Film shot by Research Journalism Initiative and placed on YouTube, shows Israeli soldiers using Palestinian children as human shields in Balata refugee camp in the occupied West Bank in 2007.
The Israeli veterans’ organisation Breaking The Silence has published new testimonies from Israeli soldiers about the maltreatment of Palestinian children in Tulkarm and Hebron under the Israeli occupation.
Children are exposed to a harsh daily reality of arrests, violence, intimidation and harassment by Israeli forces. They are wounded or killed because soldiers ignore them at the scene of events or by targeting them directly, and sometimes at random.
The disturbing actions – many amounting to war crimes – took place in 2005-2011, in occupied Palestine.
This is the first of two articles summarising shocking examples of the abuse of children by Israeli forces.
Two soldiers testified as to how children were used as human shields.
‘In Tulkarm in 2005, the “neighbour procedure” was used in an arrest mission. A resident of the neighbouring house is summoned and required to enter the wanted person’s home and call all its inhabitants to come outside.
‘We got all the people out. No one was the wanted person. We feared he was still there, inside. So at first neighbours were used, then some kid.
‘Bilal, I even recall his name. . . . And they kept sending him into that house to check that no one was inside, open all the doors, turn on all the lights, open all the windows.’
‘So there’s a school there. We’d often provoke riots there. We’d be on patrol, walking in the village, bored, so we’d trash shops, find a detonator, beat someone to a pulp, you know how it is,’ said a soldier relating incidents in Hebron in 2006-2007.
‘Search, mess it all up. Say we’d want a riot? We’d go up to the windows of a mosque, smash the panes, throw in a stun grenade, make a big boom, then we’d get a riot.
‘Once, We fired a lot of rubber ammo. A lot. Every time we’d catch Arab kids, hold them like this, with stones, like retards. You know, so that the others would throw stones at them, not at us.’
Asked if children were turned into human shields, the soldier replied ‘Yes.’ The kids cannot run away, because they will be badly beaten. You catch him, push the gun against his body, he can’t make a move, he’s totally petrified.’
In 2009, the Israeli army’s Kfir Brigade was ordered to take over a school in occupied West Bank and turn it into a detention facility.
Anyone between 17 and 50 years had to be arrested to collect information for the Shabak (Israel Security Agency), however, even 14-year-old children were brought in. People arrived blindfolded and shackled.
‘There are soldiers who know what the point of the plastic handcuff is, and then there are others who think that it is meant as a device to stop blood flow from the wrist to the fingertips.
‘They think it should be on so tight that no blood can get through. Many people were very tightly shackled and they were begging to be released just a bit.
‘Eventually, after they cried and complained, the company commander ordered them released, and after a while (about seven hours) they even had their hands in front instead of behind their backs.
‘It takes time for hands to turn blue. The operation lasted from morning until noon the next day.
‘Detainees had to stay the whole time blindfolded and shackled in the sun. When they asked to go to the bathroom, they were beaten to pulp and cursed by the soldiers who took them there.
‘A 15-year-old child was taken to piss and a soldier slapped him, down to the ground while he was shackled and blindfolded. Just like that, because he is an Arab.’
In Nablus a soldier explained that when children hit you with stones, you don’t get out of the jeep. ‘You shoot through the loophole.’ Choose someone at random, aim at his body.
‘I remember one time we put a kid down. We didn’t kill him but someone hit the kid in the chest and he fell and probably lost consciousness.’
His brigade was not instructed in how to use rubber ammunition. ‘There are rules. You shoot four. There’s this cluster of rubber bullets, pieces with four parts, packed in a kind of nylon.
‘You can break it in two, so it’s stronger and flies further. As soon as it’s four it’s less strong and flies less far. We’d usually break it in half. We figured it out ourselves. It’s something that’s common knowledge in the army.’
The interviewer said: ‘As soon as this pack of rubber bullets is broken in half, it becomes lethal. The nylon must not be removed.’
Soldier: ‘Well, that’s what we did. We barely fired a whole cluster, I mean four. It’s like you want to save ammo, too.’
The booklet presents examples of shocking violence against children.
‘At first you point your gun at some five-year-old kid, and feel bad afterward, saying it’s not right. Then you get to a point where . . . you get so nervous and sick of going into a village and getting stones thrown at you.
‘But it’s obvious, you’re inside the village, you’ve just passed the school house, naturally the kids will throw stones at you.
‘Once my driver got out, and without blinking, just grabbed some kid and beat him to a pulp. And that kid was just sitting in the street and looked like some other kid, or wore another kid’s shirt, or perhaps he was that kid but that’s not the point’ (Nablus in 2005).
‘I was driving and suddenly I see some Arab boy, about 18 years old, with his face mangled, really bad. He had a black eye, his lip was torn, in really bad shape . . . then the other jeep arrives. The sergeant in it says: “See how I handled him?” (Bethlehem 2006-2007).
‘Kids would throw stones at us, we’d catch some kid who happened to be there and beat him to a pulp. Even if he didn’t throw stones’.
Referring to a 10 year-old, ‘That commander had no mercy. Anyway, the kid could no longer stand on his feet and was already crying. He couldn’t take it anymore. ‘Stand up!’ Tried to make him stand but he couldn’t, from so much beating, he just couldn’t stand up. The commander goes:
“Don’t put on a show,” and kicks him some more.
‘It was enough to give us a look that we didn’t like, straight in the eye, and you’d be hit on the spot . . .’
‘There was another instance of a 14-year old, an illegal alien. He was detained, so he stood there and hummed to himself.
‘One of the guys went up to him and said: “Something amusing you?” The kid said: “Yes, gotta keep my spirits up.” “Spirits up, eh?” and the soldier slapped his face.’
A commander who wanted to detain a child ‘tore him away from his dad’s leg and we put the kid in the jeep. I did nothing at that point. At the end of the day, something has to make these kids stop throwing stones on the road because they can kill.
‘That specific kid, who actually lay there on the ground begging for his life, was actually nine years old. . . . I mean, a kid has to beg for his life? A loaded gun is pointed at him and he has to plead for mercy? This is something that scars him for life.’
Following a riot at Qalandiya, ‘Soldiers got out with army clubs and beat people to a pulp. Finally the children who remained on the ground were arrested.
‘The order was to run. People were made to fall to the ground, and then the soldiers with the clubs (a 30cm-long wooden club) would go over to them and beat them.
‘A slow runner was beaten, that was the rule.’
