Seven Oaks Magazine.

At the end of April this year, 60 Minutes ran a segment that graphically
revealed torture was being used against Iraqis by American forces in Abu
Ghraib prison. This caused a public outcry as people tried to understand how
the forces of the great "liberator" could behave in such an inhumane and
brutal matter. Why this is shocking is slightly puzzling as torture and
torture techniques have followed American forces and operatives from Vietnam
to Guatemala.

Unfortunately, the American military is not the only military of a so-called
democracy that has made the use of torture a routine practice. In fact, as
Ali Abunimah revealed in an article for Lebanon's Daily Star entitled
"Israeli link possible in US torture techniques: In exchange for
interrogation training, did Washington award security contracts," there is a
direct link between the torture methods used in Iraq and the torture
techniques that Israeli security forces have been using for decades against
detained Palestinians. When these two cases are examined, however, one
disturbing difference is particularly noticeable: Israel makes it a routine
practice to torture children. Another tactical difference is the fact that
Israeli military personnel don't take incriminating photographs of
themselves performing violations of the Geneva Convention.

Defence of Children of International- Palestine Section (DCI/PS), whose goal
is to legally represent Palestinian children detained by Israel and
publicize abuses perpetrated against these children, reports that since the
beginning of the current Intifada over 3000 Palestinian children have been
arrested by Israeli security forces. In 2004 the average age of the arrested
child has been 14. Currently, close to 350 Palestinian children remain
incarcerated in Israeli prisons.

Reading about these cases is nothing less than heart-breaking. There are the
cases of Youssef Khalil Mteer (born 1 February 1988) and Alarquote Ibrahim
Zein (born 24 June 1988) who were both sentenced to thirty-two months in
prison for belonging to an illegal organization and planning to kill an
Israeli civilian. There is the case of Majdi Abdel Karim Abu Gaza who was
fifteen when he was arrested, and who has been sentenced to forty months in
prison for planning to carry out a suicide attack. Prior to his trial, Majdi
spent ten months in detention where he was completely isolated from his
family and legal representation. It is extremely important to realize that
the evidence presented against these children to the military court that
sentenced them amounts to confessions obtained under torture. DCI/PS has
documented hundreds of cases where children allegedly confess to hundreds of
specific instances of stone throwing. In these cases children have somehow
remembered the exact date and time of each incident, and have miraculously
acquired the ability to read Hebrew -- the language of the confessions they
signed.

This use of torture to obtain information and confessions from children is
standard practice for Israeli security forces. Interviews conducted by
DCI/PS have revealed that every single child detained by Israel has been
subjected to some form of torture, or other cruel, inhumane or degrading
treatment. The most common torture techniques used against Palestinian
children by Israeli security forces include severe beatings to the head and genitals, sleep and time deprivation, exposure to extreme temperatures including boiling and ice cold water, threats of rape (with documented cases of the carrying out of these threats), violent shaking, which has led to deaths, and position abuse.
This latter technique, in combination with sleep and time deprivation,
constitute the complete isolation of the child prisoner, and can be seen as
part of the larger Israeli design to totally isolate the entire Palestinian
population. This is something the state of Israel has been doing from its
inception.

When child prisoners are brought to detention centres, they are placed alone
in tiny, filthy cells where they remain in complete darkness. This
disorienting reality is exacerbated by sleep deprivation as Israeli security
officials use various techniques to ensure that the child does not sleep.
Such techniques include the use of hot and cold water and the playing of
extremely loud music. This intense experience of isolation and loneliness is
only interrupted by interrogation, which includes the cruel method of
position abuse. This torture technique involves tying prisoners up in
extremely painful and immobilizing positions for days at a time. The process
of taking individual prisoners from isolation cells to interrogation rooms
and back to isolation cells can last for weeks or even months. This severe
form of individual isolation and humiliation is practiced on the Palestinian
population as a whole through such brutal Israeli practices as home
demolition, curfews, closures, roadblocks, bypass roads, checkpoints and, of
course, the new apartheid wall.

This correlation is no accident. Position abuse is designed to immobilize
the body to the point of agony just as the various population-isolating
methods are designed to immobilize Palestinian society and economy to a
similar state of agony. Furthermore, both forms of isolation are carried out
to show Palestinians that nothing is sacred. In particular, house raids and
home demolitions, are designed to teach Palestinians that the sanctity and
the safety of the private home are not safe from the arms of the Israeli
state.

The arrest and torture of children carries a similar lesson. Firstly,
Palestinians are taught that not even children are spared the abuses of the
occupying force. Secondly, through the routine use of torture, Palestinians
are shown that the body, just like the private home, is not safe from
violation or penetration. There is almost no need to mention that these
standard practices of torture are direct violations of such international
conventions as the Geneva Convention, the Convention Against Torture and the
UN Standard Minimal Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice.

The isolation of detained Palestinian children is furthered by the fact that
these children are often moved form the Occupied Territories to Israel
itself. Once in Israel, they are often moved from facility to facility,
which makes it a very difficult task for family members and lawyers to
locate the child. The fact that the child is in Israel means that family
members have virtually no chance of visiting the detainee due to Israeli
authorities denying the necessary travel permits. This type of isolation,
which is justified through various Israeli military orders, means that child
detainees are often convicted and sentenced before their family members and
lawyers even know where they are. Once again, these routine practices are
direct violations of the above-mentioned international conventions.

The abuses that children are subjected to once in prison are numerous. One
of the most despicable common practices is to incarcerate Palestinian-child
political prisoners with Israeli-adult criminal prisoners. This has led to
innumerable abuses against these children, including sexual abuse. Other
abuses perpetrated against children by prison authorities include: the
denial of medical treatment, solitary confinement, beatings, withholding of
mail, denial of bathroom facilities, forcing children to drink out of
containers that have been defecated in, denial of beds, serving of expired
and rotten food, the provision of lice-infested blankets, and never cleaning
prison cells which has led to cases of illness and infection.

The entire process of arresting, detaining, sentencing and incarcerating
Palestinian children by the Israeli state is an exercise in brutal human
rights abuses. This type of state-supported cruelty is almost unimaginable
but, unfortunately, it happens everyday to Palestinian children suffering at
the hands of Israeli security forces. This is a reality that has to be
opposed by all individuals concerned about issues of justice. Currently,
DCI/PS is encouraging people to join their Adopt a Child Prisoner campaign
which endeavours to publicize this important issue while providing moral
support to child prisoners and their families.

Scott Rohan is a member of the Palestine Solidarity Group (PSG) in
Vancouver, BC. For more information on their campaign for child prisoners,
check out www.palsolidaritygrp.org or www.dci-pal.org