It was when Save the Children Fund’s founder, Eglantyne Jebb, was shouted down by hecklers at SCF’s inaugural meeting in 1919 as she tried to raise money for the starving children of Austria and Germany, that George Bernard Shaw stepped onto the podium and declared, ‘I have no enemies under the age of seven.’ His words silenced the crowd and as we know, SCF became one of Britain’s most illustrious NGOs. It has always been reticent, like other NGOs and Western governments, to call Israel’s poor human rights record to account, for the obvious reason of the unequalled historic suffering of the Jewish people.
But it can remain silent no longer. Palestinian children live in constant fear, are liable to violent arrest and incarceration, most hauled from their beds in the middle of the night by heavily armed soldiers. Almost half such arrests, according to this SCF report, involved excessive violence against both children and to property.
In a case I know of personally, 16-year-old Shadi, whose parents run East Jerusalem’s classical music conservatoire, was dragged from his bed in the middle of the night last October. As his grandmother told me, “They beat him until he was bleeding all over the room and along the path on the way out of the house dragging him barefoot and blindfolded not allowing the parents to see where the blood was coming from.” Shadi’s ill treatment made it into Haaretz newspaper. He was illegally taken out of the Occupied Territory to the notorious Russian Compound, then to a remote prison in Northern Israel. After forty one days of beatings and questioning about his alleged role in a stone-throwing incident, he was released to house arrest. He still awaits trial.
In such cases the rest of the family, regardless of age, are also traumatised. Fear and anxiety are rife among all Palestine’s children. Bed-wetting is epidemic. Once in prison, children may suffer physical abuse and mental isolation or torment. We should be outraged. Children, like Shadi, are often illegally taken across the border into Israel where parents or lawyers have great difficulty visiting them.
Before SCF (or I) are accused of anti-Semitism, let us be clear that there is nothing particularly Israeli or Jewish in what is going on. Rather, it is what all societies do to unwanted minorities when they throw off the inconvenient restraints of international law. It is precisely why the law exists, to restrain us from our dark instincts. Furthermore, societies that know they have impunity tend to intensify their level of persecution of unwanted people. The nightmare will only stop when states friendly to Israel warn it that unless it comes into compliance with the requirements of the law, there will be consequences.
* David joined the Party in 2019. He worked for UNRWA in the 1970s, was an Oxfam relief worker during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon 1982; is the author of Palestine and Israel: The Uprising and Beyond (IBTauris & University of California Press, 1989) and A Modern History of the Kurds (IBTauris, 4th edn, 2022).
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23 Comments
I was in Palestine between 2004 and 2017 and raised these issues with both my local and national representatives. Every attempt to make it front-page news failed; meanwhile the ill-treatment continued.
I’m surprised that your article didn’t refer to the sexual abuse suffered by these victims. Save the Children did; I most certainly did at the behest of a lawyer dealing with six youngsters.. But, apparently, it is too sensitive an issue to be mentioned.
The brutal and illegal detention and torture of children in the West Bank accused of stone-throwing is not news and has been going on for years, but David is right to remind us about it with his article. The Save the Children report makes chilling reading, and prompts two questions – why has international outrage at such flagrant violations of the human rights of children not stopped Israel in its tracks, and what purpose does it serve for Israel?
The first is unanswerable, but Israel gets two benefits from the night-time raids. They breed hatred of Israel by Palestinians, and they dehumanise the IDF soldiers who carry it out. Israel talks about having “no partner for peace” but what it really needs is a ‘partner for war’. Violent acts of resistance by Palestinians, characterised by Israeli politicians as terrorism, serve as a smokescreen for Israel’s accelerating colonisation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
It is a sad irony of history that Israel appears to have lurched into neo-fascism.
Stephen Williams, as you say, the ‘fourth estate’ isn’t doing its bit (although Channel Four News is producing good coverage of Palestine these days) https://www.channel4.com/news/israels-hardline-government-approving-more-construction-in-west-bank-settlements, but the British government remains on far too friendly terms with Netanyahu and his ultra-right colleagues in the Knesset.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverley may be more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than his predecessors, but if so, he has yet to really assert himself. The mini-war between the Foreign Office and Michael Gove over his ill-fated ‘BDS Bill’ (which would have outlawed moral or ethical behaviour by universities or councils, but now seems likely to be ditched), may be a small sign that the people we elected to govern might actually begin to represent our wishes on this issue. Let’s hope they do, and let’s keep up the pressure on our MPs to do so.
A shocking article and report that will sadly surprise none of us who care about the plight of Palestinians. We in the Lords have been fighting the governments appalling Illegal Migration Bill & on plans for unaccompanied refugee children . Compare this to how Israel is treating Palestinian children. It’s criminal & disgusting. It’s also astonishing how anyone who claims to be a supporter of human rights & social and democrat values, & the rights of children can stay silent and not condemn these heinous crimes against children. Liberal Democrat’s must speak out.
Andy refers to two benefits to Israel from the night time raids on families in the occupied territories. There’s a third one, explained to me by Military Court Watch on a trip to the region last year: The young people arrested in such horrible circumstances are interrogated by Israeli military police and forced to give names of other young Palestinians who may or may not have carried out a minor offence. This in turn sets families apart from one another and starts to break down the cohesiveness of Palestinian village communities through fear of, and lack of trust in their families and neighbours.
On the same trip I met a family whose 18 year old son had been shot by IDF; he’d been taken to the hospital however the family were not told where he was, his condition or even if he was alive. On reporting this to an NGO we were told that this happens frequently.
David is absolutely right to distance criticism of the acts of the Israeli government from anti-semitism; and to highlight that Israel’s friends need to step up now and warn of real actionable consequences of its illegal and inhumane behaviour. After 75 years of Nakba, Israel needs to stop its expansionist aims, accept the land that was granted, the borders that were agreed and recognise the legitimacy of Palestine. That would be a good start to a peace process.
As Clare Cape has said, the detention of children has many unpleasant aspects. A boy who refuses to ‘confess’ under interrogation, knows that if he’s released without charge, neighbours will suspect he’s being rewarded for informing on someone, whether or not he has actually done so. He may feel three months imprisonment for a crime he didn’t commit would be preferable. This would be a difficult bind for an adult to navigate, let alone a child in his early teens who has been kept in solitary confinement for days or weeks, and harshly interrogated for many hours.
In this context it is good to read today in the Israeli liberal newspaper Ha’aretz that the EU Parliament has voted by a large majority to support the independence of the International Criminal Court and its investigation into alleged Israeli War Crimes. https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/2023-07-13/ty-article/.premium/eu-parliament-supports-iccs-investigation-into-israels-war-crimes-in-west-bank/00000189-4ff4-d2fd-abdd-cff637b70000
I congratulate David McDowell on a topical and very important article drawing attention to the kind of abuses that should be abhorrent to all Lib Dems. It is a sad reflection on the state of public discourse in this country that I also have to describe it as courageous, when courage should not be required for speaking the truth to those who would prefer to ignore it. In this case, on the other hand, I am sure it was essential.
I only have one comment to make. In his final paragraph he says that his article is about the way minorities are treated. However, there are approximately equal numbers of people who identify as Israeli Jews and Palestinians between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, if not more slightly more Palestinians. It is thus not about minorities. Unless Jewish children would be treated by the IDF in the same way as Palestinian children, we have to call a spade a spade and acknowledge that this is apartheid.
John McHugo’s contribution reminds us that Israel’s current leadership have their eyes set on achieving dominion over a land stretching “from the river to the sea”, but seem unaware that their shameful treatment of Palestinians would make a future enlarged Israel a place where achieving peace would be harder than ever.
Fulfilling that ancient prediction has no place in the modern world, and its advocates seem to have thought no further than the day they acquired the Palestinian land. The resulting Greater Israel would be a demographic nightmare for its rulers, with Jews as the minority. The Palestinian majority would suffer from ongoing apartheid, and would also have memories of decades of injustice.
Any true friend of Israel would be urging them to step back from the brink. As David McDowall has put it to me elsewhere, only “a few Israelis recognise the acute moral danger their society runs” (from their treatment of the Palestinians). There need to be more who realise what damage Israel’s policies are doing to the hopes of its own citizens, and David’s article is shocking, but it might help those who blindly support Israel to see that.
John McHugo is, of course, absolutely right that Palestinians are now probably slightly more numerous than Jewish Israelis. But ‘minority’ is not simply about numbers but also about power. In that respect Palestinians remain very clearly a minority. The news in John Kelly’s comment regarding the ICC is particularly welcome. Only application of the law has any chance of rescuing the Palestinians from their permanently unfree and oppressed predicament. Shamefully, the UK is nowhere to be seen when it comes to standing up for the victims of its own historic policies.
Police misbehaviour is not unique to Israel, from George Floyd and Wayne Couzens at the most extreme, but we do not delegitimise the entire national police force because of their actions or say they shouldn’t do dawn raids on criminals or investigate online radicalization of youth of any background or radical seduction (e.g., far right, Islamist).
The struggle Palestinian children face also partially down to a chronic lack of Palestinian leadership, with an 87-year-old president elected to a four-year term in 2005. Ultimately efforts in the UK should be to promote peace and coexistence.
The author of this piece worked for UNWRA, a body which took years to admit that its schools in were using textbooks which contained unambiguous antisemitism and were housing rockets (https://www.timesofisrael.com/rockets-found-in-unrwa-school-for-third-time/) in Gaza used to target civilians (including children in playgrounds in towns like Sderot).
In terms of child trauma, according this report (https://www.clm-israel.org/2022/growing-number-of-children-with-post-trauma-syndrome-in-sderot-warn-experts/) , 40% of children in Sderot (in Israel) suffer from PTSD/anxiety. Mentioning this would give some journalistic balance but there is no recognition in this article about Israeli victims or Israeli children.
“…nothing particularly Israeli or Jewish…” is a very peculiar phrase. Israel is 75% Jewish with fully emancipated Druze, Christian and Muslim citizens. If we are taking about a state’s actions what is the significance of using the word Jewish. What does the writer think it means to be “particularly Jewish”?
Gavin Stollar
Honorary Chairman, Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel
http://www.ldfi.org.uk
I’m astonished the piece by @GavinStollar referring to the murder of George Floyd and the murder of Sarah Everard by Wayne Couzens trivialised as ‘police misbehaviour’ and is published here as a serious argument. The 4 police officers responsible for George Floyd’s murder, which caused international outrage, have been given long prison sentences; Wayne Couzens’ horrific abduction & murder of Sarah Everard rather than ‘police misbehaviour’ has led to public outrage and serious national debate about the Metropolitan Police resulting in the Casey Review report which was commissioned by The Metropolitan Police into its conduct. The review by Baroness Louise Casey was published on 21 March 2023 and the findings are, shocking. It states that the force is “institutionally racist, homophobic, and misogynistic”, and that the largest force in Britain needs a “complete overhaul” Where are similar repercussions for Israeli police and the IDF who shoot children?
Gavin, I think the assessment of whether any military or police force contain bad apples, is the measure by which they are charged, punished, and sacked. Statistics more often suggest that those so-called bad apples are given impunity and sometimes encouraged in their work.
So, you also believe that Palestinian children suffer, not because of the occupation, the oppression, the dispossession etc, but because of poor Palestinian leadership! Might you believe an article from Haaretz: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-05-28/ty-article/.premium/imagine-being-one-of-the-2-000-palestinian-children-israel-detains-every-year/00000188-4e24-dde3-abf9-fe2dde2c0000. ‘Every year, Israeli security forces detain about 1,000 Palestinian children from the West Bank and another 1,000 from East Jerusalem. The children are taken from the street, their schools and even their beds. The methods used in these detentions are extremely damaging to children and youths, both physically and mentally. In fact, they’re prohibited under both Israeli law and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Israel has signed……..’ And so it goes on. Or is this newspaper too biased for you?
Your ‘whataboutism’ is also interesting. Regardless of the truth or exaggeration of the points you make, the attempt to equate the military occupying power that denies Palestinians even the most basic human rights to even water and education in many well documented cases, can hardly be comparable to the self-inflicted suffering of the occupier.
@Gavin, perhaps you ought to read Amnesty’s 2022 report https://www.amnesty.org.uk/files/2022-01/Israel%27s%20Apartheid%20Against%20Palestinians%20Report%20-%20Amnesty%27s%202022%20report.pdf?VersionId=s0fIB_wt.dMwGiAksB8nnlG_irQIqf67
On page 247 it says “Palestinian children are among those subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, including to obtain ‘confessions’”, and goes on to say “it is a case of a plain and clear policy followed by the various authorities: the police who carry out the arrests; the IPS (Israel Prison Service) which keeps the boys incarcerated in harsh conditions; and finally, the courts.”
According to UNICEF, ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system is “widespread, systematic, and institutionalized throughout the process, from the moment of arrest until the child’s prosecution and eventual conviction and sentencing”.
The ‘bad apple excuse’ won’t wash, and trying to pass off systematic, state-sanctioned torture as “Police misbehaviour” shows a lack of compassion which should have no place in the Liberal Democrat Party.
@Gavin Stollar, you say “mentioning this would give some journalistic balance”, but the LDV isn’t the BBC. David McDowall is a highly respected author and long-time observer of the Middle East, and his article was about the children who are seized and subjected to military law in the West Bank. Other LDV articles cover other subjects.
I’m sure they would publish an article from you about how childhood trauma is one of the awful consequences of the conflict over whether Palestine belongs to the Palestinians, or to Israel.
What a tease of Gavin’s, to invert my remark about Israeli state violence to demand my definition of Jewishness! I suggest he reads Harry Freedman’s excellent Britain’s Jews (Bloomsbury, 2022).
His claim that Israel’s Druzes, Muslims and Christians are fully emancipated betrays the truth that they are second class citizens, as Israel’s Nation State Law (2018) formalises: “the realization of the right to national self-determination in Israel is unique to the Jewish people,” (and which triggered protests among the 25 per cent non-Jewish communities), not to mention discriminatory laws, the most obvious of which is the Law of Return, operative for Jews but from which indigenous Palestinians rendered refugee in 1948 are excluded, on account of their non-Jewish identity.
As for Sderot (pop. 31,000), Israel could end the trauma of its children by ending its act of collective punishment, lifting its blockade of Gaza (since 2007) and permitting its two million plus inhabitants their basic rights enshrined in international law.
During Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in summer 1982, I was working in Sidon. An Israeli major came to the door. He spoke fluent English. “We have brought with us a Swiss woman who wishes to help the terrorist children in the kindergarten”, he said, referring to the Kanafani kindergarten in Ein el-Hilweh camp. He was clearly educated but equally clearly did not share Shaw’s view, ‘I have no enemies under the age of seven.’
@Gavin Stollar, and anyone else interested, may I suggest that next time you visit the West Bank you take the opportunity to meet with Military Court Watch who will explain in stark detail the impact on young Palestinians, their families and communities from the ongoing, illegal and systematic cruelty inflicted by IDF?
I’m sure that would remove any remaining belief that they are just a “few bad apples”. Thank you.
In responding to David McDowall’s article in Lib Dem Voice I need to declare that I am Jewish and President of Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel. David wrote a worrying piece. It is of course abhorrent to Liberal Democrats to mistreat children.
It is worth noting that Israel has a free press such as Ha’aretz that is free to criticise the Government and the police – and does.
I do not believe that the Israeli police arrest without reasons, such as rock throwing, planting/throwing explosives. However brutality should not be acceptable.
There are many reports of Israelis killed or maimed by Palestinian extremists.
There are many reports of rockets fired from Gaza and attack tunnels under the border.
Sadly the aim is to remove Israel from the map.
Our aim must be to support the State of Israel and the creation of an economically and politically viable State of Palestine.
Monroe Palmer
@Monroe Palmer, I welcome your support for the creation of a state of Palestine. Sadly, as you know, the current Israeli government wants the exact opposite, and is accelerating the colonisation of the West Bank by “authorising” yet more settlements (Israel has no right to override international law in the occupied territories). Many of the settlers engage in violent attacks on the indigenous population, designed to ethnically cleanse Palestine for Israel.
I know you are a friend of Israel, but many of us believe we are also friends when we warn Israel of the dangerous road it is treading. Colonisation of another country by getting rid of the rightful owners, or subjugating those that remain, has long been recognised as a crime throughout the western world. You must deplore, as I do, the recent lurch to the right in the Knesset, and the increasing violence sanctioned by politicians like Ben G’vir.
This is a time when we should all be using our voices to halt the devastation being wrought on the peoples of both countries.
Monroe Palmer suggests that Palestinians and those who support them aim to wipe Israel from the map. That is as much an antiPalestinianist trope as many statements that he might object to himself. What we and most others want is equal rights, equal self-autonomy, land ownership, freedom of movement and religion and the application of international law to all. The simple fact is that Israel is occupying and stealing Palestinian land and resources, dispossessing Palestinians living in occupied territory, and many would say practicing Apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Under international law Palestinians have the right of resistance. It seems to many that it is Israel that is trying to wipe Palestine off the map rather than the other way round. The statistics are enough to prove that the abusive treatment of Palestinian children is way beyond anything proportionate or reasonable and their most basic rights to water, education, shelter, and security are frequently flouted by Israeli forces and illegal settlers, with impunity.
@Monroe – In May 2020 Eyad Al Hallaq was shot & killed by Israeli police in East Jerusalem. He was an unarmed autistic man who posed no threat. The officer who killed him was acquitted.
Listen to the testimony of his carer Warda Abu Hadid.
https://twitter.com/daniellebett/status/1682423278743310336?s=46&t=xByHe97J1e8_vbsqFpXBYA
Israel’s occupation of the West bank and illegal settlements there are a key element in destabilising the International rules based order. The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has adopted a number of resolutions stating that Israel’s strategic relationship with the United States, a superpower and permanent member of the Security Council with veto power, encourages the former to pursue aggressive and expansionist policies and practices in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
Israel has no more right to occupy Palestinian territory than Russia has to occupy Ukrainian territory. Israel has every right to defend its territory within its internationally recognised borders from external attack or Palestinian militant activity within its borders. It has no right to undertake punitive expeditions in the West bank or East Jerusalem.
Israel has been condemned by the UNHRC for human rights violations more than all other UN members combined. The US exercise of its veto to block justified UN endorsed sanctions against Israel is a hypocrisy that undermines respect for human rights and the International rules based order everywhere.