From The Australian, 3 December 2011, by Gerald M. Steinberg*:
IN the long history of terrorism in the Middle East conflict, Palestinian children have tragically been exploited by groups such as Hamas for a wide range of attacks against Israeli civilians - including in suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks which have taken many innocent lives.
On March 11 this year, Khakim Awad and Amjad Awad murdered five members of the Fogel family, including three children. At least one killer was a minor. More frequently, Palestinian children often rain down heavy rocks on Israeli cars - often fatally.
Unfortunately, in the article headlined "Stone cold justice" (The Weekend Australian Magazine, November 26) on the efforts by the Israeli courts to deal with the very difficult problem posed by Palestinian "child terrorists", these basic facts are erased. Instead, it repeats the highly distorted image of Palestinians as victims and relies primarily on organisations and individuals who have invested heavily in promoting this political campaign. For example, officials from Defence for Children International - Palestine Section, a noble-sounding name that masks its real activities as a powerful propaganda organisation, provided many of the claims in the article. DCI-PS's agenda is primarily political, and its emphasis on children is a means towards this objective.
In many of their activities, the leaders of this organisation distort history beyond recognition, such as by erasing the history of Arab attacks. The 1948 war (known as the Nakba in Arabic), in which many Israeli children and others were killed, is twisted by DCI-PS to fulfil its political agenda. According to the organisation's version, Israel has "historical and legal responsibility for the Nakba" and its consequences, even though the war was initiated by the invasion of Israel by five of its neighbours.
In more recent examples, DCI-PS propagandists erase tens of thousands of rockets launched at Israeli towns such as Sderot (each such attack is a war crime), instead declaring that Israeli efforts to protect civilians from attack are "illegal acts of aggression". After the Gaza war in early 2009, DCI-PS published a list of innocent Palestinian children it claimed had been killed by Israel, and disregarded evidence showing that 17-year-olds Ibrahim Mostafa Fraih Sa'id and Ibrahim Abed al-Rahim Rajab Suliman, among others, were clearly involved in the Hamas attacks.
The DCI-PS claims further misrepresent the situation by failing to address the gravity of these crimes. In September of this year, Asher and Yonatan Palmer were murdered in a terror attack near Hebron. Asher lost control of the car after a rock smashed the windshield, killing him and his one-year-old son.
Systematic reports from the Israel Defence Forces detail "160 severe cases implicating minors . . . stone and rock throwing as well as bomb throwing that have caused death" in recent years.
Court documents in 2008 reveal attacks on individuals such as Revital Ben Haim and Lipaz Rotter, who each sustained major injuries after their vehicles were struck by stones.
Israel's court system is sensitive to the age of these perpetrators. In both the cases mentioned above, judges issued reduced sentences to the minors involved in these attacks because of their age.
The tragedy of Palestinian children who are taken advantage of by groups such as Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine for attacks, their Israeli child victims, and the resulting moral dilemmas faced by Israeli courts are important topics for discussion. Any analysis should examine ways in which minors are used by militants and politicised NGOs such as DCI-PS as pawns.
Attempts to minimise or erase the severity of these crimes works against an enduring solution, and perpetuates the exploitation of Palestinian youth, as well as adding to the toll on Israeli children.
*Gerald Steinberg is president of NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based research institution.
2 comments:
'for the Nakba" and its consequences, even though the war was initiated by the invasion of Israel by five of its neighbours'.
Er, no the war was initiated by the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population.
If someone came and kicked you out from your home you would be entitled to resist. Which is what the Palestinians are having to do to this day.
Arab leaders persecuted their Jewish population from the 1920s, and launched a relentless campaign, against the interests of their own people, to obliterate the Jewish national revival …before any “occupation” and even before the establishment of the State of Israel.
They flatly rejected the restoration of the Jewish homeland as mandated by the League of Nations. Even after Jordan was created from 80% of the British Mandate of Palestine, they rejected the 1937 Peel Commission proposal to partition the remaining 20%.
In 1947, the UN partition would have created an even larger Arab state. If not for the Arabs' violent attempt to abort the partition, there would have been no war and there would now be a Palestinian state over 60 years old.
…and the rejection continues to this day… In 1949, Israel offered to return captured land as part of a formal peace agreement. Arab rulers refused.
From 1948 to 1967, Israel did not control the West Bank and Gaza.
The Arab nations could have created an independent Palestinian state there, but did not. Instead of peace and reconciliation, they chose rejection and global terrorism.
The Arabs also rejected the offer of Palestinian autonomy in the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace negotiations. They scuttled the Oslo process that began in 1993 leading toward the creation of a Palestinian state, by violating their commitments. In 2000 and 2008, they also rejected offers to create a Palestinian state.
Since their self-inflicted, violent and catastrophic rejection of the UN partition, misguided, self-serving oil-rich Arab leaders have kept the refugees of 1948 and their descendants in squalor and dependent on international aid, as cannon fodder, fed on hatred and false hope, and squandered repeated opportunities for statehood and economic progress.
Yet here we are, six decades later, and they (and their supporters like "Anonymous") continue the futile policies of vilifying and de-legitimising Israel, in their vain hope of destroying the Jewish nation.
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