s story is hardly unusual, judging from a report on the Israeli military-justice system in the West Bank compiled by the Palestine office of the Geneva-based Defense for Children International, which works closely with the U.N. and European states. Human-rights groups in Israel and elsewhere have also condemned the punishment meted out to Palestinian children by Israeli military justice. Most onerous, says Sarit Michaeli of the Israeli human-rights group B’Tselem, is that inside the territories, the Israeli military deems any Palestinian who is 16 years and older as an adult, while inside Israel, the U.S. and most other countries, adulthood is reached at age 18.
The report states that “the ill-treatment and torture” of Palestinian child prisoners “appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized, suggesting complicity at all levels of the political and military chain of command.” . . .
The Geneva organization’s report alleges that under Israeli military justice, it is the norm for children to be interrogated by the Israeli police and army without either a lawyer or a family member present and that most of their convictions are due to confessions extracted during interrogation sessions or from “secret evidence,” usually tip-offs from unnamed Palestinian informers. If so, the practice may violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which Israel ratified in 1991. In response to TIME’s queries, a lawyer for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that under “security legislation” and Israel’s interpretation of international law, no lawyer or relative need be present during a child’s interrogation.
The children’s rights defenders collected testimony from 33 minors, including a child identified merely as “Ezzat H.,” who described a “soldier wearing black sunglasses [who] came into the room where I was held and pointed his rifle at me. The rifle barrel was a few centimeters from my face. I was so terrified that I started to shiver. He made fun of me and said: ‘Shivering? Tell me where the [father’s hidden] pistol is before I shoot you.’ ” . . .
According to the Israeli human-rights group Breaking the Silence, a few Israeli soldiers are alarmed by their own troops’ behavior. The group cites the testimony of two officers who complained before a military court that during an operation last March in Hares village, soldiers herded 150 male villagers, some as young as 14, into a schoolyard in the middle of the night, where they were kept bound, blindfolded and beaten over the course of more than 12 hours.
And now this:
This is the same country that likes to lie about being a democracy and having the most moral army no less. The Nazis used to blindfold and beat up helpless Jews as well. The Nazis used to abuse Jewish children as well.
The Jewish state is the mirror image of the Nazis.
RSS 
Shalhevet Pass, age 10 months, was killed by sniper fire at the entrance to the Avraham Avinu neighborhood in Hebron.
Eliran Rosenberg-Zayat, 15, of Givat Shmuel and Naftali Lanzkorn, 13, of Petah Tikva were killed in a suicide bombing at the Mifgash Hashalom (”peace stop”) gas station. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
Yossi Ish-Ran, 14, and Kobi Mandell, 14, both of Tekoa, were found stoned to death in a cave about 200 meters from the small community south of Jerusalem where they lived.
Marina Berkovizki, 17, of Tel Aviv; Roman; Ilya Gutman, 19, of Bat Yam; Anya Kazachkov, 16, of Holon; Katherine Kastaniyada-Talkir, 15, of Ramat Gan; Aleksei Lupalu, 16, of the Ukraine; Mariana Medvedenko, 16, of Tel Aviv; Irina Nepomneschi, 16, of Bat Yam; Yelena Nelimov, 18, of Tel Aviv; Yulia Nelimov, 16, of Tel Aviv; Raisa Nimrovsky, 15, of Netanya; Simona Rodin, 18, of Holon; Liana Sakiyan, 16, of Tel Aviv; Maria Tagilchev, 14, of Netanya; and Irena Usdachi, 18, of Holon were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself outside a disco near Tel Aviv’s Dolphinarium along the seafront promenade just before midnight on Friday. Yael-Yulia Sklianik, 15, of Holon; and Yevgenia Dorfman, 15, of Bat Yam died subsequently from their injuries.
Yehuda Shoham, aged 5 months, of Shilo, died of injuries incurred in a fatal stoning on June 5.
Ronen Landau, 17, of Givat Ze’ev, was shot and killed by Palestinian terrorists while returning home from Jerusalem with his father.
Tehila Maoz, 18, of Jerusalem; Michal Raziel, 16, of Jerusalem; Malka Roth, 15, of Jerusalem; Ra’aya Schijveschuurder, 14, of Neria; Avraham Yitzhak Schijveschuurder, 4, of Neria; Hemda Schijveschuurder, 2, of Neria; Tamara Shimashvili, 8, of Jerusalem; and Yocheved Shoshan, 10, of Jerusalem were killed and about 130 injured in a suicide bombing at the Sbarro pizzeria on the corner of King George Street and Jaffa Road in the center of Jerusalem. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.
Aliza Malka, 17, a boarding student at Kibbutz Merav, was killed by terrorists in a drive-by shooting at the entrance to the kibbutz in the Gilboa region, west of Beit She’an. Three teenage girls who were with her in the car were injured, one seriously.
Shoshana Ben Ishai, 16, of Betar Illit and Menashe (Meni) Regev, 14, of Jerusalem were killed when a Palestinian terrorist opened fire with a sub-machine gun shortly before 16:00 at a No. 25 Egged bus at the French Hill junction in northern Jerusalem. 45 people were injured in the attack.
Assaf Avitan, 15, of Jerusalem; Israel Ya’akov Danino, 17, of Jerusalem; Yosef El-Ezra, 18, of Jerusalem were killed and about 180 injured - 17 seriously - when explosive devices were detonated by two suicide bombers close to 11:30 P.M. Saturday night on Ben Yehuda Street, the pedestrian mall in the center of Jerusalem. A car bomb exploded nearby 20 minutes later. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
Ido Cohen, 17, of Jerusalem, fatally injured in the attack, died of his wounds on December 8.
Yair Amar, 13, of Emmanuel and Avraham Nahman Nitzani, 17, of Betar Illit were killed when three terrorists attacked a No. 189 Dan bus and several passenger cars with a roadside bomb, anti-tank grenades, and light arms fire near the entrance to Emmanuel in Samaria at 18:00 P.M. About 30 others were injured. Both Fatah and Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
Nehemia Amar, 15, and Keren Shatsky, 15, both of Ginot Shomron were killed and about 30 people were wounded, six seriously, when a suicide bomber blew himself up on Saturday night at a pizzeria in the shopping mall in Karnei Shomron in Samaria. Rachel Thaler, 16, of Ginot Shomron died of her wounds on February 27. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the attack.
Eleven people were killed and over 50 were injured, 4 critically, in a suicide bombing at 19:15 on Saturday evening near a yeshiva in the ultra-Orthodox Beit Yisrael neighborhood in the center of Jerusalem where people had gathered for a bar-mitzva celebration. The terrorist detonated the bomb next to a group of women waiting with their baby carriages for their husbands to leave the nearby synagogue. The victims: Shiraz Nehmad (7) and Liran Nehmad (3), of Rishon Lezion; Shaul Nehmad (15), of Rishon Lezion; Lidor Ilan (12) and his sister Oriah (18 months), of Rishon Lezion; Ya’akov Avraham Eliyahu (7 months), of Jerusalem. Avraham Eliahu Nehmad, 7, of Rishon Lezion, died of his injuries on June 20. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade took responsibility for the attack.
Avia Malka, 9 months, was killed and about 50 people were injured, several seriously, when two Palestinians opened fire and threw grenades at cars and pedestrians in the coastal city of Netanya on Saturday evening, close to the city’s boardwalk and hotels. The terrorists were killed by Israeli border police. The Fatah Al Aqsa Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.
16 people were killed and over 40 injured in a suicide bombing in Haifa, in the Matza restaurant of the gas station near the Grand Canyon shopping mall. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
The victims: Ran, 18, and Gal Koren, 15, of Haifa; Orly Ofir, 16, of Haifa; Ofer Ron, 18 of Haifa; Adi Shiran, 17, of Haifa.
Elmar Dezhabrielov, 16 of Rishon Lezion, was killed and about 40 people were wounded when a suicide bomber detonated himself in the Rothschild Street downtown pedestrian mall of Rishon Lezion.
Sinai Keinan, aged 14 months, of Petah Tikva was killed and 37 people were injured, some seriously, when a suicide bomber detonated himself near an ice cream parlor outside a shopping mall in Petah Tikva. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.
Netanel Riachi, 17, of Kochav Ya’akov; Gilad Stiglitz, 14, of Yakir; and Avraham Siton, 17, of Shilo - three yeshiva high school students - were killed and two others wounded in Itamar, southeast of Nablus, when a Palestinian gunman infiltrated the community and opened fire on the teenagers playing basketball. The Fatah Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.
Erez Rund, 18, of Ofra died of gunshot wounds to the chest sustained in a shooting attack near Ofra, north of Ramallah, when Palestinian terrorists opened fire from an ambush.
19 people were killed and 74 were injured - six seriously - in a suicide bombing at the Patt junction in Egged bus no. 32A traveling from Gilo to the center of Jerusalem. The bus, which was completely destroyed, was carrying many students on their way to school. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
Among the victims: Shani Avi-Zedek, 15, of Jerusalem; Galila Bugala, 11, of Jerusalem.
Neria, 16, Zvika, 12, and Avishai Shabo, 5 - as well as their mother and a neighbor who came to their aid, were murdered when a terrorist entered their home in Itamar, south of Nablus, and opened fire. Two other children were injured, as well as two soldiers. The terrorist was killed by IDF forces. The PFLP and the Fatah Al Aqsa Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.
Hadar Hershkowitz, 14, of Herzliya was killed and 15 others were wounded when a Palestinian suicide bomber set off a relatively small pipe bomb at a shwarma restaurant in Herzliya.
Linoy Saroussi and Hadas Turgeman, both 14 - were killed and two were wounded when a terrorist armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle and wearing an explosive belt opened fire, after infiltrating the settlement in northern Samaria. The terrorist was shot dead. The Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.
Gastón Perpiñal, 15, of Ra’anana, a recent immigrant from Argentina, was killed and about 70 people were wounded in a suicide bombing at a shopping mall in Kfar Sava. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.
Matan, 5, and Noam Ohayon, 4, and three others were killed when a terrorist infiltrated the kibbutz, located east of Hadera near the Green Line, and opened fire. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.
Eleven people were killed and some 50 wounded by a suicide bomber on a No. 20 Egged bus on Mexico Street in the Kiryat Menahem neighborhood of Jerusalem. The bus was filled with passengers, including schoolchildren, traveling toward the center of the city during rush hour. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
Among the victims: Hodaya Asraf, 13, of Jerusalem; Ilan Perlman, 8, of Jerusalem; Yafit Ravivo, 14 of Jerusalem; Michael Sharshevsky, 16, of Jerusalem.
Seventeen people were killed and 53 wounded in a suicide bombing of an Egged bus #37 on Moriah Blvd. in the Carmel section of Haifa, en route to Haifa University. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
Among the victims: Smadar Firstater, 16, of Haifa; Kamar Abu Hamed, 12, of Daliat al-Carmel; Daniel Haroush, 16, of Safed; Mordechai Hershko, 41, of Haifa; Tom Hershko, 15, of Haifa; Elizabeth Katzman, 17, of Haifa; Tal Kehrmann, 17, of Haifa; Abigail Litle, 14, of Haifa; Yuval Mendellevich, 13, of Haifa; Asaf Zur (Zollinger), 17, of Haifa.
Noam Leibowitz, 7, of Yemin Orde was killed and three members of her family wounded in a shooting attack near the Kibbutz Eyal junction on the Trans-Israel Highway. The terrorist fired from the outskirts of the West Bank city of Kalkilya. The Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command claimed responsibility for the attack.
Twenty-three people were killed and over 130 wounded when a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated himself on a No. 2 Egged bus in Jerusalem’s Shmuel Hanavi neighborhood. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
The victims: Avraham Bar-Or, 12, of Jerusalem; Binyamin Bergman, 15, of Jerusalem; Elisheva Meshulami, 16, of Bnei Brak; Tehilla Nathanson, 3, of Zichron Ya’acov; Issachar Reinitz, 9, of Netanya; Shmuel Taubenfeld, 3 months, of New Square, New York and Shmuel Zargari, 11 months, of Jerusalem.
Hila, 11, Hadar, 9, Roni, 7, and Merav Hatuel, 2 - of Katif in the Gaza Strip were killed along with their mother when two Palestinian terrorists fired on an Israeli car at the entrance to the Gaza Strip settlement bloc of Gush Katif. Fatah and Islamic Jihad claimed joint responsibility for the attack.
Yuval Abebeh, 4, and Dorit (Masarat) Benisian, 2, both of Sderot, were killed by a Kassam rocket fired from Gaza while playing in the street. Some 20 people were wounded. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
Ayala-Haya (Ella) Abukasis, 17, of Sderot was mortally wounded when a Qassam rocket landed near her and shrapnel penetrated her cerebellum, leaving her brain dead. She was struck while protecting her younger brother, who was lightly wounded. Kept on life support throughout the week, her parents agreed to stop treatment when doctors told them there was no chance of recovery. She died on January 21.
Avihai Levy, 17, of Beit Hagai was killed in a drive-by terrorist shooting at a hitchhiking stop about 200 meters from the entrance to Beit Hagai, south of Hebron. Aviad Mansour, 16, of Otniel, fatally wounded in the attack, died on June 26. Three others were wounded. The Islamic Jihad and Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.
Eight students of the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem were killed when a terrorist armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle infiltrated the yeshiva and opened fire in the library where about 80 people were gathered, mostly teenagers. Eleven others were wounded, three critically. The terrorist, a resident of East Jerusalem, was killed by an IDF officer.
The victims: Segev Peniel Avihail, 15, of Neve Daniel; Neria Cohen, 15, of Jerusalem; Yonatan Yitzhak Eldar, 16, of Shilo; Yehonadav Haim Hirschfeld, 18, of Kokhav Hashahar; Yohai Lifshitz, 17, of Jerusalem; Doron Meherete, 26, of Ashdod; Avraham David Moses, 16, of Efrat; and Ro’i Roth, 18, of Elkana.
Shlomo Nativ, 13, was killed by an axe-wielding terrorist in his community of Bat Ayin in Gush Etzion.
I’ve purposely left out all adult names. The names on this list were all Israeli children, with ages ranging from a few months to 18 years—the same ages Palestinians and Marco love to wave at the world. Other than being Israeli and/or Jewish, what was their crime?
I’ve also purposely left out the names of Israeli Arabs and foreign nationals working, studying or touring in Israel who were murdered by Palestinians. Apparently, the Palestinians don’t care who they murder. They seem to excel at murdering each other when there’s nothing else to do.
Also note that each and every one of these names has another thing in common: they are all dead. Not “missing”, not “mistreated”, not “humiliated”, not imprisoned, not under arrest… D-E-A-D – murdered by Palestinians.
Until there is a genuine peace agreement—which requires that the Palestinians and the Arab world in general admit that they, also, have amends to make for the wrongs they have committed, this will go on.
You are right. India was an important ally of Palestine and other Arab countries earlier but now India has become a strategic partner of both US and Israel. There has been a great change in Indian foreign policy in last 10-15 years. India has joined the imperialist agenda of US and Israel.
There is not even a small change in Indian policy,even at the time of BJP govt and India still following the policy of Nehru,Menon and Swarn Singh.
you don't see any change in the policy. The congress and BJP justify their shift towards US and Isarel and you are denying even the change. The Nehruvian foreign policy was that of NAM. What happened in case of Iran? Why did Manmohan Singh government voted against Iran in IAEA?
Further, it is true that India had been moving more toward a pro-Israel foreign policy. Though India, like the rest of the world, is still what I would call balanced. It no longer in unconditional support for the Palestinians, but one that plays a balancing act.
Which, of course, is certainly better than just supporting Israel and shunning the Palestinians as the United States traditionally does.