Israeli Occupation: On Checkpoints and Child Snatching

March 21, 2013 By 21wire 

Patrick Henningsen

Because of a severe lack of balanced media coverage and contorted characterisation by the western media, very few people in America and Europe have little, if any real idea of the scope of Israel’s brutal occupation and racial subjugation of its native Palestinian population.

As US President Barrack Obama does his Israel tour this week, the mainstream corporate media appear to be completely synchronised in their headlines, quotes and talking points like “Obama strengthens ties with Israel”, and “Obama pledges an eternal alliance with Israel”, and finally, quoting the President who announced, ”The United States is proud to stand with you as your strongest ally and your greatest friend,” at his lavish welcoming ceremony at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport, with Air Force One rolling up to the sound of trumpets.

Palestinians unfortunately are not as enamoured with the smooth-talking  leader of Israel’s number one financial sponsor, as their protests continue to mount during his visit.

Consider this: More than half of all Palestinian males will have been arrested and detained by the IDF and Israeli security personnel before they reach their 21st birthday. What’s worse however, is the common practice of child snatching, which has created an underage pogrom in Israel.

A recent British Foreign Office fact-finding mission confirmed what many already knew – that there a thousands of Palestinian children in Israeli jails, with many of them detained  with no notification to their families upon apprehension. BT Selem.org explains here:

“The Israeli Youth Law requires that a parent or adult be present during the interrogation of child suspects. The law does not formally apply to Palestinians in the occupied territories, who are subject to Israeli military law, but the military court has recommended that the relevant provisions be taken into account in all dealings with Palestinian children.”

It’s systematic, and designed to continually break the indigenous population to the will of their colonial apartheid lords as evidenced this week:

“B’Tselem this morning urgently contacted the Army’s Legal Advisor for Judea and Samaria, demanding his emergency intervention regarding the detention of numerous children, including some as young as 8 to 10 years old, by the Israeli military this morning in Hebron. Preliminary information received this morning indicates that Soldiers detained or arrested over twenty minors on their way to school. About ten of them were released. The video was filmed by an international activist.”

Two videos presented below offer a little glimpse into to situation which is mostly concealed from media consumers in the west. These are just two of thousands of videos available online which illustrate Israel’s inhumane treatment of Palestinians.

See child-snatching video here…



For those sitting comfortably in the US and Europe who aren’t sure what day-to-day Palestinian conditions are like in the occupied West Bank, or around Gaza, this video (below) should help them to understand that reality. Watch…


With all the billions in military aid given to Israel each year, perhaps Americans and Europeans will start demanding that the Israelis start making progress towards dismantling their 70 year old religious state, in favour of something more suitable for 21st century society?

It’s time we start demanding justice for Palestinians, and we can start by cutting off our expensive military lifeline to the State of Israel.

 21st Century Wire