UN Accuses Israel of Torturing Palestinian Children
►http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content
I think the Israeli government is much more concerned about the image than about the moral concerns, than about the actual lives and safety of Palestinian children. And indeed the Israeli government is trying to limit those bad-looking incidences, those bad PR instances. In a law from September 2011, Israel has recognized for the first time after about 45 years of occupation that Palestinian children would be considered children until the age of 18 rather than until of age of 16. So they would have the same age categories as Israeli children.
But despite that decision, Palestinian children are still being tried by martial court, by military court, and in the Hebrew language, which is not their language, so often they don’t understand what they’re being accused of, what they’re signing, what they’re admitting. They are not allowed the rights to see a lawyer, to have an adult or their parent in the room while they’re being interrogated is not observed. So these violations continue.
And one of the reasons for this is that there is a sort of disconnect inside the Israeli political and military system between the part that looks outward, that tries to improve Israel’s foreign relations, and the part that looks inward that is more concerned with gaining popularity and mobilizing the public for more solidarity with the national cause against Palestinians and for the occupation.
The Israeli army has hired philosophers to write its ethical code, and these military philosophers wrote that when it comes to choosing between the safety of Israeli soldiers and the safety of enemies or even foreign civilians regardless of their age, the Israeli soldiers should always prefer the safety of themselves, of the Israeli soldiers. And an Israeli blogger, Yossi Gurvitz, commented on that—not legislation—that recommendation that it actually means that if the Israelis would believe that they could tie Palestinian children to their tank and surround their tank by bodies of Palestinian children to deter Palestinians from shooting at that tank, there is actually no moral reason for them not to do so according to this ethical book of the Israeli military. This is the sort of message that the Israeli soldiers are receiving—Palestinian children are dispensable and the lives of Israeli soldiers is sacred. And that’s why one of the most key issues in that report by the United Nations human rights council, but also in other reports, is the issue of human shields.
#Israël #enfants #tribunaux_militaires #torture #boucliers_humains
