Kathryn Shihadah, de schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel gepubliceerd op het blog 'If Americans Knew', bracht een paar dagen voor publicatie een video waarin een 10 jarige Palestijnse jongen werd gearresteerd. De reactie van een vriend van haar, een vriend die het opneemt voor Israël, was dat dit soort video's hem/haar niets zeggen en dat deze video's zijn gespeeld en/of het resultaat zijn van langdurige provocaties (van Palestijnse kant).
Overigens is deze reactie allesbehalve uniek voor de VS en fanatieke zionisten in Israël, ook in de rest van het westen geloven velen niet dat Israël kinderen op grote schaal arresteert, laat staan dat men deze kinderen martelt en dwingt verklaringen te ondertekenen die zij niet kunnen lezen.......
Overigens is deze reactie allesbehalve uniek voor de VS en fanatieke zionisten in Israël, ook in de rest van het westen geloven velen niet dat Israël kinderen op grote schaal arresteert, laat staan dat men deze kinderen martelt en dwingt verklaringen te ondertekenen die zij niet kunnen lezen.......
Shihadah stelt terecht dat Israël dagelijks meer dan 10 miljoen dollar ontvangt van de VS, waar het congres overweegt Israël zelfs meer te geven dan dat enorme bedrag (vermenigvuldig die 10 miljoen met het aantal dagen en je ziet dat Israël per jaar het fenomenaal grote bedrag van meer dan 3,650,000,000.-- dollar ontvangt en dat bedrag wil men nog verder verhogen.....
Gezien dit bedrag dat wordt opgehoest door de belastingbetalers in de VS, waarmee deze belastingbetalers volgens Shihadah het volste recht hebben te weten wat er met dit geld gebeurt en waar Israël in feite voor staat: -apartheid, -een continue vervolging van Palestijnen, waaronder een groot aantal kinderen, -vernietiging van Palestijnse huizen en ontwikkelingsprojecten, die o.a. door Nederland werden betaald en vooral niet te vergeten -de massamoorden op Palestijnen die Israël keer op keer begaat en dat tegen mensen die zich niet kunnen verdedigen tegen één van de modernste legers op aarde.....
Tijdens de wekelijkse Great Return March demonstraties van de Palestijnen doet Israël zelfs geen moeite te verbergen dat het ongewapende demonstranten neerschiet, waarbij intussen meer dan 250 Palestijnse mensen om het leven zijn gekomen....
Tijdens de wekelijkse Great Return March demonstraties van de Palestijnen doet Israël zelfs geen moeite te verbergen dat het ongewapende demonstranten neerschiet, waarbij intussen meer dan 250 Palestijnse mensen om het leven zijn gekomen....
In 2018 arresteerde Israël het ongelofelijke aantal van 980 kinderen, dit nog naast het het zoals zojuist gemelde vermoorden van meer dan 250 ongewapende demonstranten in de Gazastrook, waaronder meer dan 30 kinderen, invaliden, medisch hulpverleners en journalisten.........
In de vorm van een brief (waarin een zevental video's zijn te zien) aan haar vriend, laat Shihadah zien dat Israël wel degelijk kinderen arresteert en dat voor ronduit onbenulligheden.........
WATCH: Yes, Israel does arrest children
CONTACT@IFAMERICANSKNEW.ORG JANUARY
28, 2019 CHILD
DETAINEE, CHILD
DETENTION, CHILD
PRISONERS, COGNITIVE
DISSONANCE, IDF, OCCUPATION
Eighteen
youths, most under the age of 18, were arrested for throwing stones
at soldiers on 13 October 2017. They were locked in a cage,
blindfolded during interrogations, and not allowed access to their
families or lawyers until their release that night.
Intellectual honesty is about confronting those things that make us uncomfortable, not ignoring them. Israel arrests Palestinian children; see 7 of the many videos of these actions.The U.S. gives Israel over $10 million per day, and Congress is currently considering bills to give Israel even more. That makes it obligatory for Americans to learn the facts, and act on them.
by
Kathryn Shihadah, Palestine
Home
A
few days ago, I posted on Facebook a video of Israeli soldiers
arresting a 10-year-old Palestinian boy.
Israeli
soldiers routinely torture,
abuse, and threaten Palestinian children, and force them to sign
confessions written in Hebrew, which they can’t read. Naturally the
child’s father tried to stop the soldiers, to spare his son. The
father was beaten up.
A
friend of mine who advocates for Israel left this comment:
I don’t put much credence in these videos. I believe a lot of this is staged and/or the result of persistent provocation.
This
is America, where freedom of speech is a thing (unless you try
to criticize
Israel),
so my friend is allowed to express his doubts.
“Provocation”
is an interesting word. Is provocation something that only
Palestinians do?
Do
110+ years of ethnic
cleansing qualify
as provocation? Does a 50-year occupation fall under that heading?
How about restriction of movement, restriction of worship, of speech,
of assembly? How about generations of humiliation, lost hope, and
neglect? Starvation and oppression? (These questions are not
rhetorical.)
My
friend continued,
Not saying it [arrest of minors, assault on adults] doesn’t happen. However, I’ve seen videos of the provocation, too.
I’ll
admit, I’ve seen a video that could be considered provocation by a
Palestinian. Her name is Ahed Tamimi, and she slapped and kicked a
soldier. She was arrested and spent 8 months in prison.
Why
did she do it? Her cousin Mohammad had just been shot
in the face by
an Israeli soldier, and was hanging onto life by a thread. Ahed was
angry that day, my friends. And not just because of this isolated
incident, horrific as it was.
For
the last 9 years or so, Israel has made life in Ahed’s town, Nabi
Saleh, almost intolerable:
Residents receive just 12 hours of running water a
week,
while nearby Israeli settlers – who live on land confiscated from
the villagers – have running water 24/7. Israeli soldiers raid Nabi
Saleh almost every day; sometimes they spray homes with skunk
water.
Ahed Tamimi’s home has been raided at least 150 times.
That
sounds a little provocative.
But
I digress.
My
friend offered a video as
proof that you can’t trust what you see Palestinians doing on the
internet.
He
also explained that he needed more proof before he’d believe that
Israel made a habit of arresting children.
Can
do.
I
submit the following videos – just a few of the many that are
available – for my friend’s perusal, and for anyone who believes
that Israel has “the world’s most moral army.”
In
2018,
Israel arrested 5,700 Palestinians, including 980
children and
175 women, according to the Palestine Prisoners’ Centre for
Studies. And there are smartphones everywhere, so it’s reasonable
to expect some arrests would be filmed.
Well,
without further ado, here are 7 short videos of Palestinian children
having their childhood stolen from them. (I wonder whether they will
grow up well-adjusted and friendly towards Israel?)
To
my Zionist friend: you can reject these if you need to, but watch
them first.
No,
seriously, watch them all the way through.
The
first video was published by Christian Peacemaker Teams, an
organization that has had a continuous presence in the West Bank
since 1995. The org exists to bear witness to injustice. CPT
workers witnessed and filmed the arrest of several young boys in
2014.
This
2013 video is of a 5-year-old boy being arrested for throwing
a stone at the tire of
an Israeli settler’s car. When the child’s father came, Israeli
soldiers handcuffed and blindfolded him. (Additional pertinent
details of the incident can be found here,
from Ynet News, the English-language edition of Israel’s largest
news website.)
Here
is a 7-year-old boy being violently detained in 2014. According to
the International
Solidarity Movement,
several boys were throwing stones at a checkpoint before school.
Israeli forces threw two stun grenades and fired approximately three
tear gas canisters towards the children. Several men tried to
intervene and were pushed around; one was put into a headlock as he
tried to help the hysterical 7-year old.
The
next video, filmed in 2017 by the well-known Israeli rights group
B’tselem, appeared in the
Independent.
The story of the detention (in a small cage) of 18 Palestinian
children and youths was conveniently lost amid the controversy over a
soccer player’s tweet of the video. Israel partisans, including the
IDF, were critical of the tweet, but not of how the children were
treated. (You need to click on this
link to
view the video.)
Next,
we have an 8-year-old boy swarmed by Israeli soldiers. (Look at the
upper left corner of the screen grab below – see the machine gun
pointed at the boy’s head? Have you noticed how very many Israeli
soldiers seem to be involved in every one of these child-arrest
incidents? What’s that about?) This video is from B’tselem, 2017.
Here
we see the IDF has arrested 4 children, ages 5 to 9, for allegedly
throwing burning tires at the soldiers. The video came out in 2013
from Israel
Social TV,
an independent media organization that “sees itself as part of the
human rights and social change community in Israel.”
And
last, Israeli soldiers detained a 3-year-old child, as filmed
and published in
2018 by a Palestinian journalist who writes for the Jewish news
website Mondoweiss.
The Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz,
adds detail:
soldiers cursed at the boy; he ran home, and soon returned with a
zucchini scraper. Israeli Police claimed that the incident “was
intended to paint the security forces in a bad light.” (Notice, the
problem isn’t the detention of a 3-year-old, but how it made
Israeli soldiers look bad.) A police spokesman further rationalized
the soldiers’ actions by calling the incident “a stabbing
attempt.”
Many,
many more videos like these are available for the watching.
What
does one do with such information, especially if one is a supporter
of Israel? There are a few options:
- Ignore the information (“I’m not an expert researcher, and I’m a busy person, so I can’t disprove these videos. Therefore this isn’t my problem. I will put it out of my mind and continue to believe only the best about Israel.”)
- Disbelieve the information. (“These 7 videos – and all the others – are fake or staged. Israel does not arrest children, except perhaps when deeply provoked – but those kids have it coming to them. I can’t trust the well-known human rights organizations, journalists, and news outlets that produced the videos.”)
- Believe that there may be some truth to these videos, but that the issue is certainly being exaggerated – and don’t forget that every country has a skeleton in its closet. (“As long as you single Israel out for criticism, and don’t talk about Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia, I don’t have to listen.”)
- Believe that, hard as it may be to stomach, the videos are real – and then adjust your Israel paradigm. (“I thought Israel didn’t arrest children, but obviously Israel does arrest children” is a possible starting point, followed by “Is there anything else I’ve been wrong about?”)
Each
of these choices comes with its own set of challenges.
The
first two choices will nag your subconscious. Ignoring and
disbelieving these spectacles will rob you of serenity because on
some level, you know.
You face a lifetime of cognitive dissonance – or maybe you’re
already acquainted with CD, and this just adds another layer of
denial.
The
third choice will give you discomfort of another type. There’s
something deeply repugnant about the idea that Israel is arresting
toddlers, even if (you think) Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia might be
doing it too.
The
last choice, believing, is difficult too: it means the death of
idealism, the shaking of ground that you thought was solid. The
choice to believe things that you
don’t want to be true is
not a one-time experience – it is the beginning of a new journey, a
journey of leaving untenable beliefs behind and embracing new
principles based on reality. It’s a tough undertaking, but once you
take that first step, you’ll know it’s right.
Now
if you’re reading this and haven’t watched those videos yet,
scroll up and start watching. All of them.
Congress
is currently voting on legislation that would finalize a $38
billion package
to Israel, the largest such aid package in U.S. history. This is
about $23,000 per Jewish Israeli family of four and amounts to $7,230
per minute. The
Senate bill would also impede our right to boycott and contains
additional measure on behalf of Israel. To learn more and to take
action go here.
RELATED
READING:
============================================
Zie ook:
'Israël bewijst nogmaals fascistisch te zijn >> journalist met kritiek wacht gevangenisstraf......'
'Esther Voet (hoofdredacteur Nieuw Israëlietisch Weekblad) over 'antisemitisme'' (zie ook de links in dat bericht)
Het bericht als hierboven wordt weggezet als antisemitisch
Zie ook:
'Israël bewijst nogmaals fascistisch te zijn >> journalist met kritiek wacht gevangenisstraf......'
'Esther Voet (hoofdredacteur Nieuw Israëlietisch Weekblad) over 'antisemitisme'' (zie ook de links in dat bericht)
Het bericht als hierboven wordt weggezet als antisemitisch
Mijn excuus voor de belabberde vormgeving.
