The invisible children of Palestine.
Watching the news last night I couldn’t help but be moved by the image of an Israeli father embracing his young daughter who he thought had been killed on October 7th but was part of the exchange of hostages between Hamas and the Israeli authorities.
But the release of dozens of Palestinian children held by Israel in military detention received no similar coverage by the American media.
There were no faces of smiling Palestinian boys and girls.
There were no scenes of Palestinian mothers and fathers embracing their children.
They were mentioned but they were invisible.
For 30 years I taught American children the exact same age as many of these Palestinian children.
So I see the faces of my fifth grade boys and girls.
I can’t erase their images
I can’t stop thinking about them.
The crimes for which the Israeli police and soldiers incarcerate young Palestinian boys and girls are often not much more than for throwing stones at machine gun toting members of the occupying Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
The American media describes the children held by Hamas as hostages.
The Palestinian children are called prisoners.
It is estimated that the Israeli military detains and prosecutes between 500 and 700 Palestinian children each year in Israeli military courts that lack basic safeguards for a fair trial.
Despite the fact that international norms reaffirm that children should not be brought before military courts, Israel remains the only country in the world to automatically and systematically prosecute children in military courts.
Israeli authorities systematically disregard and deny fundamental protections and guarantees concerning the right to a fair trial.
Amnesty International reported that “the child’s request for a lawyer is often delayed until the interrogation has taken place and often a confession is obtained. It is a punitive system that is not aimed at rehabilitating children. It always keeps children in prison until they are tried and sentenced. Children are often pressured into accepting plea bargains in exchange for a commuted sentence.”
The most egregious cases involve Israeli authorities’ use of administrative detention, or detention without charge or trial, against Palestinian children.