Guardian Report Misses the Real Child Abuse
January 24, 2012 12:27 by Simon Plosker
NBC News reports:
The images grow no less shocking with time — a gaping wound on a tiny skull, the hair matted with blood; a gunshot that pierced the skin of a small torso and went straight toward the kidney; and finally, the broken neck and severed penis of a 13-year-old boy, his mangled body contorted on a plastic sheet.
This isn’t, however, a story from Israel but the shocking example of what is happening to Syrian children being tortured and murdered by the Assad regime.
Meanwhile, in Israel, The Guardian runs a special report on the alleged mistreatment of Palestinian children detained by the Israeli military. With the report is an 11 minute video which includes footage of an interrogation. A Palestinian child cries, not as a result of torture but because he is going to miss some school exams.
By opening this critique with the emotive and disturbing description of a dead child, we could be accused of being deliberately manipulative. Just like The Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood who also set the scene in a similar fashion:
The room is barely wider than the thin, dirty mattress that covers the floor. Behind a low concrete wall is a squat toilet, the stench from which has no escape in the windowless room. The rough concrete walls deter idle leaning; the constant overhead light inhibits sleep. The delivery of food through a low slit in the door is the only way of marking time, dividing day from night.
This is Cell 36, deep within Al Jalame prison in northern Israel. It is one of a handful of cells where Palestinian children are locked in solitary confinement for days or even weeks. One 16-year-old claimed that he had been kept in Cell 36 for 65 days.
It is an ugly scene for an equally ugly story that paints Israel as a serial abuser of Palestinian children. The real child abuse in reality, however, is that caused by Palestinian society and media that glorifies terrorists, suicide bombers and “martyrs”, encouraging Palestinian youth to follow the same path.
A vulnerable child is easy pickings for recruitment by terrorist organizations. In recent years the most predominant activities characterizing involvement of minors were involvement in suicide bomb attacks, Molotov cocktail throwing, stone throwing and stabbing. Minors have also been involved in grenade throwing, use of explosives, shooting, car bombs, transfer of weapons, kidnapping, rocket launching, as well as assault and murder.
See here for more on Children Dying to Kill.
And while it suits Palestinian propaganda to promote the image of children armed with stones facing Israeli armor, the reality is that stones can kill. As recently as September 2011, Asher Palmer and his infant son Yonatan were killed after the vehicle he was driving overturned as a result of Palestinian rock throwing.
The Israeli response: Unpublished by The Guardian
There are often complaints that Israel does not react in a timely manner to address allegations such as those made by The Guardian. While Israeli Government spokesman Mark Regev does appear in The Guardian’s video along with a token paragraph in the main article, most of the Israeli Security Agency’s (ISA) response went unpublished as Harriet Sherwood picked out only a few quotes.
Here, for the record, we are including the response from the ISA that was sent to The Guardian before its article was published. In it, the ISA states:
- The claims that Palestinian minors were subject to interrogation techniques that include beatings, prolonged periods in handcuffs, threats, kicks, verbal abuse, humiliation, isolation and prevention of sleep are utterly baseless.
- Those detained for ISA questioning receive the full rights for which they are eligible, in accordance with international treaties of which the State of Israel is a signatory and according to Israeli law, including the right to legal counsel and visits by the Red Cross.
Click here for the full ISA response.
Leon
4:43 am
Feb 21, 2012
Some commentators seem to think that being “the good guy” means committing suicide.
Like the Arab despatchers of homicide bombers, these commentators advocate their “remedy” to Israel, but would not dream of using it themselves.
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Jan Cosgrove
5:00 am
Feb 21, 2012
Are you saying there were no Arabs living in that area before 1922? The UN superceded the LoN and it is now where such matters are determined. The UN says Israel has a right to exist, it exists within defined borders, Israel is part of the UN, and in becoming a member it recognised that territorial acquisition by force is not lawful any more, and also that people have a right to self-determination. Don’t just claim that for yourselves. If Israel wants more territory, it has to negotiate. The same applies to the Arab nations. In fact, as things stand, neither party has a case for more territories and Israel has no case to hold onto the occupied territories permanently. Negotiations may require land swap. The Jewish people sought and got their nation, it is recognised internationally. It had to be so, based on the call of justice. But you cannot then deny the Palestinian people their desire and right in this. Neither has to right to deny the other. Arab nations illegally occupying territory is not the same as the Arabs who were living there. Your own Israeli Arabs prove the point. If you claim illegal occupation then they may well point back to your unilateral declaration of independence as illegal. The world doesn’t agree with them. And it doesn’t agree that the Palestinians should be denied their nation state. The Palestinian Authority has had to accept Israel’s right to exist, Egypt has done so.
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Leon
9:05 am
Feb 21, 2012
The UN, upon its establishment, declared that all the determinations of its predecssor, The League of Nations, remained valid.
Jews have lived in The Land of Israel uninterruptedly since about the second millennium BCE.
They lived there under Ottoman rule; they lived there during World War One.
During and immediately after that war stakeholders in the post-war territorial settlements staked their claims. The international community endorsed the Jewish claim ( just as it endorsed the Czech, Polish etc claims.) This was done because of the recognition that :
1. The only nation for which The Land has ever been a nation-state is the Jewish nation, and
2. Jews lived there and they had a right to national self-determination, and any Jew living in exile had the right to join them.
The Arab leadership initially supported Zionism, but then degenerated into racist chauvinism.
The Arabs were awarded 99.9 % of the territory of the Middle East, but greed and anti- Jewish mentality turned them against legitimate Jewish aspirations.
Opposition to Zionism has its roots in one or more of the following mindsets:
1. the view that Jews must always remain a vulnerable minority in other people’s nation-states.
2. the view that Islam mandates Jewish inferiority.
3 the view that Jewish values, morals and ethics are inconsistent with those of ideologies such as Christianity, communism, socialism etc
4. realpolitik, whose adherents believe that expediency mandates opposition to legitimate Jewish rights and that lies, distortions, libels, discrimination and other base tactics are legitimate weapons against the Jewish nation.
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Jan Cosgrove
2:40 pm
Feb 21, 2012
Yes, but those LoN determinations have been superceded by later UN determinations. If that were not so, the British would still be expected to carry out their LoN Mandate. Namibia was a LoN mandate, this was superceded by the UN recognition of Namibia. The other inhabitants ofn the West Bank etc also have lived there for a very long period. This claim extending back to your stated period has no more or less legitimacy than, say, the Celts in Britain claiming ownership of the whole of these Islands. No one disputes they have a claim to part of the land.
The antics of Arab states is not the main issue, the right to self-determination of the people living in the Occupied Territories is. Given your stance I cannot see how you morally can deny that claim, to continue to do so risks further generations of bloodshed. I fail to see how that is consistent with Judaism.
If anti-semites trade on supposed Christian, Islamic and Socialist beliefs, they deny that all of these have their roots in the basis of justice and truth that lies at the heart of Judaism. Islam recognises the Jews as the people of the Book, so does Christianity. Also, given that the Palestinians are also a semitic people, I can assure you I have have heard racist, anti-semitic Jews in my time. No prettier than their anti-Jewish nazi colleagues.
What if your claim to all these lands were achieved, mainly by force (so not permitted by the UN Charter). What would happen to the Palestinians? Would they become Israelis? Or expelled if they did not? No one has yet answered me on this in various exchanges on the net.
You cannot label me anti-semitic or as denying the right of Israel to exist as a nation, and as a homeland for the Jewish people as an ethnic grouping. When I see nazis locally I speak against them, I always wish for the sudden appearance of a coachload of the League of Jewish Ex-Servicemen. But if people like me also say the Palestinians deserve their place in the sun, surely you are not surprised. They will continue to flock to leaders such as they have whilst they see no hope. You are prepared to fight for your homeland – at least extend that understanding to them. They have nowhere to go.
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Leon
9:58 pm
Feb 21, 2012
Zionism is the best thing that’s happened to the Arabs in the last 900 years.
The Zionist enterprise in The Land attracted Arab illegal immigrants in large numbers from all over the Middle East as far away as Sudan.
The Zionists created work and business opportunities for all; the Zionist enterprise taught the ordinary folk democracy, equal rights for women, secular education and modernism.Many of the Arab interlopers, however, not content to live in peace with the Jewish traditional owners/custodians of The Land, allowed themselves to be led astray by their fanatical religious mentors such as the nazi, Haj Amin al Husseini, and made war on the Zionists.
Zionists live as minorities in other nations’ states. It’s no tragedy for a tiny proportion of the Arab nation to live as a minority in the Jewish nation-state, where they have equality, by and large, and were it not for the state of war, their lot would be even better.
Western “do gooders” are utterly disingenuous when they claim to be “struggling” for “the Palestinians.”
What they are “struggling for” is to deprive the Jews of their national independence, identity and history.
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Jan Cosgrove
2:00 am
Feb 22, 2012
Leon
A study in self-righteous self-pity worthy of the Afrikaaners. Who allowed themselves to be led astray by the fanatical; religious mentors. You have none of these in Israel? Who do not preach equality of women, or arabs for that matter. Either there is equality of there isn’t.
Many countries still harbour anti-semtism. In the UK, in my childhood, even having fought that dreadful war, you could still encounter it. Now mainly, I hope, it’s confined to a very small far-right looney element, but they still get to march. Mainly about Poles and Moslems but the anti-Jewish aspect is there if hidden. Good riddance when the last of their kind are gone.
But many good people here, sympathetic to the cause of a Jewish homeland, are feeling more than uneasy about your direction over the Palestinians. as they want to be known. Still no answer about their future, still consigned to an oblivion you fought to reject for yourselves. It’s simply morally and historically unsustainable. Western ‘do-gooders’ would be happier by far were an honest accommodation reached. Both sides, by giving what is needed will gain so much more than land. If you ask me, that’s what God wants. Shalom.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Leon
10:44 pm
Feb 22, 2012
Modern secular anti-Zionists are the heirs to the obsessive drive of Hellenism, Christianity and Islam to eradicate the Jews, whether it be by conversion, physical extermination or assimilation.
That is the reason that they are prepared to use casuistry, sophistry, rationalisation and mendacity in their campaign to deprive the Jews of their national independence.
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Jan Cosgrove
3:29 am
Feb 23, 2012
Leon
Israel has a right to exist in its present borders excluding the Occupied Territories. Your mystical destiny is a view not shared by the rest of the world any more than it is Islam’s destiny etc etc. Maybe Israel will end up with negotiated, different borders, but then a Palestinian State for its people has a right also to exist. That is the reason people like me are prepared to use Reason and Truth. Still no answer as to the fate of the Palestinians in Greater Israel? Something to hide? What’s this about Hellenism?
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Karl
4:18 am
Feb 23, 2012
It is very good that at least some of the fierce Israeli critics “agree” to the rights of Jews to have an independent state if only on a small part of their ancestors land- but that was already agreed on long time ago by the majority of the World represented by the UN. When Israel agreed on the UN partition plan they also de facto agreed on an Arab Palestinian state side by side to Israel! Unfortunately it was the Arabs that de facto did not recognise the Arab Palestinian state together with the Jewish Palestinians state. This “little fact” is the only cause for the conflict, occupation (including Arab), refuges (including Jewish) and casualties. How come this little fact is not discussed and we hear instead only about occupation, refugees, settlements – how about looking at the causes and circumstances that brought this situation? Brushing this aside as being historical=non-relevant is quite silly: Hamas still fights the 1948 war to destroy Israel (maybe with the help of Iran) and so is the so called moderate PLO in the West Bank, just look at their internal propaganda or education books or the symbol on their flags. So maybe those critics of Israel so much dedicated to “peace and justice” will go and talk to the other side to recognise Israel right to exist and to recognise all the misery Arab/Muslim regimes caused, are still causing and probably will cause to their own population in the near future.
In the meantime there is no other solution for the “Palestinians” – if they don’t initiate violence against Israel they can continue living in one of the highest standards of living in the Third World -objectively better than a couple of billion people starving to death or suffering much more oppression from their own government then Israel ever inflicted on them. Often in the REAL World the choice is between Bad and Worse and logical people don’t have much problem to choose between those options.
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Leon
10:39 am
Feb 23, 2012
All the organisations of the Arabs who call themselves “Palestinians” constantly proclaim that even if Israel were to donate more territory to them as far as the 1949 armistice lines (which only the disingenuous claim to be “borders”), they would still not accept Jewish self-determination in the Jewish Land.
The depth of hatred among Westerners is exemplified by the phenomenon that the churches such as the Vatican and Church of England would prefer to see Jerusalem under Islamic rule or any other, so long as it’s not the Jews who control the Jews’ holiest and historically most important city…and this at a time when all over the Islamic world Christians are being murdered or degraded.
It brings to mind the depth of hatred of the nazis, who asserted that the Jews, being Semites, were not human; that didn’t stop the nazis from collaborating with Arabs, who also happen to be Semites. Why? Because both wanted the Jews to disappear.
Today’s secular supporters of the genocidal and politicidal “Palestinian” Arab agenda do so not because they love the Arabs, but because they hate the Jews. Their media are suffused with the same sort of mindset that “Der Sturmer” exhibited and the willing victims of their propaganda blindly parrot all their nonsensical libels.
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Jan Cosgrove
2:38 pm
Feb 23, 2012
Karl
You speak of the arabs. You might as well say “europeans”. The issues are the State of Israel and its borders and the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. The views of the arabs are as important as those of the europeans, no more no less. Oh how about the africans too?
In my view, the arabs put their concern for the Palestinians well down the list after their opposition to Israel, and there we can agree. But you can’t wave away the issue of self-determination with talk about standards of living. That really is Afrikaaner. We heard that all the way to the end of apartheid. Which was achieved peacefully.
The politics in Palestine – after decades, are you surprised that they are as they are? Even the most moderate of Palestinians who know you have a right to exist as a nation reject the current status quo.
The territory in which they live is not Greater Israel, the world has decided otherwise. Borders change. God doesn’t interfere, nor should He. It’s for our freewill, Man talking reason with Man. That’s what God asks of us.
In a creative spirit, Jerusalem could become the symbol of an imaginative and peaceful solution. That needs talking through, brick by brick if need be. It also is a holy city of Islam and of Christianity – it would be given the Judaic origins of both faiths. That’s a current reality. The aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians also have to be taken into account on this issue. Over to you and them, land clearance/expulsion etc is not a honest solution.
Leon, there were Jewish semites willing to collaborate with the nazis to get their Promised Land, and who regarded the British as their hateful enemy. Christians have nothing proud to boast in their centuries old litany of libel against the Jews. Maybe excuse the English when they invited the Jews back during the Parliamentary era as the People of the Book. But not too much as anti-semitism was rife in this country. So was anti-Catholicism for that matter.
Islam is going through a crisis it hasn’t yet recognised. Sectarianism may well engulf it, in the guise of nationalisms such as Iran and Saudi Arabia. For my money, if Israel or someone disguised its planes and bombed the crap out of Assad’s forces to aid the Syrian liberation, I’d applaud. The world stands by. Awful.
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Norman Trubik
9:07 pm
Mar 18, 2012
Jan, what you don’t mention is the offers made by, Ehud Barak in 2000 to Arafat for a Palestinian state on about 95% of the W. Bank and all of Gaza which Arafat rejected.The Clinton offer soon after proposing more land with Barak’s agreement, also rejected and the offer of a Stare by Ehud Olmert to Abbas in 2008 on 98% of the West Bank including land swaps, which was not accepted. Abbas’s excuse was that Olmert was facing legal charges in Israel. Furthermore, Israel withdrew all Israeli citizens (all Jews) who lived in Gaza in 2005. All Israel got in return were thousands of rockets fired at her from Gaza. There is no reason why Jews should not reside in the West Bank or Gaza. Jews reside in all European countries, the US, Britain, Australia etc. Why not the West Bank or Gaza? This is the real Apartheid. Abbas has already stated that no Jew will ever be allowed to reside in a Palestinian State. Jerusalem is not mentioned even one time in the Koran, which mentions Mecca and Medina many times, just not Jerusalem. The holiness of Jerusalem to the Muslims is contrived and not mentioned anywhere in the Muslim religious doctrine.
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Jan Cosgrove
5:57 am
Mar 19, 2012
Norman you say a lot that is true. However, it’s the Palestinian people who are the issue, and we started around how they are treated by Israel in their own land. We have to hope people like Abbas can be persuaded to move forward. Look, who would have thought British Tories in Government would be then ones pushing gay marriage even ten years, 5 years back. All this becomes easier when Palestinians know you will be withdrawing, people of hate will start to seem less and less relevant. Every kid arrested and detained and roughed up or worse gives them the oxygen. As for claims about Greater Israel which have surfaced here, as useful as ‘No Jews Here’. Such people also ensure blood and suffering for all. And Jerusalem has been special to Islam for a long time, remember the Crusades?
“Jerusalem is considered a sacred site in Sunni Islamic tradition, along with Mecca and Medina. Islamic tradition holds that previous prophets were associated with the city, and that the Islamic prophet Muhammad visited the city on a nocturnal journey. Due to such significance it was the first Qibla (direction of prayer) for Muslims and the prophet Muhammad designated the Al-Aqsa for pilgrimage.” [Wikipedia] You forget that Islam holds the Jews to be the People of the Book, and that current anti-semitism is far from that tradition. It certainly is not ‘contrived’, that is a stretch too far. No it’s not mentioned in the Quoram. But it is in the Christian Bible – do you accept their claims about Jerusalem? Or that Christian concern for that City is more valid than Islam’s? Why did Islam construct one of it’s holiest Mosques there?
Islam venerates Abraham, so does Christianity, Islam honours Jesus yet sides with Judaism in rejecting his divinity. The latter indeed fails to honour him at all despite many fine things he did say and which clearly derive from a close understanding of what was, after all, his own religion – he was never a Christian, and Islam honours him as Prophet, one of the greatest. The one who will lead Heaven’s forces at the last great battle etc. Alive too, taken up into heaven but didn’t die on the cross etc, unlike Mohammed who did die.
It’s a silly tactic to pursue such claims, it brings us no nearer to Peace. Which, if you believe any of the Judaic-based Faiths, is the greatest duty. Standing before God, one might be asked “You have told me how far the others would not go. How far did you? Far enough to find Peace?” All of you have to answer that to God. Believe me He wants all of you to find that Peace, which can be based only on Trust. Which none of you yet have earned.
I come from the Christian tradition. But who in the three Faiths would disagree with Jesus when he said that for those who harm children, it would be better for them if a millstone were hung around their neck and they were cast in the sea?
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Norman Trubik
4:33 am
Mar 20, 2012
Jan, Well yes, if they had accepted the Israeli and American offers of statehood, they would have known that Israel was withdrawing -but they did not accept those offers. There is no reason for you not to accept the Israeli explanation of how their system works regarding children. You do however accept the Guardian’s article even though they have consistently been very anti-Israel and have had to apologize several times for misrepresenting Israel in the past.
The reason why the El Aksa mosque was built on the Temple mount was a result of a split in Islam whereby the Sunnis were barred from entering Mecca or Medina. So they decided to build the mosque in Jerusalem, facing Mecca as a temporary replacement.
Mohammed did designate El Aksa (Meaning ‘Furthest Mosque’) as a place of pilgramage but since the Mosque was built several hundred years after the death of Mohammed, it is doubtful that he was thinking of that mosque or even a place in Jerusalem. His nocturnal visit does not indicate that it was Jerusalem, since Jerusalem is not mentioned anywhere in the Koran.There were numerous mosques built during his lifetime and it can be very reasonably assumed that he meant one of them.
Islam venerates Abraham, they regard him as the first Moslem and therefore according to them, Islam came before Judaism and Christianity. The regard Jesus as a prophet but not the Son of God and believe that it is the greatest sin to even suggest that he was. Some veneration!!!
Of course I agree that Christianity has claims over the Christian holy places in Jerusalem precisely because Jerusalem is mentioned many times in the New Testament. The crusades were a reaction to the Musdlim occupation of Christian religious sites. The only reason why the Muslims were so intent upon protecting Jerusalem was that the Christians claimed ownership of Jerusalem and Islam spitefully wanted to deny Jerusalem to them which is exactly why they want to deny Jerusalem to the Jews!
I would agree would with Jesus when he said that for those who harm children, it would be better for them if a millstone were hung around their neck and they were cast in the sea? Perhaps we should look at those people who send child suicide bombers tto kill themselves and innocent people and those who hide behind children and use them as human shields against the Israeli army.
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Arab Editor: Fabricating Quotes is Common Practice for Iranian Media | Blogs about Israel aggregation
5:11 pm
Jun 27, 2012
[...] • The Guardian notes a British report examining the status of Palestinian children in Israeli custody (executive summary in pdf). Earlier this year, HonestReporting addressed similar concerns (see The Guardian Misses the Real Child Abuse). [...]
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Arab Editor: Fabricating Quotes is Common Practice for Iranian Media | The Conservative Papers
1:23 pm
Jun 28, 2012
[...] • The Guardian notes a British report examining the status of Palestinian children in Israeli custody (executive summary in pdf). Earlier this year, HonestReporting addressed similar concerns (see The Guardian Misses the Real Child Abuse). [...]
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