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Israeli growing
crimes against humanity: Strip-searching Palestinian children
By: Sajida Fadlullah
Although the practice has been used by Israeli officials
against Palestinian children, even girls, for decades, If
Americans Knew was the only rights group among all those who
are concerned about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to
uncover the brutality and the extent of humiliation
Palestinian children suffer as a result of being
strip-searched almost daily at Israeli checkpoints.
The rights group If Americans Knew interviewed women in the
United States, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, and learned
that Israeli border officials systematically force females of
all ages, whether Christian or Muslim, take off their clothes
as part of their searches. And in many cases, If Americans
Knew said, Palestinian girls as young as seven and below are
also strip-searched by Israeli officials, without regard to
the negative psychological impact that would have on them.
According to an article published recently on Counterpunch
written by Alison Weir, executive director of If Americans
Knew, Israeli officials in many cases strip search mothers and
children together, while in some other cases girls are taken
from their parents and strip-searched alone.
• “Remove sanitary napkins”
Israelis order women to remove sanitary napkins, while their
small daughters are standing near, and in some cases in the
presence of their sons.
The report comes to only add a new episode to a long series of
Israeli violations of human rights, international law that
requires it protect civilians of the nation it occupies, as
well as Geneva Conventions.
It’s been recently discovered that Israeli soldiers used
Palestinian civilians, particularly in a recent raid on the
Old City of Nablus, as human shields to help them “safely”
search apartments for Palestinian fighters.
Testimonies gathered by the Israeli human rights organization,
B'Tselem, on February 25, on the first day of Israel's
military operation in the Old City of Nablus, showed that
Israeli soldiers forced two Palestinians, 'Amid and Samah
Amirah, ages 15 and 24, to walk at gun point and enter
“suspects’” houses ahead of them to make sure that
there’re no bombs threatening their lives, or that suspects
are carrying guns.
“Amid described how the Israel Occupation Forces (IOF) used
him at his own house at a time when the IOF apparently
believed one or more suspects might be inside, as suggested by
the fact that soldiers fired shots during the search:
"They aimed their weapons at me. One of them pushed me so
that I would go into the house first. I went in first, and
then the soldiers entered. One of them pushed me to a corner
of the room, and then fired into the house. They fired 5-6
shots inside the house. They told me to go into the rooms and
then they came in behind me."
According to International humanitarian law, a party to a
conflict is prohibited from using the civilian population or
individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military
operations.
Joe Saunders, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch
said that "the soldiers' actions fly in the face of the
Geneva Conventions, an Israeli high court decision, and the
IOF’s own prior commitments,"
"Israel should put an immediate end to this wholly
illegal practice which deliberately abuses the immunity to
which civilians are guaranteed under international law."
• Deep feelings of humiliation
If Americans Knew added that people it interviewed spoke about
the deep feelings of humiliation as a result of being strip
searched by Israeli soldiers, with many describing incidents
where they wept at the degradation they felt.
Even parents can’t protect their children from being
strip-searched by the Israelis.
"I remember crying and pleading with my mother,"
Gaza journalist Laila El-Haddad said describing an incident
when she was 12-years-old, and Israeli officials asked her to
take off her undershirt.
"They had machine guns," she added.
"We just had to submit." El-Haddad, who holds a
Masters degree in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School
of Government, added.
Strip searching is being applied on Palestinian children,
Christians and Muslims. It also targets those who carry
foreign citizenship, including native-born Americans.
• Maysoon Zayid also strip searched
Maysoon Zayid, a Palestinian American actress and professional
stand-up comedian of a Muslim family, detailed an incident
where she faced strip-searching at Ben Gurion Airport when she
was "seven, eight, nine years old" during family
trips to visit her parents' home in Palestine.
Maysoon said that on her most recent trip in July 2006, she
was forced by the Israelis in Ben Gurion Airport to remove her
sanitary pad, and later on officials refused to return back
her pad or even give her another one.
Zayid, who launched a program for newly disabled Palestinian
youths, many of them permanently disabled as a result of
attacks by the Israeli occupation army, described sobbing
uncontrollably, while sitting in a wheelchair, bleeding
publicly for hours as she waited for her flight,
"No one spoke up," she said. "There were
several women, including the woman who was pushing my
wheelchair, none of whom said a word."
"The flight attendants looked at me in disgust."
"They want us to get to the point where we don't go
back." Zayid said.
Israel is guilty of committing severe human rights violations
in the occupied Palestinian territories, including
"wanton destruction" of houses and infrastructure,
land grab, as well endangering the lives of and massacring
Palestinian civilians, however, no action had ever been taken
against Israel to stop it from carrying on with such barbaric
practices.
Also the United Nations, although aware of all these
violations, failed to issue a resolution punishing or even
denouncing the Israeli crimes against Palestinians that had
been going for decades.
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