Murder For Sport - The Israel Army In Palestine
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Ellis Sharp
29/06/2006
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The plight of Palestinian children arrested by the Israeli army has long been one of the neglected aspects of Israeli occupation, involving some 600 minors a year since the outbreak of the second Intifada in September 2000. Nearly all are held without access to legal support during questioning, often compelled to sign confessions in Hebrew, a language they don't understand, while subjected to intimidation and mistreatment as a matter of routine course.
It starts with the arrest itself, which can take place during night-time incursions or mass arrest campaigns, or alternatively at the military checkpoints which have played such a part in curtailing the economic and social life of the West Bank.
After a night or two behind bars, some minors are released without charge, while the unfortunate ones, around 300 a year, start their passage through the Israeli military justice system which stands as the rule of law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
This system allows no special provisions for minors, despite the fact that Israel is a signatory of numerous international treaties which demand due consideration for age in the legal process, not least of which is the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Those considerations are, by contrast, applied to Israeli minors, including those living cheek by jowl with the Palestinians in illegal West Bank settlements.
Life doesn't improve on the inside, with Palestinian children routinely reporting torture or mistreatment.
The brutalisation of Palestinian children is not news; 600 kidnappings a year is not a crisis. Contrast the absolute silence about the treatment of those children with that of the wall-to-wall coverage of the captured Israeli. The corporal's youth is repeatedly stressed by reporters. We know his name. A variety of photographs of him (many in civilian dress) are repeatedly shown on TV. He is humanised. We hear from his father. We hear from a family friend. On breakfast TV the anchorwoman looks concerned as she plaintively refers to "this young man". He is constructed as a victim. He is not represented as a member of an army notorious for its human rights abuses but as the victim of a "kidnap". He is never identified as what he was - a tank gunner.
And while enormous emphasis is put on the soldier's comparative youth, there is another striking fact never mentioned by news reporters. Almost half the population of Gaza is under 15 years old. Many of them are already traumatised by past Israeli brutalities. Earlier this month John Pilger described how:
"Dr Khalid Dahlan, a psychiatrist who heads a children's community health project, told me, "The statistic I personally find unbearable is that 99.4 per cent of the children we studied suffer trauma . . . 99.2 per cent had their homes bombarded; 97.5 per cent were exposed to tear gas; 96.6 per cent witnessed shooting; a third saw family members or neighbours injured or killed."
So, Israel's tanks "roll in", along with armoured bulldozers. Jets and helicopter gunships fill the skies. Yesterday's ITN lunchtime news described how at least nine missiles had destroyed Gaza's only power station, destroying the region's electricity supply. There was no military purpose to this. It was in fact a war crime. Electricity to most of Gaza has been cut, including hospitals and clinics. The main coastal road connecting north and south Gaza has been severed. Today we learn (but only on Channel 4 news) that oil supplies to Gaza have been cut. Fuel, water, electricity are now no longer available, or are fast running out, for an estimated 80 per cent of the population.
These are punitive crimes against a civilian population, but you will never hear the words "war crime" or "collective punishment" frame the telling of this news story.
Nor has a single TV or radio journalist that I've heard ever mentioned one of the most sadistic weapons in the Israeli state's vast armoury - using jets to create sonic booms all through the night, to make the entire population of Gaza unable to sleep at night.
Today, the Israeli army "rounded up 64 Palestinian ministers and MPs" (BBC news). The language of the Israeli PR machine is cravenly imitated by BBC and ITN; only Jon Snow asserts that they were "kidnapped".
Sixty four elected representatives seized and unlawfully imprisoned! Just imagine the hysteria if a single Labour MP, or a member of Congress, or a member of the Knesset - let alone 64 - was abducted by an Islamic group. Bush and Blair would rush to the microphone to denounce this savage attack on democracy. The cruise missile left would rage about Islamo-fascism and its contempt for democracy and western values. But where elected Hamas representatives are concerned there is total silence from the United Nations, Britain, the USA, France, and Germany - the same powers which have sponsored and indulged 58 years of Israel's existence.
And note the language - "rounded up", as you might cattle or stray dogs. Palestinians are indeed the Untermenschen of our age.
Yes, "the battle lines are clearly drawn". On one side are Palestinian civilians and some poorly armed resistance fighters, and on the other is an army of tanks, bulldozers, helicopter gunships and the most advanced weaponry in the world - an army whose previous actions in Gaza were witnessed by the US journalist Chris Hedges, who in an interview in 2001 described his revulsion at the sadistic savagery of Israeli soldiers:
"Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered- death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo - but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport."
Well it's not as if we don't know what to expect in the next few days. BBC TV news reporter Katya Adler - she's new and she'll go far - spoke of Palestinian civilians fearful of being "caught in the crossfire". (BBC Lunchtime News, June 28). As Robert Fisk has pointed out, that's a favourite rhetorical device of the Israeli PR machine. And what it means is what Chris Hedges described:
"indiscriminate killing of men, women and children; the systematic destruction of property; the cutting off of water supply; and the prevention of travel even for ambulances. It is a full-scale war against the entire population."
A full-scale war against an entire population. You'll never find anyone in "the broad centre" of the British mass media ever using such disagreeable expressions.
Except, perhaps, when things get personal. The tone of Julian Manyon's reportage changed dramatically on today's lunchtime ITN broadcast. He described how he and a film crew were filming from the roof of a Palestinian house in Gaza near the northern border with Israel when Israeli gunners opened fire with a barrage of shells, perhaps as many as 50, lasting for two hours. Some of the shells landed "so close to the house that in fact bits of shrapnel flew up into the air and landed right at our feet, forcing us to beat a retreat down the stairwell of the home."
Manyon seemed shaken by his experience. "You can imagine that the local people are terrorised by this," he commented.
Palestinians terrorised by the Israeli army.
Careful, Julian. Too much of that sort of thing and you'll be transferred to reporting on jumble sales in Swansea.
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