[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
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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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