The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem published video today of a chilling incident in Hebron in which Israeli soldiers raided an extended Palestinian family at about 8 PM on September 3 and forced more than a dozen small children, some of whom were sleeping in rooms in a “residential building,” to line up for a photograph.
“Because they’re throwing stones,” an Israeli soldier says. “Come on, stand still for a moment… I want to take a picture.”
The soldier proceeded to line up 15 or 16 children, many of them apparently under 10, and to tell them to say Cheese, so he could get a good shot.
Incidents like this one are why Rep. Betty McCollum has repeatedly introduced legislation to cut off American military aid that is used for the violation of Palestinian children’s rights, including their “ill-treatment… in Israeli military detention.”
McCollum’s legislation has gotten 30 co-sponsors and has in years past died with that level of support, and lacking the backing of liberal Zionist groups such as J Street. Today J Street tweeted the B’Tselem video and its political director says it shows a “violation of international law.”
The B’Tselem video has frequent references to the children’s fears.
“Rawan, don’t be scared, it’s just routine,” a woman says.
While the B’Tselem videographer says to the soldier, “They are kids. Do you like it when soldiers come and take a picture of your kids? They were asleep and you came and scared them.”
B’Tselem says the soldiers detained men in the house in an effort to prevent the incident being documented.
At the same time, some soldiers went up to the building’s rooftop and detained several young men, aged 15 to 25, preventing the family members from documenting the incident. After photographing the children, the soldiers left the building, leaving behind troubled parents and terrified children.
B’Tselem says that the photograph is likely about the new facial recognition software; and that all Palestinians have their rights violated on little pretext.
This footage illustrates how the routine of Palestinian subjects living under the occupation is disturbed arbitrarily and how easily soldiers violate their rights. It seems that for the military, all Palestinians, including school-age children, are potential offenders. At any time, it is permissible to wake them up at night, enter their homes and subject them to a lineup. Given this background, one should read the latest publications on the database set up by the military exclusively in the West Bank through facial recognition technology.
B’Tselem issued a report early this year saying that Israel leads an “apartheid… regime of Jewish supremacy from the river to the sea.”
I’d like to submit this in the video category – Eran Paz, an Israeli soldier, made a documentary called “And I Was There”: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13038014/
A random trance party in a living room is fairly common when it comes to young people. But what happens when the young people are Israeli soldiers, when the living room is owned by a Palestinian family that is locked up in one on the rooms of the house? 18 years after serving in the army, Eran Paz finds a box of videotapes with rare footage of himself and his squad mates, invading Palestinian homes in the occupied territories. Now Eran sets out on a journey in the footsteps of the people, the memories and the places that inundate him and give him no peace.
Here’s the two minute trailer, worth watching –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx9Faj-YTbs&t=40s
Traumatizing the next generation in advance. Psychological warfare. Cruel.
Beyond words!! Fascism in action!! Heavily armed Zionist illegal occupation soldiers lining up innocent Palestinian CHILDREN in order to photograph them!! If Jewish victims of the Holocaust could some how rise from their graves I have no doubt they would promptly and forthrightly condemn these monsters and their leaders.