EDITOR: Which country leads the international Militarisation Index?
No prizes offered for the rights answer… This index has been compiled for the last 21 years, ever since 1990. In the whole period, Israel has led the list of 148 states, either in the first place – 16 years – or in the second place – 5 years. For comparison, the UK is in the 65th place, and the US is in the 30 place! The list is taking military spending per capita as its main index of militarisation.
When you consider the fact that American activists are speaking incessantly about reducing military spending, then Israeli peace activists have not yet started to seriously challenge their government on what is accepted as ‘security’. Israel lives and thrives on the Military-Industrial Complex, both the American and Israeli ones. As long as this does not change, no peace, no reduction in the conflict and tension are possible or likely. Israel’s economy is a war economy, and its society is centrally focused on producing arms and weaponry, and reproducing conflict; it is the drug the economy and society are addicted to, and feed on. Here is something for Israeli intellectuals to ponder on.
Global Militarization Index – Ranking Table: bicc
This table presents the GMI data sorted by country name. You can re-sort the table either ascending or descending by clicking the corresponding arrow next to the column headers.
To view the table in its original, maneuverable form, please use the link above
View GMI data by year:
2010
Country ⇑ ⇓ Index Value ⇑ ⇓ Rank ⇑ ⇓
Israel 912.3 1
Singapore 867.99 2
Syria 845.04 3
Russia 830.8 4
Jordan 826.03 5
Cyprus 810.12 6
Korea, Republic of 796.8 7
Kuwait 791.47 8
Greece 779.47 9
Saudi Arabia 767.52 10
Brunei 766.71 11
Oman 766.37 12
Libya 765.42 13
Bahrain 763.69 14
Azerbaijan 756.54 15
Belarus 756.31 16
United Arab Emirates 754.44 17
Algeria 750.14 18
Vietnam 732.59 19
Ukraine 730.77 20
Bulgaria 727.92 21
Lebanon 727.81 22
Morocco 726.41 23
Armenia 724.49 24
Finland 723.16 25
Mongolia 717.66 26
Turkey 717.43 27
Egypt 714.68 28
Portugal 712.19 29
United States of America 710.59 30
Angola 706.06 31
Iran 704.02 32
Iraq 700.97 33
Chile 698.22 34
Estonia 693.97 35
Ecuador 689.42 36
Serbia 684.45 37
Croatia 683.88 38
Yemen 680.04 39
Norway 676.66 40
Macedonia 675.92 41
Qatar 675.13 42
Mauritania 674.7 43
Djibouti 670.28 44
Sri Lanka 668.9 45
Romania 667.49 46
Thailand 666.86 47
Peru 664.43 48
Colombia 655.78 49
Botswana 652.83 50
Cambodia 652.76 51
Denmark 651.78 52
Namibia 650.96 53
Georgia 650.31 54
Sweden 645.33 55
Pakistan 644.56 56
Malaysia 642.49 57
Kyrgyzstan 641.56 58
Lithuania 641.34 59
Slovenia 639.34 60
France 638.81 61
Switzerland 638.35 62
Spain 634.36 63
Austria 633.62 64
United Kingdom 633.48 65
Chad 627.86 66
To see the whole table, use link above
EDITOR: The warmongers continue to bang the war drums!
Barak, not happy with the impasse on Iran, is again on the barricades, calling for ‘the world’ to act against Iran. What he means is ‘the world’ allowing Israel to do it…
Barak: World must act against Iran before it’s too late: Haaretz
Defense Minister says Iran is soon reaching a point where even a ‘surgical’ military strike could not block it from acquiring nuclear arms.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Friday the world must quickly stop Iran from reaching the point where even a “surgical” military strike could not block it from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Amid fears that Israel is nearing a decision to attack Iran’s nuclear program, Barak said tougher international sanctions are needed against Tehran’s oil and banks so that “we all will know early enough whether the Iranians are ready to give up their nuclear weapons program.”
Iran insists its atomic program is only aimed at producing energy and research, but has repeatedly refused to consider giving up its ability to enrich uranium.
“We are determined to prevent Iran from turning nuclear. And even the American president and opinion leaders have said that no option should be removed from the table and Iran should be blocked from turning nuclear,” Barak old reporters during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.
“It seems to us to be urgent, because the Iranians are deliberately drifting into what we call an immunity zone where practically no surgical operation could block them,” he said.
Barak called it “a challenge for the whole world” to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran but stopped short of confirming any action that could further stoke Washington’s concern about a possible Israeli military strike.
Separately, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged a resumption of dialogue between Western powers and Iran on their nuclear dispute.
He said Friday that Tehran must comply with Security Council resolutions and prove conclusively that its nuclear development program is not directed to making arms.
“The onus is on Iran,” said Ban, speaking at a press conference. “They have to prove themselves that their nuclear development program is genuinely for peaceful purposes, which they have not done yet.”
Ban expressed concern at the most recent report of the International Atomic Energy Agency that strongly suggested that Iran’s nuclear program, which it long has claimed is for development of power generation, has a military intent.
IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said at a Davos session that “we do not have that much confidence if Iran has declared everything” and its best information “indicates that Iran has engaged in activities relevant to nuclear explosive devices.”
“For now they do not have the capacity to manufacture the fuel,” he said. “But in the future, we don’t know.”
In spite of his tough words to Iran, Ban said that dialogue among the “three-plus-three” … Germany, France and Britain plus Russia, China and the United States … is the path forward.
“There is no other alternative for addressing this crisis than peaceful … resolution through dialogue,” said Ban.
Ban noted that there have been a total of five Security Council resolutions so far on the Iranian nuclear program, four calling for sanctions.
As tensions have been on the rise recently, some political leaders in Israel and the United States have been speaking increasingly of the possibility of a military strike to eliminate, or at least slow down, what they allege is a determined effort by Iran to obtain nuclear weapons.
‘Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012’: Guardian
Julian Borger
One of Israel’s leading strategic analysts says the country’s leadership believes air strikes can set back the Iranian nuclear programme by three to five years
An Israeli Air Force F-16I jet fighter takes off after touching down briefly at the Ramon Air Force Base in the Negev Desert. Photograph: Jim Hollander/EPA
Ronen Bergman, an investigative journalist and analyst on the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth has written a long piece for the New York Times magazine, asking the question on many people’s minds: Will Israel attack Iran?
Bergman’s answer, which comes in the last paragraph, is yes:
After speaking with many senior Israeli leaders and chiefs of the military and the intelligence, I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012. Perhaps in the small and ever-diminishing window that is left, the United States will choose to intervene after all, but here, from the Israeli perspective, there is not much hope for that. Instead there is that peculiar Israeli mixture of fear — rooted in the sense that Israel is dependent on the tacit support of other nations to survive — and tenacity, the fierce conviction, right or wrong, that only the Israelis can ultimately defend themselves.
Bergman is one of a small circle of heavyweights in the Israeli media who spend a significant amount of time with the politicians, spies and generals who are going to make the ultimate decision. So his assessment carries more weigh that your average Israel-Iran analyst. Here is one of the key paragraphs:
The Israeli Air Force is where most of the preparations are taking place. It maintains planes with the long-range capacity required to deliver ordnance to targets in Iran, as well as unmanned aircraft capable of carrying bombs to those targets and remaining airborne for up to 48 hours. Israel believes that these platforms have the capacity to cause enough damage to set the Iranian nuclear project back by three to five years.
Three to five years seems a very confident estimate. The US defence secretary, Leon Panetta, reckoned in December that such strikes could set the Iranians back one or two years “at best”. Bergman also talks to a Mossad veteran, Rafi Eitan, whose own estimate was “not even three months”.
Bergman spent a lot of time in recent months with the Israeli defence minister, Ehud Barak, and is particularly revealing on his strategic thinking. He does not necessarily share Binyamin Netanyahu’s apocalyptic view of Iran’s intentions, but believes a nuclear Iran will be more aggressive and harder to counter.
“From our point of view,” Barak said, “a nuclear state offers an entirely different kind of protection to its proxies. Imagine if we enter another military confrontation with Hezbollah, which has over 50,000 rockets that threaten the whole area of Israel, including several thousand that can reach Tel Aviv. A nuclear Iran announces that an attack on Hezbollah is tantamount to an attack on Iran. We would not necessarily give up on it, but it would definitely restrict our range of operations.”
At that point Barak leaned forward and said with the utmost solemnity: “And if a nuclear Iran covets and occupies some gulf state, who will liberate it? The bottom line is that we must deal with the problem now.”
Bruce Riedel, a former CIA Middle East specialist, takes the opposite view, arguing in Lebanon’s Daily Star today that even with the bomb, Iran would not be an existential threat to Israel. Riedel’s view probably reflects the majority outlook at the CIA and the White House. Bergman examines this divergence in American and Israeli assessments, and wonders how much notice Israel would give Washington of an attack. Matthew Kroenig, a former Pentagon advisor now at the Council on Foreign Relations, reckons it will be “an hour or two, just enough to maintain good relations between the countries but not quite enough to allow Washington to prevent the attack”.
Jeffrey Goldberg has put out a piece in The Atlantic in response to Bergman, suggesting that Bergman’s analysis might be premature, and pointing out that the same people that Bergman talked to had previously convinced Goldberg that the attack would come last summer. Clearly, Israeli has a motive in conveying the impression that an attack might be imminent, to stir up urgency in the West to confront Iran. Ultimately, as Bergman admits, only Netanyahu and Barak really know how much is bluff and how much real intention.
That is a lot more interesting stuff in Bergman’s piece. He is bringing out a book this month, called The Secret War with Iran, (clarification: an updated English version of his 2007 book of the same title) which sounds like it will be a gripping read, and of course the NYT article helps drum up interest and sales. In it, Bergman gives a colourful description of a meeting in January 2011 with the outgoing Mossad boss, Meir Dagan, who has argued vehemently against an attack on Iran.
We were told to congregate in the parking lot of a movie-theater complex north of Tel Aviv, where we were warned by Mossad security personnel, “Do not bring computers, recording devices, cellphones. You will be carefully searched, and we want to avoid unpleasantness. Leave everything in your cars and enter our vehicles carrying only paper and pens.” We were then loaded into cars with opaque windows and escorted by black Jeeps to a site that we knew was not marked on any map. The cars went through a series of security checks, requiring our escorts to explain who we were and show paperwork at each roadblock.
This was the first time in the history of the Mossad that a group of journalists was invited to meet the director of the organization at one of the country’s most secret sites.
Presumably there will be much more of this in the book. However, when it comes to covert operations, as with the nuclear programme, there are things that Israeli journalists know but cannot say, and must attribute to non-Israeli sources. For example, Bergman does not say outright that Israel is behind the assassinations of Israeli nuclear scientists but reports lots of nods and winks in that direction. Here is an example of the journalistic animut (opacity):
Operating in Iran … is impossible for the Mossad’s sabotage-and-assassination unit, known as Caesarea, so the assassins must come from elsewhere. Iranian intelligence believes that over the last several years, the Mossad has financed and armed two Iranian opposition groups, the Muhjahedin Khalq (MEK) and the Jundallah, and has set up a forward base in Kurdistan to mobilize the Kurdish minority in Iran, as well as other minorities, training some of them at a secret base near Tel Aviv.
Is Bergman really channeling Iranian intelligence here, or laundering something he knows by attributing it to Iranian intelligence? Hard to know for sure, but it certainly reads like the latter. So his NYT piece and probably his book will no doubt tell us a lot about Israel’s intentions but not as much as Bergman undoubtedly knows.
Israel jails Palestinian parliament speaker without trial: Guardian
Aziz Dweik’s six-month imprisonment is an attempt by Israel to thwart reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, says his office
Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem
An Israeli military court has ordered the speaker of the Palestinian legislative body to be jailed for six months without trial after he was arrested at a checkpoint last week.
Aziz Dweik, a member of Hamas and a senior elected politician, was imprisoned “without charge or legal justification”, a statement from his office said. It claimed Israel was attempting to thwart moves towards reconciliation between the rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas.
Dweik was arrested at a checkpoint near Ramallah last Thursday. According to reports, he was handcuffed and blindfolded by Israeli soldiers, who said he was being detained for “involvement in terrorist activities”.
Dweik has been the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council since elections six years ago. However the PLC has not sat since the summer of 2007, when Hamas – which had won elections the previous year – took control of Gaza in a bloody battle with Fatah.
The order to imprison Dweik was made the day after two Hamas politicians were arrested by Israeli police inside the east Jerusalem compound of the Red Cross, where they had sought refuge 18 months ago after being threatened with expulsion from the city.
Police said they arrested Mohammed Totah, a member of the PLC, and Khaled Abu Arafeh, a former Palestinian minister for Jerusalem affairs, on Monday for “Hamas activity in Jerusalem”. Hamas is banned by Israel in the city.
The men had lived in a protest tent on Red Cross premises since July 2010, receiving visitors but not leaving the compound. The international body has no diplomatic immunity, unlike embassies.
Another Hamas PLC member, Abdel Jaber Fukaha, was arrested at his home in Ramallah this week, bringing the total number of council members in Israeli jails to 27. Nineteen have been detained without trial or charge.
The recent arrests are seen as part of an Israeli crackdown on the movement and activity of senior Palestinian figures, which is thought to be connected to moves towards reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas. Israel strongly opposes Palestinian reconciliation, believing it will give Hamas greater influence.
A statement from the Palestinian cabinet on Tuesday condemned “the continued detention campaign against [PLC] members” and demanded their immediate release.
Hanan Ashwari, a veteran Palestinian politician, said Israel was “flagrantly violating international conventions and practices” with regard to the immunity of elected officials, and was using “calculated means of coercion and power politics to interfere in Palestinian domestic affairs and to undermine democratic institutions in Palestine”.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights said the arrests were a continuation of the targeting of elected politicians affiliated to Hamas, which it viewed as “a retaliatory act and a form of collective punishment” in breach of the Geneva conventions.
More than 300 Palestinians are held in “administrative detention” under the Israeli military system, without charge or trial, on security grounds.
Child Prisoners in Israel: Guardian
Cell 36: Palestinian children locked in solitary confinement in Israel – videoCell 36 in Al Jalame prison, northern Israel, is one of a handful of cells where Palestinian children are locked in solitary confinement for days or even weeks. Mohammad Shabrawi from Tulkarm, in the West Bank, was arrested last January, aged 16, and Ezz ad-Deen Ali Qadi from Ramallah, who was 17 when arrested, talk about their experiences
* Archive footage courtesy of B’Tselem
The Palestinian children – alone and bewildered – in Israel’s Al Jalame jail: Guardian
Special report: Israel’s military justice system is accused of mistreating Palestinian children arrested for throwing stones
Harriet Sherwood in the West Bank
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 22 January 2012 20.00 GMT
Palestinian children locked up in solitary confinement by Israel. Link to this video
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.
The only escape is to the interrogation room where children are shackled, by hands and feet, to a chair while being questioned, sometimes for hours.
Most are accused of throwing stones at soldiers or settlers; some, of flinging molotov cocktails; a few, of more serious offences such as links to militant organisations or using weapons. They are also pumped for information about the activities and sympathies of their classmates, relatives and neighbours.
At the beginning, nearly all deny the accusations. Most say they are threatened; some report physical violence. Verbal abuse – “You’re a dog, a son of a whore” – is common. Many are exhausted from sleep deprivation. Day after day they are fettered to the chair, then returned to solitary confinement. In the end, many sign confessions that they later say were coerced.
These claims and descriptions come from affidavits given by minors to an international human rights organisation and from interviews conducted by the Guardian. Other cells in Al Jalame and Petah Tikva prisons are also used for solitary confinement, but Cell 36 is the one cited most often in these testimonies.
Between 500 and 700 Palestinian children are arrested by Israeli soldiers each year, mostly accused of throwing stones. Since 2008, Defence for Children International (DCI) has collected sworn testimonies from 426 minors detained in Israel’s military justice system.
Their statements show a pattern of night-time arrests, hands bound with plastic ties, blindfolding, physical and verbal abuse, and threats. About 9% of all those giving affidavits say they were kept in solitary confinement, although there has been a marked increase to 22% in the past six months.
Few parents are told where their children have been taken. Minors are rarely questioned in the presence of a parent, and rarely see a lawyer before or during initial interrogation. Most are detained inside Israel, making family visits very difficult.
Human rights organisations say these patterns of treatment – which are corroborated by a separate study, No Minor Matter, conducted by an Israeli group, B’Tselem – violate the international convention on the rights of the child, which Israel has ratified, and the fourth Geneva convention.
Most children maintain they are innocent of the crimes of which they are accused, despite confessions and guilty pleas, said Gerard Horton of DCI. But, he added, guilt or innocence was not an issue with regard to their treatment.
“We’re not saying offences aren’t committed – we’re saying children have legal rights. Regardless of what they’re accused of, they should not be arrested in the middle of the night in terrifying raids, they should not be painfully tied up and blindfolded sometimes for hours on end, they should be informed of the right to silence and they should be entitled to have a parent present during questioning.”
Mohammad Shabrawi from the West Bank town of Tulkarm was arrested last January, aged 16, at about 2.30am. “Four soldiers entered my bedroom and said you must come with us. They didn’t say why, they didn’t tell me or my parents anything,” he told the Guardian.
Handcuffed with a plastic tie and blindfolded, he thinks he was first taken to an Israeli settlement, where he was made to kneel – still cuffed and blindfolded – for an hour on an asphalt road in the freezing dead of night. A second journey ended at about 8am at Al Jalame detention centre, also known as Kishon prison, amid fields close to the Nazareth to Haifa road.
After a routine medical check, Shabrawi was taken to Cell 36. He spent 17 days in solitary, apart from interrogations, there and in a similar cell, No 37, he said. “I was lonely, frightened all the time and I needed someone to talk with. I was choked from being alone. I was desperate to meet anyone, speak to anyone … I was so bored that when I was out [of the cell] and saw the police, they were talking in Hebrew and I don’t speak Hebrew, but I was nodding as though I understood. I was desperate to speak.”
During interrogation, he was shackled. “They cursed me and threatened to arrest my family if I didn’t confess,” he said. He first saw a lawyer 20 days after his arrest, he said, and was charged after 25 days. “They accused me of many things,” he said, adding that none of them were true.
Eventually Shabrawi confessed to membership of a banned organisation and was sentenced to 45 days. Since his release, he said, he was “now afraid of the army, afraid of being arrested.” His mother said he had become withdrawn.
Ezz ad-Deen Ali Qadi from Ramallah, who was 17 when he was arrested last January, described similar treatment during arrest and detention. He says he was held in solitary confinement at Al Jalame for 17 days in cells 36, 37 and 38.
“I would start repeating the interrogators’ questions to myself, asking myself is it true what they are accusing me of,” he told the Guardian. “You feel the pressure of the cell. Then you think about your family, and you feel you are going to lose your future. You are under huge stress.”
His treatment during questioning depended on the mood of his interrogators, he said. “If he is in a good mood, sometimes he allows you to sit on a chair without handcuffs. Or he may force you to sit on a small chair with an iron hoop behind it. Then he attaches your hands to the ring, and your legs to the chair legs. Sometimes you stay like that for four hours. It is painful.
“Sometimes they make fun of you. They ask if you want water, and if you say yes they bring it, but then the interrogator drinks it.”
Ali Qadi did not see his parents during the 51 days he was detained before trial, he said, and was only allowed to see a lawyer after 10 days. He was accused of throwing stones and planning military operations, and after confessing was sentenced to six months in prison.The Guardian has affidavits from five other juveniles who said they were detained in solitary confinement in Al Jalame and Petah Tikva. All confessed after interrogation.
“Solitary confinement breaks the spirit of a child,” said Horton. “Children say that after a week or so of this treatment, they confess simply to get out of the cell.”
The Israeli security agency (ISA) – also known as Shin Bet – told the Guardian: “No one questioned, including minors, is kept alone in a cell as a punitive measure or in order to obtain a confession.”
The Israeli prison service did not respond to a specific question about solitary confinement, saying only “the incarceration of prisoners…is subject to legal examination”.
Juvenile detainees also allege harsh interrogation methods. The Guardian interviewed the father of a minor serving a 23-month term for throwing rocks at vehicles. Ali Odwan, from Azzun, said his son Yahir, who was 14 when he was arrested, was given electric shocks by a Taser while under interrogation.
“I visited my son in jail. I saw marks from electric shocks on both his arms, they were visible from behind the glass. I asked him if it was from electric shocks, he just nodded. He was afraid someone was listening,” Odwan said.
DCI has affidavits from three minors accused of throwing stones who claim they were given electric shocks under interrogation in 2010.
Another Azzun youngster, Sameer Saher, was 13 when he was arrested at 2am. “A soldier held me upside down and took me to a window and said: ‘I want to throw you from the window.’ They beat me on the legs, stomach, face,” he said.
His interrogators accused him of stone-throwing and demanded the names of friends who had also thrown stones. He was released without charge about 17 hours after his arrest. Now, he said, he has difficulty sleeping for fear “they will come at night and arrest me”.
In response to questions about alleged ill-treatment, including electric shocks, the ISA said: “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 … Investigators act in accordance with the law and unequivocal guidelines which forbid such actions.”
The Guardian has also seen rare audiovisual recordings of the interrogations of two boys, aged 14 and 15, from the village of Nabi Saleh, the scene of weekly protests against nearby settlers. Both are visibly exhausted after being arrested in the middle of the night. Their interrogations, which begin at about 9.30am, last four and five hours.
Neither is told of their legal right to remain silent, and both are repeatedly asked leading questions, including whether named people have incited them to throw stones. At one point, as one boy rests his head on the table, the interrogator flicks at him, shouting: “Lift your head, you.” During the other boy’s interrogation, one questioner repeatedly slams a clenched fist into his own palm in a threatening gesture. The boy breaks down in tears, saying he was due to take an exam at school that morning. “They’re going to fail me, I’m going to lose the year,” he sobs.
In neither case was a lawyer present during their interrogation.
Israeli military law has been applied in the West Bank since Israel occupied the territory more than 44 years ago. Since then, more than 700,000 Palestinian men, women and children have been detained under military orders.
Under military order 1651, the age of criminal responsibility is 12 years, and children under the age of 14 face a maximum of six months in prison.
However, children aged 14 and 15 could, in theory, be sentenced up to 20 years for throwing an object at a moving vehicle with the intent to harm. In practice, most sentences range between two weeks and 10 months, according to DCI.
In September 2009, a special juvenile military court was established. It sits at Ofer, a military prison outside Jerusalem, twice a week. Minors are brought into court in leg shackles and handcuffs, wearing brown prison uniforms. The proceedings are in Hebrew with intermittent translation provided by Arabic-speaking soldiers.
The Israeli prison service told the Guardian that the use of restraints in public places was permitted in cases where “there is reasonable concern that the prisoner will escape, cause damage to property or body, or will damage evidence or try to dispose of evidence”.
The Guardian witnessed a case this month in which two boys, aged 15 and 17, admitted entering Israel illegally, throwing molotov cocktails and stones, starting a fire which caused extensive damage, and vandalising property. The prosecution asked for a sentence to reflect the defendants’ “nationalistic motives” and to act as a deterrent.
The older boy was sentenced to 33 months in jail; the younger one, 26 months. Both were sentenced to an additional 24 months suspended and were fined 10,000 shekels (£1,700). Failure to pay the fine would mean an additional 10 months in prison.
Several British parliamentary delegations have witnessed child hearings at Ofer over the past year. Alf Dubs reported back to the House of Lords last May, saying: “We saw a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old, one of them in tears, both looking absolutely bewildered … I do not believe this process of humiliation represents justice. I believe that the way in which these young people are treated is in itself an obstacle to the achievement by Israel of a peaceful relationship with the Palestinian people.”
Lisa Nandy, MP for Wigan, who witnessed the trial of a shackled 14-year-old at Ofer last month, found the experience distressing. “In five minutes he had been found guilty of stone-throwing and was sentenced to nine months. It was shocking to see a child being put through this process. It’s difficult to see how a [political] solution can be reached when young people are being treated in this manner. They end up with very little hope for their future and very angry about their treatment.”
Horton said a guilty plea was “the quickest way to get out of the system”. If the children say their confession was coerced, “that provides them with a legal defence – but because they’re denied bail they will remain in detention longer than if they had simply pleaded guilty”.
An expert opinion written by Graciela Carmon, a child psychiatrist and member of Physicians for Human Rights, in May 2011, said that children were particularly vulnerable to providing a false confession under coercion.
“Although some detainees understand that providing a confession, despite their innocence, will have negative repercussions in the future, they nevertheless confess as the immediate mental and/or physical anguish they feel overrides the future implications, whatever they may be.”
Nearly all the cases documented by DCI ended in a guilty plea and about three-quarters of the convicted minors were transferred to prisons inside Israel. This contravenes article 76 of the fourth Geneva convention, which requires children and adults in occupied territories to be detained within the territory.
The Israeli defence forces (IDF), responsible for arrests in the West Bank and the military judicial system said last month that the military judicial system was “underpinned by a commitment to ensure the rights of the accused, judicial impartiality and an emphasis on practising international legal norms in incredibly dangerous and complex situations”.
The ISA said its employees acted in accordance with the law, and detainees were given the full rights for which they were eligible, including the right to legal counsel and visits by the Red Cross. “The ISA categorically denies all claims with regard to the interrogation of minors. In fact, the complete opposite is true – the ISA guidelines grant minors special protections needed because of their age.”
Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, told the Guardian: “If detainees believe they have been mistreated, especially in the case of minors … it’s very important that these people, or people representing them, come forward and raise these issues. The test of a democracy is how you treat people incarcerated, people in jail, and especially so with minors.”
Stone-throwing, he added, was a dangerous activity that had resulted in the deaths of an Israeli father and his infant son last year.
“Rock-throwing, throwing molotov cocktails and other forms of violence is unacceptable, and the security authorities have to bring it to an end when it happens.”
Human rights groups are concerned about the long-term impact of detention on Palestinian minors. Some children initially exhibit a degree of bravado, believing it to be a rite of passage, said Horton. “But when you sit with them for an hour or so, under this veneer of bravado are children who are fairly traumatised.” Many of them, he said, never want to see another soldier or go near a checkpoint. Does he think the system works as a deterrent? “Yes, I think it does.”
According to Nader Abu Amsha, the director of the YMCA in Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, which runs a rehabilitation programme for juveniles, “families think that when the child is released, it’s the end of the problem. We tell them this is the beginning”.
Following detention many children exhibit symptoms of trauma: nightmares, mistrust of others, fear of the future, feelings of helplessness and worthlessness, obsessive compulsive behaviour, bedwetting, aggression, withdrawal and lack of motivation.
The Israeli authorities should consider the long-term effects, said Abu Amsha. “They don’t give attention to how this might continue the vicious cycle of violence, of how this might increase hatred. These children come out of this process with a lot of anger. Some of them feel the need for revenge.
“You see children who are totally broken. It’s painful to see the pain of these children, to see how much they are squeezed by the Israeli system.”
Child Prisoners in Israel: Guardian Letters
Child prisoners in Israel’s jails
We applaud Harriet Sherwood for bringing the violation of Palestinian children’s rights to the attention of your readers (Alone and bewildered, the boy in Cell 36, 23 January). We recently visited Jerusalem and the West Bank as members of the British Association of Social Workers, and heard many similar accounts. We also witnessed the horrific sight of Palestinian children being led into a military courtroom in handcuffs and leg-irons, and saw a diminutive 14-year-old being sentenced to three and a half months in prison, together with a large fine, for allegedly throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. The Israeli prison service’s justification for the use of such restraints strikes us as incredible. In a context of the utmost security, it was impossible to see the necessity of such inhuman shackling of a child. Seeing this boy’s bewilderment and tearful face as he looked across to his mother is something that we will not forget in a long time.
What we witnessed were clear breaches of the human rights of children under international law. We believe, given our professional code of ethics, that we have a duty as social workers to do whatever is in our power to highlight this issue and to promote the rights of those children who are affected. We call upon other social workers to do the same, including within Israel.
Guy Shennan, David Harrop, Sarah Sturge, Rupert Franklin-Lester
Members of the British Association of Social Workers
• Congratulations to Harriet Sherwood for her thorough report. If Mark Regev’s statement is serious that “The test of a democracy is how you treat people incarcerated, people in jail, and especially so with minors”, then he should acknowledge that Israel is no democracy. The reports of abuse of child prisoners are numerous, from Amnesty International and others.
On 17 October 2011, Jean Gough, Unicef’s special representative in the occupied Palestinian territories, said: “Unicef calls on the Israeli government to release Palestinian child detainees so that they can be reunited with their families. As stated in the convention on the rights of the child, the detention of children should be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.”
We call upon the coalition government to demand the release of all child prisoners and the cessation of the continual mistreatment of any prisoners in Israeli jails.
• The appalling treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli jails is sadly not a new phenomenon. In every year since 2002 at least 500 minors have been arrested, despite a much reduced level of disturbance
Mark Regev may ask complainants to pursue their cases in the courts, but it is a tortuous and costly process. Most of the children are from poor families who simply lack the resources to pursue the matter. While the treatment of child prisoners is particularly shocking, in many ways it is only “the tip of the iceberg” of abuse. Approximately 8,000 Palestinians are currently prisoners in Israeli jails, many of them held for months, even years, without charge or trial. Under the fourth Geneva convention, it is lawful for an occupied people (such as the Palestinians) to resist their occupier. Israel is a signatory to that convention but wilfully ignores its provisions, especially the extra safeguards afforded to children. Shamefully the international community has responded to these grave breaches with indifference.
Michael Gwilliam
Norton-on-Derwent, North Yorkshire
• Your paper, in collaboration with Defence for Children International, has falsely portrayed Israel as a country that tolerates the torture and abuse of Palestinian children, which is definitively not the case. Having to arrest, prosecute and imprison minors is by its very nature a difficult issue. Unfortunately, Israel has been forced out of necessity to address a problem arising from Palestinian society. So where then is the real child abuse?
Robert Simonofsky
New Jersey, USA
• May I offer a word of appreciation for Harriet Sherwood’s work. The strength and clarity of her report into the detention of child prisoners by Israel will have touched many people, not least by means of the human detail included, making these young prisoners more than just statistics. Her use of names, ages, villages and verbatim quotation is such an important part of reporting accurately on these issues, especially when, in the past, Palestinians have been reduced to anonymous numbers of deaths and injuries, mere marks on a page.
Another cogent aspect of her report, for me, is the way she framed what she said by reference to international law and the Geneva conventions. These legally compelling navigational tools make it possible to plot a course through a territory which some people like to say is too complex to understand – it isn’t ethically complex at all.
Annie O’Gara
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire
• Your report on Palestinian children in Israeli jails makes shocking, distressing reading and provides another example of Israel’s utter disregard for the human rights of Palestinians. Isn’t it time for the international community to stand up to the Israeli government and demand an end to the inhuman practice of imprisoning and torturing children? A start would be the cancellation of all cultural exchanges, a sanctions programme and a ban on all arms sales to Israel. And each one of us can protest by personally boycotting all Israeli products.
Maisie Carter
London
• Despite it being illegal in Israel to imprison children under 14, the Israel Prison Service admitted during 2011 that 35 minors aged between 12 and 15 were among 164 Palestinian children held in Israeli jails.
Before Christmas, during correspondence with my MP about Palestinian child prisoners, the foreign and commonwealth minister, Alistair Burt, assured me that he “regularly raises concerns about the application of due process and treatment of Palestinian detainees” with the Israeli authorities. He welcomed Israel’s “recent decision to raise the age of legal majority for Palestinian children” and said “when fully implemented, this will be an important step towards protecting children’s rights”.
Harriet Sherwood’s shocking revelations suggest that, unacceptably, this decision has not been implemented. I would like to know what the UK government is doing to make sure it is before more Palestinian childhoods are ruined.
Richard Stainton
Whitstable, Kent
• The report on Palestinian child prisoners is very timely. The Israeli treatment of child prisoners – physical violence, solitary confinement, shackling and denial of access to parents – breaks the convention on the child (which Israel has signed) and in 2009 elicited a report from the UN committee against torture.
According to the DCI, arrests of Palestinian children in East Jerusalem have increased markedly; it reports that 80% children detained there have been physical ill-treated during arrest, 75% interrogated in the absence of a parent, with 55% threatened with further violence.
But Palestinian children are also mentally scarred and physically ill-treated in other ways. The theft of agricultural land during the construction of the so-called separation barrier, as well as blockades and closures, have resulted in up to 30% child malnutrition (WHO 2009). The constant raids on Gaza and other areas have left children mentally traumatised; their schools are wrecked and their relatives killed (UNHRC October 2011). Sick children are frequently denied access to medical care. And do not let us forget that since 2006, nearly 700 children have been killed by Israeli army and settler violence.
Irene Brennan
West Kirby, Wirral
• Harriet Sherwood’s article confirms how supine our governments, past and present, have been towards the Palestinian question. My daughter spent nearly three years in the West Bank, first as an ecumenical accompanier, then as a human rights lawyer at the Womens’ Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC). What this time revealed was that the treatment of children by the Israeli Defence Force and courts had a most profound negative mental health effect on the women and female relatives of the children.
The WCLAC site documents this fully. During our daughter’s time in the West Bank we visited her and was amazed at the warm, friendly welcome we were given by Palestinians, despite the lack of support for their cause by the UK government. That we were there seemed sufficient reason for their kindness and I can only urge your readers to show that many in the UK support them by also visiting Palestine.
Michael and Elizabeth Rought-Brooks
Scarborough, North Yorkshire