Enlistment of children to carry out these violent acts is in effect no different than enlisting child soldiers.
Youths throw rocks in Hebron Photo: Youtube screenshot
As stone-throwing Palestinian children have been in the news lately it is
relevant to observe that enlistment of children to carry out these violent acts
is in effect no different than enlisting child soldiers, which is a war crime in
terms of Article 8(2)(b)(xxvi) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal
Court (ICC).
The time has come to recognize that encouraging children to
hurl stones and firebombs, as well as using them as human shields, as practiced
by Hamas, cannot be described as anything but enlisting them to participate
actively in hostilities and therefore a war crime.
The book The
Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation, edited by Zachery Lockman and
Joel Benin, describes communiqués issued during the first intifada by the United
Leadership of the Uprising. Communiqué No. 2 says: “O youth of Palestine, O
throwers of incendiary stones, clearly the new fascists will be forced to admit
the facts entrenched by your ferocious rebellion.... Intensify the use of
popular means against all enemies beginning with the holy stones and ending with
the incendiary Molotov cocktails.”
Stones and firebombs, even thrown by
children, can cause serious and even lethal injury.
For example,
according to a report by CIF Watch, rock-throwers caused the crash which killed
Asher Hillel Palmer and his one-year-old son. Last December a rock struck a
12-year-old girl, breaking her skull and on March 14, 2013, a three-year-old
girl was in critical condition and her mother and two sisters seriously wounded
after a car accident caused by rocks thrown by Palestinians. The three-year-old
was not breathing when medics arrived at the scene. Before the accident, a
number of drivers reported rock attacks. A bus was hit with rocks and a man and
a 10-year-old boy also were injured by rocks in the same area.
After a
recent spate of daily rock throwing near Hebron 27 youths were detained for
questioning. Most of the young children were released within a few hours and
handed over to the Palestinian police who called the parents to come and collect
them. Only seven were actually held for questioning, none of whom were
minors.
The kids who were justifiably suspected of stone throwing were
detained to enable the Israeli security forces to examine the video footage they
had in their possession, to see which of the youngsters had thrown stones, and
the suspicions were justified by the youths’ confessions to the Palestinian
police.
Judea Brigade Commander Avi Bluth said that stone throwing at
checkpoint 160 had become a daily occurrence until the arrest of these kids,
since which the area has been very quiet.
Despite the serious nature of
these attacks, all too often even responsible media irresponsibly treat the
hurling of stones and rocks as a minor misdemeanor and protest strongly about
every effort to deal with them.
For example, despite the fact that only
seven of the 27 kids were detained, the B’Tselem website as well as an article
on March 31 by Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy described the incident as “mass
arrests,” conveying the false impression of huge numbers of children arrested
unjustifiably.
Levy contradicted himself in his article. He first claimed
the arrests were made indiscriminately, but he also tells us that when handed
over to the Palestinian police and asked who had participated in the stone
throwing, all raised their hands in the affirmative.
In the circumstances
the allegation by Haaretz and B’Tselem that there was mass detention of youths
for unspecified reasons is highly irresponsible and
unsustainable.
B’Tselem spokesperson Sari Michaeli is quoted in a March
31 Jerusalem Post report as saying, “Even if they [minors under 12] are throwing
stones, they cannot be arrested...
there are other ways to deal with
children that throw stones.”
I’m sure the Israeli government and the IDF
would be very grateful to learn B’Tselem’s secret about how to effectively deal
with these hate-indoctrinated kids. In what other way could kids be dealt with
whose violence emanates from indoctrination to hate, not only on official PA TV
but in their school textbooks, as described by then-senator Hillary Clinton, who
said, “These textbooks do not give Palestinian children an education; they give
them an indoctrination.
When we viewed this report in combination with
other [PA] media that these children are exposed to, we see a larger picture
that is disturbing.
It is disturbing on a human level, it is disturbing
to me as a mother, it is disturbing to me as a United States senator, because it
basically, profoundly poisons the minds of these children.”
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