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Child of 12 is roughed up, then detained, by Israeli forces in occupied Hebron

The world is beginning to pay attention to Israeli crimes against children. Earlier this week a photograph of a blindfolded and disoriented Palestinian boy of 16, surrounded by 20 Israeli soldiers who had arrested him, drew international outrage. The boy, Fawzi al-Junaidi, has been charged with throwing stones.

Fawzi al-Junaidi, 16, has been accused of throwing stones. Photo by Wisam Hashlamoun/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images.

Meantime in the U.S., Congresswoman Betty McCollum and 20 others have introduced legislation to cut off U.S. funds when Israel spends them detaining children, the Promoting Human Rights by Ending Israeli Military Detention of Palestinian Children Act. This week, McCollum writes in the Nation:

Children as young as 12 years old are taken from their beds at night by Israeli soldiers and police. They are bound, blindfolded, and taken to detention centers. Under Israeli military law they are denied access to lawyers during interrogation, and even the youngest children are regularly denied access to their parents during interrogations. This happens to around 500 to 700 Palestinian children every year.

Just such a thing happened three days ago to the family of a leading Hebron anti-occupation activist, Badia Dwaik.

Two of Dwaik’s brothers, Wadea and Monqaz, were on their way to the hospital on December 7 to get medication for Wadea, when occupation forces stopped them. These soldiers were in the H1 area of Hebron, the area which is supposed to be under Palestinian control according to the Hebron protocol. The Dwaik brothers explained that Wadea needed medication, but the soldiers instructed them to go back home. An argument ensued, and the soldiers attacked the two men, Badia Dwaik reports, and the younger brother, Monqaz, managed to run away, but the soldiers arrested Wadea.

Wadea Dwaik, being arrested when trying to get medication, in occupied Hebron.
Wadea Dwaik’s arrest when trying to get medication, in Hebron December 7.

A crowd of 20 Palestinians gathered to protest the arrest. It included Badia Dwaik’s 12-year-old son Abdullah. Before long the soldiers turned to Abdullah. Badia Dwaik said they beat his son and then detained him for four hours.

This is the second time that Abdullah has been detained in the last two months.

Badia Dwaik is the leader of Human Rights Defenders and lately did a tour of Europe. The group is today sponsoring a “capturing occupation camera project” to document abuses by occupying soldiers. Dwaik’s courage is evident in this encounter with an Israeli soldier, when a settler boy on a horse tried to have him run out of town.

Update. Another son of an activist is targeted, and arrested, this time the son of Iyad Burnat, the leader of resistance in Bil’in. Al-Awda New York reports:

Abdul-Khalik Burnat, 17 years old, the son of Palestinian activist Iyad Burnat, an active leader of the Nonviolent Resistance Movement in the Palestinian village of Bil’in, was kidnapped, beaten and detained on the night of December 10, 2017 while getting pizza along with his friends Hamzah Al-Khatib and Malik Rahdi.

Their whereabouts were unknown until Abdul-Khalik’s mother and father recently learned that he and his friends are in Ofer Prison near the city of Ramallah.

Iyad Burnat and his son, Abdul-Khalik before son’s arrest.

Thanks to Ofer Neiman.

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With all due respect, I ask you to inform me where exactly do I find evidence that “The world is beginning to pay attention to Israeli crimes against children”?. I read a few articles about the latest criminal activity by Israel, but not so much in Western MSM.

Israel’s evil crimes against Palestinians (including children) are infamous, but not recognized as such by those that are complicit and willing enablers. These crimes are almost 99% ignored by “the world”.

Please share where it was that you found some optimsm… it’s sorely needed.

Good to see the IDF are living up to their reputation as Heroic (but also Most Moral) Defenders of Civilisation against the Barbarous Islamic Hordes who threaten to Overwhelm us at any minute. (A twelve year old boy counts as a horde, doesn’t he?)

And so brave! I can only see eight soldiers in the first picture.

So children are routinely abducted, beaten, and detained without due process? What do you, any of you think are the chances that pressure from the United States might convince the Israelis to stop committing war crimes and human rights violations with such impunity?

> JosephA

What do you, any of you think are the chances that pressure from the United States might convince the Israelis to stop committing war crimes and human rights violations ?

More to the point, what do you think are the chances of there
being any pressure from the United States on Israel
to change its criminal ways ?

The answer is –

NONE, NEVER, ZERO pressure on Israel
as long as the lovers of Zionism and Israel are allowed to pay for and own US politicians at all levels of of government.

Americans should feel ashamed that their tax dollars, their congresspeople, and their country, are all supporting these filthy crimes, by giving them aid, weapons, and vetoing UN resolutions, that condemn these crimes. We are complicit in all Israel’s crimes. Despite the brave efforts of Betty McCollum and others, there is no doubt we will continue to send this apartheid state aid, so that the occupation and illegal settlements, will continue. It is sad to see young scared little kids treated like criminals, and the disparity between the treatment of vicious settlers, even called terrorists by the US State Department, and these kids, is so obvious, and unfair.

When people have been living under a brutal occupation, and children have lived all their lives with guns pointed at them, throwing stones is the only way to show resistance, and anger.
Are Israelis not so bright to fathom that out, or don’t they care? Most probably both.