Rights for the Children of Palestine?
Heartbreaking images from the USA of young children confined in cages have dominated the international media this week. Thousands of people fleeing from persecution and civil unrest in Latin America have been imprisoned since the Trump administration introduced its “zero tolerance” policy to supposedly combat illegal immigration. Among them, more than 2,000 children forcibly separated from their families in the country that styles itself “The Home of the Free”.
Human rights organizations, church groups and governments around the globe condemned the new policy as a serious violation of human rights. The debate on social media led quickly to comparisons being made with the concentration camps in Europe in the 1930s. Not to be deterred, prominent spokespersons for the US government continued to defend this callous treatment of minors with Attorney General Jeff Sessions quoting passages from the Bible, live on international television, assuring us all that he had God on his side.
Meanwhile, several thousand miles away, Palestinian children languish behind bars – arrested and imprisoned under military laws and sentenced in a military court by a state that boasts of itself as “The Only Democracy in the Middle East.” Hundreds of Palestinian children are imprisoned every year by the Israeli military. Neighbourhoods are surrounded, homes are invaded – often under cover of darkness, entire families harassed and held hostage, children dragged out of bed, blindfolded and bound. Parents are refused the right to accompany their children nor are they entitled to know where the soldiers are taking them.
UNICEF reports document Israel’s systematic abuse of child detainees with 75% subjected to physical violence during interrogation or detention.
The Israeli policy of deliberate targeting young children in order to intimidate the wider Palestinian community is not new. It has been going on for years and yet it receives comparatively little attention on the world stage. Like their American allies, the Israeli state is not overly concerned about international opinion or human rights and is equally fond of claiming God’s support for their every endeavour.
There is also a common thread in the respective propaganda wars being waged by Trump and Netanyahu as illustrated by the deliberate policy of demonizing and dehumanizing people in order to facilitate gross human rights abuses – and targeting their children to do so. Trump’s rhetoric brands people fleeing their homelands in search for a better life as “criminals.” Netanyahu uses the same reactionary language to portray 10-year-olds throwing stones at Israeli occupation forces, as “terrorists.”
The world community is currently mobilizing and appealing to Trump to rethink his position, protect children’s rights in the United States and release these children from their suffering. It appears to be working. Is it too much to ask that the same attention be given to children in Palestine?
Solidarity 
The hypocrisy and silence of Western governments and indeed of some Christian church’s on this issue is truly breathtaking!