• People Who Kill Children

    Palestinian children are subject to brutal violence far more frequently and on a far wider scale than are young Israelis.

    http://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/07/people-who-kill-children

    Palestinian children are subject to brutal violence far more frequently and on a far wider scale than are young Israelis. Such violence is official state policy. And the governments of Canada and the United States either tacitly or overtly back it. Over a thousand Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers since 2000, according to Defense for Children International-Palestine Section (DCI), a group with consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, UNICEF, UNESCO, and the Council of Europe. Yet the much larger volume of violence endured by Palestinian children receives far less media attention than did the disappearance of the young Israeli teens.

    Take as a case study the New York Times. The paper ran thirty-three articles on the captured teens from the time they went missing until July 2, the day after news that their bodies were found became public. But recent documentations of extreme violence against Palestinian children go virtually unnoticed.

    The Times ran no articles on an August 2012 booklet that the Israeli veterans’ group Breaking the Silence published about Israeli treatment of Palestinian youth. In the anthology, Israeli soldiers testify that “physical violence is often exerted against children, whether in response to accusations of stone-throwing or, more often, arbitrarily.” The book describes “cruel and indifferent treatment of children in custody,” “the wounding and killing of children in the West Bank and Gaza, whether by ignoring them at the scene of events, or by targeted shooting,” and the use of children as human shields.

    A February 2013 publication from UNICEF did warrant mention in one Times article: a ninety-nine word wire report that appeared on page A11. That report describes a process in which Palestinian children held in Israeli military detention are systematically denied legal rights and subject to physical and psychological violence:

    In the past 10 years, an estimated 7,000 children have been detained, interrogated, prosecuted and/or imprisoned within the Israeli military justice system — an average of two children each day. The analysis of the cases monitored by UNICEF identified examples of practices that amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention against Torture.

    #Palestine #Israël #enfance #violence #double_standard #médias