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Brutalizing Palestinian Children - by Stephen Lendman
As an isolated incident, it would be appalling and criminal. As a regular occurrence, it's state-sponsored terrorism against defenseless children, subjected to barbarism by Israeli soldiers committing crimes against humanity to crush their will for wanting to live free on their own land - what Westerners take for granted; what Palestinians since 1948 haven't had, and since 1967, under military occupation denying their very humanity.
Nora Barrows-Friedman does heroic reporting for Pacifica Radio's KPFA Flashpoints Radio and as an activist/teacher/journalist in Occupied Palestine during regular visits. On March 8 on the Electronic Intifada, she wrote about Amir al-Mohteseb, a 10-year old Hebron child, arrested, detained, and savagely beaten after his 12-year old brother Hasan endured similar treatment a week earlier.
On March 7 at 2AM, "Israeli soldiers (broke) into (his) house, snatch(ed) Amir from his bed, threatened his parents with death by gunfire if they" interfered, took him down the stairwell, and brutally beat him causing internal abdomen bleeding, requiring overnight hospitalization. "In complete shock and distress, Amir would not open his mouth to speak for another day and a half."
Before the incident, he told Barrows-Friedman he was playing in the street on his way with Hasan to see their aunt when:
"Two....soldiers stopped us and handcuffed us, (took) us to two separate jeeps, (took) me to the settlement and put me in a corner, (put) a dog next to me," refused to let him use the bathroom, threatened to hold him forever, wouldn't let him call his mother, blindfolded him, and held him until his father managed to get him late at night.
He was terrified, held for 10 hours, traumatized by the incident, and unable to sleep, "worried sick about his brother in jail and extremely afraid that the soldiers would come back" and do it again, which they did, and do repeatedly to hundreds of Palestinian youths, their siblings, parents and friends, guilty of being Palestinian on land Israel wants to make historic Palestine an ethnically pure Jewish state.
On March 9, Haaretz writer Nir Hassan headlined, "Israel using strong arm tactics against young Palestinian stone-throwers," saying several Silwan, East Jerusalem youths "were arrested and taken from their home(s) in handcuffs in the middle of the night over the past few months, as part of a police crackdown on suspected stone-throwers....," not militants, gunmen, murderers, or bomb throwers threatening civil society - alleged stone-throwers punishable by imprisonment up to 20 years under Military Order 378 if convicted.
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