Israel imprisons children : it is urgent to worry about it.
Silvia Cattori – Translated from French by Robert Thompson.
11th February 2005

The world says nothing. There are hundreds of Palestinian children imprisoned in the gaols of the State of Israel (1). They are in extrajudicial detention. Considered as "administrative detainees" by Israel, they are crammed into cells infested by insects.

There are thousands of children on the "wanted" lists who will tomorrow suffer the same fate. To this day, no State in the world has had the courage to force Israel to stop this violation of these young lives.

Arresting a child, mutilating a child and killing children, are an integral part of the military strategy of Israel : it comes back to getting rid of resistants in the cradle.

Who are the statesmen who are moved by this ? These children, deprived of schooling, deprived of affection, deprived of freedom and subjected to traumatising torture, are the victims of a denial by public opinion. It is as if these Palestinian children had no right to a normal life and upbringing !

Kidnapped on their way to school, or in the middle of the night under the very eyes of their mothers, brothers or sisters, who are powerless to protect them, they find themselves, without knowing why, in total darkness. They are beyond the reach of help.

The instructors from the Shabak who interrogate them and subject them to the same tortures as the adults, have a terrifying power over them. After having humiliated them and broken them psychologically, they try to make them into collaborators, in exchange for tiny periods of respite. It happens that, under the threat of rape and blows, they can end up by accusing themselves of acts which they have not committed or denouncing their father or mother, signing statements drawn up in Hebrew, a language which they do not understand.

They come out, after one year, or even three years, shattered.

This is pure barbarism. We have to react to this violence done to children. These children will never come out unharmed. They will come out in a state of deep post-traumatic stress, closed in on themselves and with a need to play with death, which possibly explains the number of candidates for suicide ?

We must do all in our power - and our power is great if we know how to make good use of it - to haul these children away from the hands of the torturers before they have been completely broken.

(1) Arrested from the age of 12, some 300 chlidren are currently detained without any grounds, without any proceedings.

silv...@yahoo.it