Israel systematically targets Palestinian kids: Commentator

Press TV has conducted an interview with Seif Da'na, a lecturer at University of Wisconsin, to discuss a UNICEF warning about Israel’s excessive use of force against Palestinian children.  

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: What can you tell about the extreme impunity that the regime in Israel enjoys when it comes to cracking down so brutally and inhumanly on young Palestinians?

Da’na: We have to correct the wording of the report first because we are not before an excessive use of force. We are before literally an open war on the Palestinian children, and the report only mentions the last few months. But actually there is a new report that was published in December by Ramallah-based human rights organization called al-Haq in which it basically states literally that targeting the children is deliberate and it is a systematic Israeli policy intended to force the Palestinians to comply with occupation and to subjugate them.

In 2014 alone, which was characterized as the bloodiest year, actually 574 children were killed in the occupied Palestinian areas, and 556 of them were in Gaza alone. Palestinian children face killing, torture, arbitrary detention. According to the human rights organizations and according the al-Haq report, 556 children were killed in Gaza alone in 2015 over 3,300 were injured. So, we are talking about a systematic targeting of the children. Destruction of the Palestinian homes affected 126,000 children in the Palestinian areas, in Gaza and in the West Bank. So, what we are seeing, according to al-Haq, is a systematic policy.

This is an open war against the Palestinian children let alone that report deals in details with what they characterized as a trauma that affects all the Palestinian children and because of the daily humiliation, thousands of them can’t even get to their schools without passing through Israeli checkpoints and being humiliated. We are talking about young kids here and especially in the area of Hebron which many human rights organizations have already reporting about certain schools and certain school children who are being humiliated on a daily basis.

So what we have here is a systematic deliberate Israeli policy that targets the Palestinian children can be characterized clearly as an open war on the Palestinian children intended to scare the Palestinian parents and to force them to comply with the occupation conditions, under the Israeli occupation.

Press TV: This has been going on for ages, it is not something new, but why is it and how come the international community, despite the condemnation and the reports by various human rights organizations including the United Nations’ offshoots, nothing really happens on the ground in terms of pressuring, bringing international pressure on the Tel Avive regime to change its policies?

Da’na: It is very simple. Since, at least 1967, most of the world countries and we all may have to look at the numbers in the UN in every other resolution human rights organizations, we have to look at the reports as well, the whole world has been condemning Israel for its really barbaric practices against Palestinians in general and when we talk about thousands of Palestinian children being killed, I mean sine 2000 more than 2,200 children have been killed, essentially we are talking about 3 to 5 children weekly since 2000.

That is a slow massacre basically, but because of the support that Israel receives -- diplomatic support, military support, political support and every kind of support from the United States -- Israel has been acting with impunity and until the United States realizes or the world actually exercises pressure on the United States to stop supporting Israel, to stop arming Israel and to stop actually providing Israel with financial support, Israel will continue to act with impunity.

Basically when we listen to the news, what we hear is that the US and Israel have been negotiating at this point about aiding Israel with $45 to $50 billion in the next 10 years. Basically $50 billion of the American tax payers are going to go to Israel and a significant part of them will be used to subjugate the Palestinian population and a significant part of them will be used to actually kill, torture, humiliate, arrest or arbitrarily detain Palestinian children, destroy homes, destroy Palestinian houses which is a daily Israeli practice.

So, without the US support, Israel cannot continue its daily war crimes and crimes against humanity as has been characterized by the human rights organizations. I just want to ask the audience to go to al-Haq website, it is a Ramllah-based human rights organization and look at the December 2015 report and read the conditions of the Palestinian children under the Israeli occupation.             

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