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.
vhardman
6:14 pm
Jan 24, 2012
when anything comes from the guardian it has no credibility
and when letters are always being signed by useful idiots it has even less credibility.
fortunately the papers circul;ation is limited to useeful ididots !
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Ronnie Pleet
6:54 pm
Jan 24, 2012
The Guardian never publishes truthful articles on Israel.Just anoher example of consistently poor journalism and distorted lies
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Reuven
7:16 pm
Jan 24, 2012
So, if the charges are “baseless”, why doesn’t the ISA charge The Guardian with libel? If The Guardian can substantiate its claims, let them have their day in court to prove it.
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Mark
7:45 pm
Jan 24, 2012
Israel is faced with unrelenting war on many fronts: armed attacks by Islamists who would kill every Jew on Earth, diplomatic pressures from “friends” and foes alike, the BDS/academic battalions of the left, and, perhaps most pernicious, media allied with the most illiberal, murderous, and repressive political forces on the planet. The Guardian wages war against Israel on a daily basis, clearly seeing itself not as an impartial reporter of news, but as a combatant supporting its allies. That anyone could believe one single word printed in that poisonous rag is astounding. It long ago lost all credibility.
So who buys that paper, who consumes its noxious fare? Only those who share its vile tenets; Guardian readers have self-selected themselves as uncivilised barbarians, lusting for blood, more specifically, Jewish blood. It’s time that all civilised people boycott the Guardian completely – not just the paper and web site, not just its advertisers, but also, and most importantly, its readers. If you know any people who buy or read the Guardian, deny them the comforts of their illusion that they are still part of the civilised world, and let them know what you are doing, and why – withdraw of all social contact with any who support their vicious anti-Semitism. They don’t merely see the world from a different moral or political perspective – they are evil themselves, as evil as the stormtroppers, party members, and de facto supporters who swept Hitler to power. We must none of us countenance such evil by anyone, in any form.
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Vardit
8:01 pm
Jan 24, 2012
The Guardian is a newspaper most people in the English speaking world scoff at, especially those who have visited Israel and who have friends and family members in the IDF. The Guardian should stick to knitting things of wool as they keep on spinning and spinning and spinning. Garbage journalism at its best when it comes to reportage of Israel.
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Salah Yakoub
10:27 pm
Jan 24, 2012
Harriet Sherwood: Here we go again. Another unknown journalist wishes for international recognision like her fellow journalists writing for The Guardian where she will end up in the bins of lies and distortion.
I wonder if she has ever bee to the Holy Land and seen for herself any part of her Christianity heritage and with all her distortions she would still be allowed to visit there. So far all journalists who write untruths whether they work for the guardian or other members of the anti JEWISH media have ended up in utter oblivion and the Oscar of distortions and lies.
I again challenge these distorters to go and see Israel if they have the GUTS and check their essays of lies they are given by Hamas and the PA.
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brynababy
11:25 pm
Jan 24, 2012
You might also note that the ‘moderate’ Haniyeh who “lives modestly locally in Gaza”, as reported by Sandra Osborne MP, has only very, very recently been living in Gaza having escaped in fear, the blood-letting in Syria, where he has resided in splendor in Damascus all these years.
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greeneyeshade
12:45 am
Jan 25, 2012
My favorite British blogger, Norman Geras (normblog.typepad.com), a self-described Marxian socialist but also an uncompromising democrat, says, “I won’t buy the Guardian any more, not even a single copy _ though I do read it online, free, mostly for blogging material.” I believe he once called the paper a “moral swamp.”
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george forrai
4:19 am
Jan 25, 2012
Sir, I wrote 2 decades ago to the Jerusalem Post suggesting the “Singapore Solution”. Any publication that is critical of Singapore must give the right of full response to a represenataive of the Singapore government, failing which that publiction is banned from sales there until such time as it prints a response (and apologizes for the delay in such printing.) The Wall Street Journal was banned for a while under that rule.
BAN the Guardian. Let them then publish that fact and make Israel look “undemocratic”.
THEN, Israel can reply in all the OTHER papers to explain the ban. That will in fact provide Israel with an opportunity for an even wider circulation for its response and show a wider public how unfair the Guardian is. Anyone got a better idea ? It works for Singapore !!
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patricia jones
5:07 am
Jan 25, 2012
The Guardian – of what – certainly not the truth!!!! This newspaper – to put it mildly – is an ‘intellectual wasteland’……nothing that is credible emits from it’s pages.
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jacko
8:03 am
Jan 25, 2012
I suppose one must continue trying to complain to the Guardian for their constant anti Israel articles however nothing will ever alter the fact that an Anti Semite is an Anti Semite and nothing you say or any proof you give will ever cahnge their mind or attitude
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Victor
8:29 am
Jan 25, 2012
I deleted the Guardian long long ago from my browser as it’s an anti-Semitic rag constantly on the edges of going broke.
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jack L
2:09 am
Jan 26, 2012
The Editor 23rd. January 2012
The Guardian
Your extensive coverage in today’s Guardian concerning the alleged treatment of children alleged to have thrown stones at Israeli soldiers and others makes very disturbing reading. As you will know, it is not a new story and one must wonder why it warranted front page as well as considerable coverage within at this time. The alleged treatment would be disturbing from whatever source and I presume that you consider Israeli morality to be such as to make this especially worrying, even though instances of child neglect and cruelty may go unreported in many other regions.
I want to suggest that the story below this message to you is one that deserves prominent coverage too. It is heartening and refreshing and certainly shows Israel in a different light. I could offer you many more stories that do that too, including the work of Israel’s ambulance service which treats all as equal, sometimes putting the lives of Israelis second to others who may urgently need treatment.
I can also introduce you to some amazing stories emanating from Haifa where the Leo Baeck Institute is able to integrate young Jews and non-Jews in some remarkable ways.
And a story about the world wide work of ‘Save a Child’s Heart’ would make a good read – let me know and I will produce it with all payments going directly to that unique charity!
If you wish to live up to your name and be a Guardian of truth and fairness, I hope you will find this and other stories sufficiently worth while to publish.
Yours etc.
Jack Lynes. (BAJ) 163 Albury Drive Pinner Middlesex HA5 3RH 020 8428 7977
Jerusalem (CNN) — Aya Abu Mouwais, a 3-year-old who lives in the West Bank, can barely walk or talk because of a failing kidney and liver. For much of her life, the Palestinian child has needed dialysis to survive.
Thankfully, an Israeli man has been able to help her get the treatment she so desperately requires.
More than 500 times in the past two years, Yuval Roth and his volunteers have driven Aya and her mother roundtrip from a checkpoint near the West Bank border to Rambam Medical Centre, which is an hour away in Haifa, Israel.
“What Yuval has done, no one else has done,” said Aya’s mother, Suhair. “He is day by day helping us to get her to the hospital. I’m not allowed to drive an Israeli car, so if not for Yuval, we wouldn’t be able to transport her. I thank him.”
Leaving the West Bank is the only way Aya’s family can get dialysis. For one thing, medical facilities are limited in the territory.
“In the Palestinian Authority, it’s very expensive to get health care, and most of the people cannot afford it,” Roth said.
It’s also expensive to make the trip to Israeli hospitals. Although the Palestinian Authority allows sick children and adults to leave the West Bank for treatment, Palestinians are not allowed to drive past the checkpoints. To get to Israeli hospitals, they’d have to take a taxi, which would cost at least $90 each way.
Fortunately, there is Roth and his organization, Derech Hachlama (“On the Road to Recovery”). Since 2006, Roth and his team of volunteers have been giving Palestinians a lifeline.
“The volunteers are driving at least five days a week,” said Roth, a 55-year-old carpenter and professional juggler from Pardes Hanna, Israel. “Some (drive) in the morning to drop off patients, and others come in the evening to take them back. That makes the whole thing easy, since they can still go to work and don’t have to spend the whole day.”
The price of the conflict is a lot more than the price of making peace.
–CNN Hero Yuval Roth
For Roth, the transportation service is a way to recover from personal tragedy. In 1993, his brother Udi was kidnapped and killed by members of Hamas. After his loss, Roth found a way to channel his anger into peace.
“I heard an interview on Israeli radio with a man who lost his son in the same way that I lost my brother,” Roth said. “After the interview, I called him … and he said he had an idea to establish a group to encourage dialogue between bereaved families from both sides, Israelis and Palestinians.”
Roth joined the group, called Parents Circle – Families Forum, and befriended many Palestinians. All shared a surprisingly common need: transportation access to Israeli health-care facilities.
“One day, (a program participant) called and told me his brother might have a brain tumour. He had an appointment at Rambam hospital but no way to go,” Roth said. “He asked if I could drive him, and I agreed it would be no problem.”
That first call for help was more than four years ago. As word of Roth’s generosity spread, transportation demands grew, and Roth began to recruit his friends as driver-volunteers.
Today, Roth’s group has grown to 200 volunteers. Transport coordination efforts are run entirely by Roth, who spends many hours on his cell phone inquiring about the location of volunteers and Palestinian families. Each volunteer maintains his or her own vehicle, but Roth helps cover gasoline costs with donation money he has received.
Even though differences exist, including some language barriers, Roth believes that the program helps Israelis and Palestinians learn from and respect each other.
“When we are coming to pick up the sick kids, the (Palestinian and Israeli) checkpoint managers help us a lot,” Roth said. “It makes our life and their life a lot easier. I think Palestinian families trust me also because I’m coming as one of them. I feel like they are my family or my friends.”
Roth’s group has driven an estimated 90,000 kilometers (about 55,000 miles) in 2010 alone. He says they have helped hundreds of Palestinians get access to health care.
“I lost my brother, but I didn’t lose my head,” Roth said. “This activity gives me an essence for life. I have learned the price of the conflict is a lot more than the price of making peace. We are all human beings.”
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Jan Cosgrove
5:02 am
Jan 27, 2012
Friends of Israel do it no favours by:
1. denying there is abuse against Palestinian kids in its jails (where they shouldn’t be anyway)
2. resorting to “Syria does worse” (any donkey knows that)
3. ranting against The Guardian for being allegedly anti-semitic when that is simply not the case – querying Israel’s actions as a state is not that any more than to query Iran is anti-islamic. Or is The Guardian both? No doubt it’s also anti-christian …. Maybe it’s got a thing about monotheistic religion emanating from the Middle East ….
Israel in supposed to be superior to Syria, in most things surely it is. But not in this matter. Put it right, soon, as you should, and then the world will see that you have done it.
Real child abuse in Israel, real child abuse in Syria (and more of it). The issue is Israel should not be controlling Palestine in any way, yet it is. Until the parties agree to peace, real peace, and whilst Israel occupies land it has no right to (and continues to allow settlement building) what do you expect? Thanks? Praise? The issue re Syria is when will the world stop permitting governments to slaughter their own people under the excuse of national sovereignty? Assad has no claim to be leader of Syria. Israel has no claim to Palestine.
There is no case for not reporting abuse in Israeli jails.
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george forrai
5:35 am
Jan 27, 2012
The term “abuse” is usede by the writer for both Israeli and Syrian actions. But she’s comparing apples and oranges. The Israeli “abuse” cannot be compared in degree or nature to what Syria is doing to its young revolutionaries, who are TORTURED (in a real sense of the word) and KILLED, in may instances. Trying to deflect this point, she then digresses to the question of the right of occupation – irrelevant to the issue at hand.
BTW, many learned law professors (including the late Prof. Julius Stone in Uni of Sydney) have written learned treatises as to why the occupation is LEGAL. Amongst those factors are : the rules of war; U.N. resolution 242; the non-existence of a “Palestinian State” ever in the history of the world; the fact that the territories were basically abandoned by Egypt (Gaza) and Jordan (West Bank); no flag, currency, borders etc etc.to prove the right to the lands by the so-called Palestinians. The “Palestinian State” is an Arafat creation of a legitimacy never aspired to by these people before Israel in effect tore them (liberated them ?) from previous “occupiers” .Funny they never claimed a State before 1967 !
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Jan Cosgrove
5:55 am
Jan 27, 2012
Abuse is abuse. It’s all rotten apples, maybe different varieties, but all rotten with abuse. Israel has tortured kids, and in any case it has no right to hold them. They are not Israelis nor do they live in Israel. Who cares what Prof Stone wrote, the international community does not recognise Israel’s right to occupy those lands, it has declared there should be a Palestinian state (just as it did about Israel’s right to exist), and 242 expressly forbids appropriation of territory by force as does the UN Charter, maybe its most essential rule. They ARE Palestinians, it’s as offensive as if one used the term “so-called Israelis”. No, Jordan and Egypt lost a war to Israel, they did not ‘abandon’ as if they just wandered off and forgot about it. Jordan and Egypt recognise the territories in question now as the Palestinian homeland, the basis for their state. Occupation is not irrelevant to the issue at hand, Israel takes children from the territories (which it calls Occupied) and incarcerates them in Israeli jails. Assad takes Syrian kids and jails them in his own jails. This tautology to justify Israel’s actions again does it no favours. It cannot be ‘Honest Reporting’ if you ignore what your own side is doing wrong even before you point fingers elsewhere. I have not noticed The Guardian going soft on what Assad is doing. Why should they excuse Israel? They don’t let up on UK failure in its jails. What a day it would be for the President of Israel, invited as a friend, stood proudly as the Palestinian flag was raised to celebrate its statehood, two semitic peoples side-by-side, working together. This is not the route. I am a Mr.
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george forrai
8:02 am
Jan 27, 2012
To Jay Cosgrove ( Mr.). “Si duo facient idem, non est idem !” The fact that “children” are jailed for acts of violence ( YES, rock throwing is violent) and kept in jail in Israel is not the same as what Syria does to its children who violate the law. So stop trying to equate Israeli “abuse” with Syrian because that is just plain disingenuous. Gaoling kids for crimes is not abuse ! Gaoliing and torturing and killing them for non-violent demonstartions IS abuse !
There cannot be friendship between the sides while one preaches HATE to its children.
Golda Meir said it best: if the “Palestinians” laid down their arms, there would be peace: if the Israelis did, there would be a massacre ! Only when the Arabs finally accept Israel’s right to exist in peace and security as a Jewish State will there be a chance for peace.
BTW, many of you leftists even try to call it racist that Israel wants to be a Jewish State, while you dare not object to all the Arab Republics being Islamic Republics ! You bloody hypocrites.
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Jan Cosgrove
5:01 pm
Jan 27, 2012
I said “abuse is abuse”. Courts of law see it that way. The severity of offence will vary. No one equates Syria and Israel as to degree. But you don’t want to admit that Palestinian kids ARE abused in your jails. They throw rocks at Israeli troops who are in Palestinian territory, it’s not Israeli land. If anyone should jail them it’s their own authority. But if Israeli troops weren’t where they have no right to be, guess what? It wouldn’t be happening. There is also the right of a people to resist occupation. Even your state calls the territories “Occupied”. That begs who owns them, and it ain’t Israel and, putting national ownership apart, Israel has no right to impose its rule on non-Israelis. If Israel were to annexe the territories, what would the Palestinians become? Israeli? Or would they be expelled? The people of Poland had the right to resist the nazis, and kids no doubt threw rocks at them if they could. What happened if they were caught? At the least incarceration in jails run by Germans, doubtless torture, maybe worse. The Germans had that right to be where they were and to do what they did? Stop claiming special privileges for Israel. We’ve seen special privileges before, it ended at Nuremburg. Why is Israel different, any more than Germany had some historic and mystical right? I never said there should not be a Jewish state, it’s an ethnic issue to some degree, and is recognised as such globally. An islamic state is not ethnic. But maybe ask some of Israel’s citizens about the encroaching power of extremist Jewish sects and see if they are all that happy. What’s the difference between such men in Israel trying to chase women off the street, increasingly violent, and the Taliban doing the same where they have sway? A matter of degree, the fact both are objectionable is true. I object to the Iranian regime, it hangs teen aged boys for being allegedly gay, it persecutes opponents, it discriminates against women, its own Arab population etc etc. Likewise the Saudi regime. Oh and the Syrian, very much so. But to do that doesn’t make me less critical of Israel where it is in the wrong. My enemy’s enemy is NOT my friend. If a friend is truly a friend, then he’ll not hold back telling his friend the truth when it’s vital
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brynababy
12:18 am
Jan 28, 2012
Mr. or Ms. Cosgrove has crowned herself “expert” of the year. However, her facts are so distorted and outright wrong, that one wonders where she received her historical education.
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Jan Cosgrove
2:06 am
Jan 28, 2012
It seems to me this blog is meant only for those who have a single uncritical viewpoint, that Israel does no (real) harm. That is not Honest Reporting it is Apologia, Hackdom, propaganda, it is not Honest, honest. Do you deny Israel has Palestinian kids in its jails? That they committed their ‘offences’ in non-Israeli territory? That they are not Israeli citizens? That some of them have been abused? Just answer straight, none of your going-round-the-houses to justify Israel. IS Palestine (West Bank, Gaza if you will) part of Israel? None of this “experts have said” crap, yes or no. If you say ‘yes’ that makes you a supporter of aggression to acquire territory. I am quite sure borders may need to be negotiated etc but I say ‘negotiated’. What Israel is practicing is ‘occupation’ and thereby is oppression. Never mind Syria, we know what they are. What are YOU? The Rule of Law or of the Fist?
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