Palestinian boys throwing stones (AFP)
Today’s UK Independent carries a searing story about Israeli treatment of young Palestinians arrested for throwing stones. Reporter Catrina Stewart somehow got to see a video recording the interrogation of a 14-year-old Palestinian named Islam Tamimi. (Stewart doesn’t say so, but the video must have been made by the Israeli authorities themselves.) Her story begins:
The boy, small and frail, is struggling to stay awake. His head lolls to the side, at one point slumping on to his chest. “Lift up your head! Lift it up!” shouts one of his interrogators, slapping him. But the boy by now is past caring, for he has been awake for at least 12 hours since he was separated at gunpoint from his parents at two that morning. “I wish you’d let me go,” the boy whimpers, “just so I can get some sleep.”
During the nearly six-hour video, …. Tamimi, exhausted and scared, is steadily broken to the point where he starts to incriminate men from his village and weave fantastic tales that he believes his tormentors want to hear. … Shown a page of photographs, his hand moves dully over it, identifying men from his village, all of whom will be arrested for protesting.
Stewart goes on to explain how these cases usually end, regardless of whether or not the children arrested actually threw stones:
In most cases, children as young as 12 are hauled from their beds at night, handcuffed and blindfolded, deprived of sleep and food, subjected to lengthy interrogations, then forced to sign a confession in Hebrew, a language few of them read.
…most children are frightened into signing a confession, cowed by threats of physical violence, or threats against their families, such as the withdrawal of work permits.
When a confession is signed, lawyers usually advise children to accept a plea bargain and serve a fixed jail sentence even if not guilty. Pleading innocent is to invite lengthy court proceedings, during which the child is almost always remanded in prison. Acquittals are rare. “In a military court, you have to know that you’re not looking for justice,” says Gabi Lasky, an Israeli lawyer who has represented many children.
At the end of the piece Stewart provides some statistics about such arrests. Most striking to me:
62 The percentage of children arrested between 12am and 5am.
Go read the whole article. And as I’ve said to several people active in the Palestine solidarity movement: if you ever have a moment of doubting why we do this work, just go back and re-read this piece.
