Month: April 2018

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Palestine

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The Detained Chil­dren of Palestine 

This pod­cast focus­es on my vis­it to Pales­tine, where I met activist Ivan Karkashi­an, who speaks about the wrong­ful incar­cer­a­tion of Pales­tin­ian youth in Israel and Pales­tin­ian territories.

click here to listen

The Detained Chil­dren of Pales­tine Pod­cast Script 

     I was walk­ing through the hus­tle and bus­tle of the old city of Jerusalem. A city that takes you back thou­sands of years, a city that blends his­to­ry, reli­gion and cul­ture. Ven­dors with vibrant col­ored spices on every cor­ner. The old cob­ble­stone paths take you to anoth­er time. The ancient archi­tec­ture reflects on the dif­fer­ent empires that have con­quered and left their mark on this Holy City in the past few millennia.

    In the streets mer­chants are wav­ing you down to sell to their best jew­el­ry or trin­kets. Or bak­ers try­ing to con­vince you why they have the best kanafeh (a Pales­tin­ian desert) in all of Jerusalem The com­pact city and high ener­gy is like a scene straight from a movie.

    As the sun sets and night falls on the old city, the shops are closed and the bus­tle dies down. Every­one goes home except for some.

   On every major inter­sec­tion, cor­ner, or entrance of the old city stand the Israeli Defense Forces sol­diers or com­mon­ly known as IDF sol­diers. That intim­i­dat­ing­ly stand guard and watch over all that enter the city.

    As I was walk­ing back with a group to my hotel that night I saw about 7 guards abus­ing two Pales­tin­ian young-adults near one of the entrances of the old city. As we walked clos­er the IDF sol­diers stopped what they were doing and start­ed to stare at us as if say­ing “there is noth­ing to see here.”

    This type of police bru­tal­i­ty is noth­ing new to Jerusalem or the state of Pales­tine. This is a chron­ic issue that plagues the soci­ety, where chil­dren are wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of crimes or giv­en unbe­liev­able pun­ish­ments. But Pales­tini­ans and oth­er allies have teamed togeth­er to cre­ate orga­ni­za­tions that com­bat the unjust judi­cial sys­tem in Israel & Palestine

One orga­ni­za­tion is called Defense for Chil­dren Inter­na­tion­al Pales­tine (DCIP for short)

Defense for Chil­dren Inter­na­tion­al Pales­tine (DCIP) is com­mit­ted to secur­ing a just and viable future for Pales­tin­ian chil­dren in the Occu­pied Pales­tin­ian Territory.

For more than twen­ty years, they have sup­port­ed and advo­cat­ed for this child pop­u­la­tion: inves­ti­gat­ing and doc­u­ment­ing grave human rights vio­la­tions, hold­ing both Israeli and Pales­tin­ian author­i­ties to account, and pro­vid­ing legal ser­vices to chil­dren in urgent need. They will con­tin­ue to demand nation­al and inter­na­tion­al bod­ies enact stronger mea­sures to safe­guard this vul­ner­a­ble demo­graph­ic of Pales­tin­ian soci­ety. ( http://www.dci-palestine.org/who_we_are )

  • In my time in Jerusalem I got the chance to speak to Ivan Karkashi­an , who is the advo­ca­cy unit coor­di­na­tor of DCIP. This is what Karkashi­an  had to say about the mis­treat­ment of  Pales­tin­ian youth :

In recent news, Ahmed Tami­mi, a 16 year old Pales­tin­ian girl who kicked and slapped an Israeli sol­dier, could face 14 years in jail.

Accord­ing to Newsweek, Tamimi’s fam­i­ly and friends have said she was react­ing to an ear­li­er inci­dent in which an Israeli sol­dier shot her 14 year old cousin , Muham­mad Tami­mi, in the head with a rub­ber bul­let at close  range putting him in an 72 hour med­ical­ly induced coma, he sur­vived but still remains bad­ly injured.

Ahmed Tami­mi caused no bod­i­ly harm to the IDF solid­er, and could be charged with over a decade of jail time.

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Now to bring our U.S. law into per­spec­tive, it’s very impor­tant, to under­stand the con­trast between Israeli Law vs. U.S.  Law, even though U.S law varies state by state. I’ve cho­sen Flori­da as an exam­ple to com­pare the two.

In Flori­da any­one con­vict­ed of Gen­er­al Bat­tery (not caus­ing great bod­i­ly harm) against an offi­cer can be charged as a 3rd degree felony in Flori­da pun­ish­able by up to five years in rea­son, five years’ pro­ba­tion and $5000 fine.

The light­est sen­tence under this statute is six months to one year in coun­ty jail for assault against an office, charged as a 1st degree mis­de­meanor. The out­come varies from case by case, and what juris­dic­tion you are charged in.

Though the U.S. judi­cial sys­tem is not flaw­less, that’s a con­ver­sa­tion for anoth­er time these pun­ish­ments vary between Adults and Minors.

While in Israel, West Bank, and Gaza their harsh pun­ish­ments are not only placed on the adults but chil­dren also suf­fer unre­al­is­ti­cal­ly long sen­tences and go through ago­niz­ing tor­ment as soon as they are accused, found, or arrest­ed at their homes.

            And this is what DCIP objec­tive wants to end. This orga­ni­za­tion wants to stop the dis­crim­i­na­tive judi­cial sys­tem, and they want to start with the chil­dren who are suf­fer­ing the most from being denied access to school and hav­ing to start work­ing menial jobs that can only take them so far into soci­ety. As chil­dren they have the right to a high­er edu­ca­tion and freedom.

Cit­ed Sources