Israel seeks to declare war on Palestinian youth: Activist

Press TV has interviewed Paul Larudee, a member of the Free Palestine Movement in Berkeley, California, about the death of a Palestinian teenager at the hands of Israeli soldiers during clashes in the southern part of the occupied West Bank.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: It is a bit shocking, isn’t it? The number of young men who have been killed in this latest uprising, Palestinian young men that is, and all under the age of 19, at least from the many stories that I have read and I’ll ask you as well. How do you feel about this latest death?

Larudee: Well I would say it is not an exaggeration that Israel has decided to declare war on Palestinian youths and children. They come in the middle of the night and they take children away and torture them and put them through terrible things that are going to affect them for the rest of their lives, but assassination is obviously not beyond the scope of what they are willing to do. And they are basically seeing just how outrageously they can violate human rights.

Press TV: And of course this is also an indication, I would imagine, [of] the fact that many people have said; this latest uprising is led by the youth out on the streets, who are of course unhappy with the Palestinian leadership and of course as well as the occupation. How important do you think that this is then?

Larudee: I think that the killing is led by Benjamin Netanyahu and his cohorts not by the youth of Palestine. The youth have…, many of them have decided that it is time to act but this is not an effort that is strongly coordinated and certainly it does not have the strength to terrify Israel and Israel has the means to cope with an insurgency, if you want to call it that, of this level.

So I am not sure that it is yet at the strength it needs to be to cause Israel to tremble in its boots.

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