Did you hear that? Story of a 12 year old boy arrested for trying to visit his aunt’s house.
What are you doing about this? Story of a 12 year old boy arrested for trying to visit his aunt’s house.
Jewish readers, they’re doing this in your name, American readers they’re doing this with your money: Story of a 12 year old boy arrested for trying to visit his aunt’s house.
The great Amira Hass in Haaretz tells the story of a 12 year old boy arrested for trying to visit his aunt’s house in Palestine:
Bassam (not his real name), who lives in a village west of Ramallah, [decided] to visit his aunt who lives in another village 14 kilometers away. It took place in the afternoon hours of Monday, December 21, 2009. Bassam’s home is some 10 kilometers north of Route 443 and his aunt’s home to the south. A narrow, winding path links the villages located along the way. Bassam took two taxis, then began walking the rest of the way. At the suggestion of another boy he met on the path, he took a shortcut through a valley and headed for the little tunnel that runs below the road which is closed off to Palestinians, but built on their land…
the soldiers grabbed him. He noticed there were two jeeps nearby.
"They boxed me a little on my ears, covered my eyes and put plastic handcuffs on my wrists. Then they lifted me and threw me into a jeep," he says. An Arabic speaker, he says, told him: "If they ask you, say that you threw stones." "I was so afraid that I did not think about anything," Bassam says two weeks later, at home.
With his eyes covered and hands cuffed, Bassam was taken from place to place. At the first stop, he was kept about two hours. They offered him water, but he said he did not want any. Then they drove to another place where a police interrogator asked him if he "had ever thrown stones on 443," Bassam relates. "I said yes – because that’s what the soldier in the jeep told me – but I didn’t know what 443 was. He asked me whether I had ever thrown stones with a sling. I asked him what a sling was. He explained to me and I said no."
