[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 206 (Monday, December 7, 2020)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1101-E1102]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 FROM HAARETZ: ``ISRAEL'S WAR ON PALESTINIAN CHILDREN'' BY GIDEON LEVY

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. BETTY McCOLLUM

                              of minnesota

                    in the house of representatives

                        Monday, December 7, 2020

  Ms. McCOLLUM. Madam Speaker, when military force and violence are 
used to oppress, dehumanize, and deny fundamental human rights to an 
entire civilian population--women, men, and children--it is an 
injustice that is antithetical to America's values and our self-
proclaimed belief in promoting dignity, equality, and justice for all. 
The Israeli military occupation of Palestine is such an injustice. 
Settlement expansion, home demolitions, the military detention of 
children and state sponsored violence are the weapons used as Israel 
seeks to annex Palestinian land and destroy any prospects for 
Palestinian self-determination.
  The violence used by Israel against Palestinians, especially 
children, is shocking and abhorrent. Late last week a particularly 
grotesque act of state sponsored violence took place when a 13 year-old 
Palestinian boy living under military occupation in the West Bank

[[Page E1102]]

was shot in the abdomen by an Israeli soldier. The child, Ali Abu 
Aalya, later died.
  According to a statement from the United Nations Children's Fund, 
UNICEF, issued on December 4, 2020, ``A 13 year-old Palestinian boy was 
shot and killed today in the West Bank in the State of Palestine. In 
the past two weeks. four other Palestinian children were shot and 
severely injured in the West Bank . . .''
  The UNICEF statement continues, ``From January to September this 
year, according to UN data to date, 232 incidents involving the injury 
of Palestinian children, some of whom sustained long-term damage. 
UNICEF urges Israeli authorities to fully respect, protect, and fulfil 
the rights of all children and refrain from using violence against 
children, in accordance with international law.''
  Such a rebuke from UNICEF, calling on Israel, a U.S. ally that 
receives $3.8 billion in U.S. taxpayer funded military assistance, to 
``refrain from using violence against children'' should make every 
Member of Congress and American citizen question whether U.S. military 
assistance is being used to injure and kill Palestinian children.
  I strongly urge the incoming administration of President-Elect Biden 
to investigate Israel's killing of Ali Abu Aalya, as well as Israel's 
on-going pattern of using state sponsored military violence against 
Palestinian children. Members of Congress and the American people 
deserve to know whether U.S. taxpayer funding to Israel's Ministry of 
Defense is being used directly or indirectly to facilitate or enable 
violence against Palestinian children. Committing human rights abuses 
with impunity and with U.S. taxpayer aid is intolerable and there must 
be accountability on the part of the U.S. Government.
  Earlier this year, I introduced H.R. 2407, Promoting Human Rights for 
Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act. The 
bill deems the military detention of children a gross human rights 
violation and prohibits U.S. aid to support, enable, or facilitate such 
abuse of children. The military detention of children is a systemic 
practice of the Government of Israel used against Palestinian children 
as a tactic that violates international humanitarian law in order to 
maintain a permanent military occupation of Palestinian lands. There 
are twenty-four courageous colleagues who have joined me as co-sponsors 
of H.R. 2407 and I am deeply appreciative of their commitment to 
defending human rights and the rights of children.
  ``Israel's War on Palestinian Children'' was published on December 
5th in the Israeli newspaper HAARTEZ. In a column by Gideon Levy, the 
systemic brutality and violence inflicted on Palestinian children by 
the Government of Israel is described. Mr. Levy writes about his own 
country, Israel, this way: ``What would you think of a regime that 
allows the shooting of children, that abducts them in their sleep and 
razes their schools? That's exactly what you must think of the regime 
here in our country.''
  Madam Speaker, I include in the Record Mr. Levy's powerfully honest 
column. I would like Members to read this column and answer Mr. Levy's 
question: What would you think of a government that allows the shooting 
of children?

                      [HAARETZ.com, Dec. 5, 2020]

                  Israel's War on Palestinian Children

                            (By Gideon Levy)

       Last week, we were in the Al-Arroub refugee camp, searching 
     for an open area in which to sit, for fear of the 
     coronavirus. There wasn't one. In a camp in which house 
     touches house, whose alleys are the width of a man and strewn 
     with garbage, there's nowhere to sit outside. One can only 
     dream of a garden or a bench; there isn't even a sidewalk. 
     This is where Basel al-Badawi lives. A year ago, soldiers 
     shot his brother dead, before his eyes, for no reason. Two 
     weeks ago, Basel was snatched from his bed on a cold night 
     and taken, barefoot, for questioning. We sat in his family's 
     cramped home and realized there was no ``out'' to go to. 
     While we were there, Israeli soldiers blocked the entrance to 
     the camp, as they occasionally do, arbitrarily, and the sense 
     of suffocation only grew.
       This is Basel's world and this is his reality. He is 16, a 
     bereaved brother, who was abducted from his bed in the dark 
     of night by soldiers. He has nowhere to go to except for 
     school, which is closed for part of the week due to COVID-19. 
     Basel is free now, more fortunate than certain other children 
     and teenagers. Around 170 of them are currently detained in 
     Israel. Other children are shot by soldiers, wounded and 
     sometimes killed, with no distinction made between children 
     and adults--a Palestinian is a Palestinian--or between a 
     life-threatening situation and a ``public disturbance.''
       On Friday they killed Ali Abu Alia, a 13-year-old boy. It 
     was a lethal shot to the abdomen. No one could remain 
     indifferent to the sight of his innocent face in photographs, 
     and his last picture--in a shroud, his face exposed, his eyes 
     closed, as he was carried to burial in his village. Ali, as 
     he did every week, went with his friends to demonstrate 
     against the wild and violent outposts that sprouted out of 
     the settlement of Kokhav Hashahar, taking over the remaining 
     land of his village, al-Mughayir. There is nothing more just 
     than the struggle of this village, there is nothing more 
     heinous than the use of lethal force against protesters and 
     there is no possibility that shooting Ali in the abdomen 
     could have been justifiable. In Israel, of course, no one 
     showed any interest over the weekend in the death of a child, 
     one more child.
       Up until the current school year, around 50 children from 
     the shepherding community of Ras a-Tin studied at the school 
     in al-Mughayir, the village of the deceased boy. They had to 
     walk about 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) each day, round trip, to 
     attend. This year their parents, with the help of a European 
     Commission aid organization based in Italy, built them a 
     modest, charming school in the village. Israel's Civil 
     Administration is threatening to demolish it, and in the 
     meantime it is harassing the pupils and teachers with 
     surprise visits to check whether the toilets had been, God 
     forbid, connected to a water pipe--in a village that was 
     never connected to the power grid or the water supply. The 
     children of Ras a-Tin must have known Ali, their former 
     classmate, now dead.
       The children did not know Malek Issa, of Isawiyah, in East 
     Jerusalem. The 9-year-old boy lost an eye after it was hit by 
     a sponge-tipped bullet fired by an Israeli police officer. On 
     Thursday the Justice Ministry department that examines 
     allegations of police misconduct announced that no one would 
     be charged in the shooting, after 10 months of intensive 
     investigation. It was enough for the policemen involved to 
     claim that stones had been thrown at them, perhaps one of 
     them hit the boy. But no video shows stones being thrown, nor 
     is there any other evidence of this. Ali's killers can also 
     sleep in peace: No one will prosecute them. All they did was 
     to kill a Palestinian child.
       These and many other incidents are taking place during a 
     period that is among the quietest in the West Bank. This is 
     the terror taking place, committed by the state. When we hear 
     of such incidents in vicious dictatorships--children who are 
     snatched from their beds in the middle of the night, one boy 
     who was shot in the eye, another who was shot and killed--it 
     sends shivers down our spine. Shooting at demonstrators? At 
     children? Where do such things happen? Not in some faraway 
     land, but rather just an hour's drive from your home; not in 
     some dark regime, but in the only democracy.
       What would you think of a regime that allows the shooting 
     of children, that abducts them in their sleep and razes their 
     schools? That's exactly what you must think of the regime 
     here in our country.

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