December 24, 2012 
Dec 24, 2012 by occpal | Updated May 4, 2013
Follow @occpal
Apparently nothing has changed a lot since HRW trolled around to extract money in a corrupt fundraiser to “relieve” potential Saudi donors including a Royal member of the Shura Council of their oil-dollars by bragging about the group’s “battles” with the “pro-Israel pressure groups while serving the latter agenda all too well.
In the latest selective ‘condemnation‘ HRW slams Gaza’s resistance for alleged violating “laws of war” by launching hundreds of rockets at Israeli civilians.”
Where to start when we dig through HRW’s reports, which seems to be the utmost activity: Creating biased reports.
First of all HRW seems to forget there is an absolute right of self-defense and resistance during occupation. ( Brayer: The Absolute Right of Palestinian Resistance)
And no. Israel does not have the “Right to Self-Defense” in International Law against Occupied Palestinian Territory.
According to the Law of Occupation it rather has a lot of obligations which it is literally raping one after another. Quoting:
“The occupying power is thus precluded from annexing the occupied territory or otherwise unilaterally changing its political status and is bound to respect and maintain the political and other institutions that exist in that territory.
During the period of occupation, the occupant is responsible vis-à-vis the local population, the ousted government, and third parties, for the management of public order and civil life in the territory under its control.
The doctrine of occupation serves as a useful device to fill the “spatial problem”—the exercise of “foreign state power in the territory of a continuing sovereign state.”
The law of occupation operates as a gap-filler—in fact the only such gap filler—assigning authority to one state to act in the territory of another state.”
I may remind you that the “Law of Occupation” was codified in the 1899 and 1907 Hague Peace Conferences and later modified by the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention.
Yet, even the law of occupation as a “gap filler” is not secured by UN State parties and it’s mandate holding NGO’s living up to any law (not this one, not the 1907 Hague Convention nor the Fourth Geneva Convention) but rather function as a sustaining force or even a catalyst by their silence becoming Israel’s consent, resulting in fundamental inalienable rights to be violated in ongoing crescendo bending so called Human Rights scopes and forthcoming statements in inaction towards those whose rights are really denied or taken – if they have been granted ever in the first place – creating a black hole in which every imaginable ‘right’ disappears before it even can be born to be effectuated.
Secondly did not one human being in this world condemn the Jewish ‘heroic’ resistance for fighting the same evil as Zionism: Nazism.
Did ANYONE in this world tell the Bielski brothers to go throw FLOWERS in stead of ammunition and explosives?
And let’s not forget, who started this mess in the first place: “Israel” before it existed. In 1946 with the bombing of the King David Hotel assassinating 91 innocent people.
After 1946 it took a whole 55YEARS before any resistance started using a ‘rocket’ for the first time ever.
THE FACTS
For a clear visualization of the cycle of initiation and continuation of attacks on Palestine and infograph
Click to enlarge
GENOCIDE SINCE 1946
Starting in 1946 and after over 77 massacres even today the latest is still going on.
Namely: the ongoing ethnic cleansing by deprivation policies, causing excess death a.k.a avoidable mortality. A genocide, unknown by many, of an unseen magnitude. (The real cost of lives for the sake of zionism. Research by Dr. Gideon Polya)
Actually the ‘powers’ and those carrying their mandates by their grace forgot that Israel is denying the very same which Jewish people in World War II used to do themselves:
Resist and smuggle to fight deprivation, i.e. even arms to fight any intruders. For who forgot the facts:
Battle at the Holocaust Project
But what does HRW actually know about resistance in the first place?
Apparently nothing at all whatsoever other than ‘resisting’ openness about facts and honest reporting, protecting the bias and propaganda, and above all: protecting those who left the Gulag to become gatekeepers for those creating a new Gulag for others:
Click to read the article on Jewish.. and Palestine’s Resistance
The HRW: From Gulag Liberators to Saudi Retainers Human Rights Watch has betrayed its original mission (NRO via IMRA)
So some history lessons for those who did not pay attention in class:
“What if “#UN” (and HRW) had been witnesses in Warsaw Ghetto?”
If you do not get my equasion with Warsaw Ghetto I suggest you check out this
“Leaflet to the world from it’s largest open air extermination camp: Gaza“
Oh wait, of course you need some evidence to come to some conclusion the current zionist practices equal nazism. So some photos to compare and to end this ‘discussion” for once and for all. (Photos: Hashoah versus Al Nakba)
Click to see the full album
That hidden for this world, and with complicity of NGO’s like HRW itself utterly appalling and shocking facts like THESE stay silenced does say more about the agenda of HRW than those who are beyond recovery mental distorted to commit such crimes. In 2009 already, Barry Rubin exposed the double standards and hidden agendas at the HRW: Human Rights (sic) Watch: The Big and Little Hands Always Point Against Israel
HRW “fighting” exclusively for those who left the gulags and stalags – or never survived them at all – to serve merely those re-creating the 2012 version of the holocaust. And worse equal an Abu Ghraib, with one important difference, the Zionist version existed long before the real Abu Ghraib itself.
The “New” Abu Ghraib” – Israel’s own ‘Trophy Pictures”
Where is HRW’s condemnation about 825 extrajudicial executions (Read: death sentence without a trial whatsoever) in Gaza only per Dec 2011 only in 5 years only.
Or the 1516 children assassinated by Israel since the year 2000? (Remember these Children HRW?)
Of course writing condemnations and slamming around is as much of worth as this letter of Shimon Peres as displayed below: Absolutely nothing.
Click to enlarge
Apparently HRW did not get the Israeli memo of the real deaths of Gaza’s flares since the first one was launched after 5 decades of ongoing and unrelentless massacres by the zionist state. For those flares killed 24 people in the same years since 2001 (Israeli source)
Aren’t you at HRW quite ashamed, knowing Israel is committing war-crimes over decades now only by settling? So you will remember again:
“Settling” constitutes a warcime according to international law and ICC statute. Even under US’ vetoing and thus raping it’s very own military legislation on the matter’
For who forgot….
LAW
“States may not deport or transfer parts of their own civilian population into a territory they occupy.”
SummaryState practice establishes this rule as a norm of customary international law applicable in international armed conflicts.
International armed conflictsThe prohibition on deporting or transferring parts of a State’s own civilian population into the territory it occupies is set forth in the Fourth Geneva Convention.[1]
It is a grave breach of Additional Protocol I.[2]
Under the Statute of the International Criminal Court, “the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies” constitutes a war crime in international armed conflicts.[3]
Many military manuals prohibit the deportation or transfer by a party to the conflict of parts of its civilian population into the territory it occupies.[4]
This rule is included in the legislation of numerous States.[5]
Official statements and reported practice also support the prohibition on transferring one’s own civilian population into occupied territory.[6]
Attempts to alter the demographic composition of an occupied territory have been condemned by the UN Security Council.[7]
In 1992, it called for the cessation of attempts to change the ethnic composition of the population, anywhere in the former Yugoslavia.[8]
Similarly, the UN General Assembly and UN Commission on Human Rights have condemned settlement practices.[9]
According to the final report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Dimensions of Population Transfer, including the Implantation of Settlers and Settlements, “the implantation of settlers” is unlawful and engages State responsibility and the criminal responsibility of individuals.[10]
In 1981, the 24th International Conference of the Red Cross reaffirmed that “settlements in occupied territory are incompatible with article 27 and 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention”.[11]
In the Case of the Major War Criminals in 1946, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg found two of the accused guilty of attempting the “Germanization” of occupied territories.[12]
References
[1] Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 49, sixth paragraph (cited in Vol. II, Ch. 38, § 334).
[2] Additional Protocol I, Article 85(4)(a) (adopted by consensus) (ibid., § 335).
[3] ICC Statute, Article 8(2)(b)(viii) (ibid., § 336).
[4] See, e.g., the military manuals of Argentina (ibid., §§ 346–347), Australia (ibid., § 348), Canada (ibid., § 349), Croatia (ibid., § 350), Hungary (ibid., § 351), Italy (ibid., § 352), Netherlands (ibid., § 353), New Zealand (ibid., § 354), Spain (ibid., § 355), Sweden (ibid., § 357), Switzerland (ibid., § 357), United Kingdom (ibid., § 358) and United States (ibid., § 359).
[5] See, e.g., the legislation of Armenia (ibid., § 361), Australia (ibid., §§ 362–363), Azerbaijan (ibid., §§ 364–365), Bangladesh (ibid., § 366), Belarus (ibid., § 367), Belgium (ibid., § 368), Bosnia and Herzegovina (ibid., § 369), Canada (ibid., §§ 371–372), Congo (ibid., § 373), Cook Islands (ibid., § 374), Croatia (ibid., § 375), Cyprus (ibid., § 376), Czech Republic (ibid., § 377), Germany (ibid., § 379), Georgia (ibid., § 380), Ireland (ibid., § 381), Mali (ibid., § 384), Republic of Moldova (ibid., § 385), Netherlands (ibid., § 386), New Zealand (ibid., §§ 387–388), Niger (ibid., § 390), Norway (ibid., § 391), Slovakia (ibid., § 392), Slovenia (ibid., § 393), Spain (ibid., § 394), Tajikistan (ibid., § 395), United Kingdom (ibid., §§ 397–398), Yugoslavia (ibid., § 399) and Zimbabwe (ibid., § 400); see also the draft legislation of Argentina (ibid., § 360), Burundi (ibid., § 370), Jordan (ibid., § 382), Lebanon (ibid., § 383) and Trinidad and Tobago (ibid., § 396).
[6] See, e.g., the statements of Kuwait (ibid., § 405) and United States (ibid., §§ 406–407) and the reported practice of Egypt (ibid., § 402) and France (ibid., § 403).
[7] See, e.g., UN Security Council, Res. 446 , 452 and 476 (ibid., § 408), Res. 465 (ibid., § 409) and Res. 677 (ibid., § 410).
[8] UN Security Council, Res. 752 (ibid., § 411).
[9] See, e.g., UN General Assembly, Res. 36/147 C, 37/88 C, 38/79 D, 39/95 D and 40/161 D (ibid., § 412) and Res. 54/78 (ibid., § 405); UN Commission on Human Rights, Res. 2001/7 (ibid., § 413).
[10] UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights, Final report of the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Dimensions of Population Transfer, including the Implantation of Settlers and Settlements (ibid., § 415).
[11] 24th International Conference of the Red Cross, Res. III (ibid., § 419).
[12] International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Case of the Major War Criminals, Judgement (ibid., § 421).
So we make up the “bill”: the alleged war crime of rehearsing the fundamental right to resist a disengaged occupier behaving itself like an immoral transgressor of literally all (international law), regulations, Hague convention 1907, the Fourth Geneva convention and even it’s own military regulations have cost – by way of Gaza justified -based on int’l law rightful resistance” – fire: 24 lives.
From 2001 – to now, Israel killed almost 5000 Palestinians (of which 1000 children) in Gaza only according to B’Tselem
Which annoys me the most is the fact that HRW has being assimilated by the zionist narrative of the body-count. Neglecting to condemn the weapons of mass-destruction which are not propelled by air, sea, drones, F16’s, naval vessels or tanks, but the very policies that cause excess deaths. So far estimated on research costing lives of millions.
DEPRIVATION & EXCESS DEATH
Of basic human rights to which even an occupier is obliged when it occupies a territory. Yet, Israel is a disengaged occupier. Even Israeli NGO write an exhausting report about this matter in the context of International Law.
Or the report of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, with the literally ‘killing’ effects of racist policies in health care inside Israel itself towards Palestinians. You can read that here if it missed your mail or attention.
Of course the weaponry blown up beyond any proportions do NOT allow HRW to compare it to begin with. There is no war. There is an occupation.
While Israel is serving itself of illegall banned weaponry, not only killing on impact but again – causing excess death – by birth defects, cancer or other illness inflicting related diseases, disabilities, permanent loss of hearing or sight, while Gaza’s flares in times of mostly ‘good luck’ scratch some hut in a kibbutz.
Where the hell did HRW oversee the Crimes on Humanity itself regarding Israel’s arsenal?
SO DEAR HRW AND WORLD
Did it ever occur to you that Israel inciting all kinds of delusional imaginary threats like the Iran nuclear threats, endangered your lives as well, I emphasize also OUTSIDE PALESTINE, with Stuxnet and Flame?
Of course you all remember Chernobyl and Fukushima. I can assure you these kind of disasters of uranium, depleted or not do NOT RECOGNIZE your borders.
Neither your “democracies”. Where exactly is the map of whose human rights are defended or not? And what, of this great world’s environment brings you with the next breeze, the remains of Israel’s weapons testing into your own child’s bedroom or mushroom?
In stead of defending the human rights of those in Palestine, the HRW also neglects to condemn the real war criminal i.e. namely Israel, still denying any probe into it’s nuclear arsenal while building nuclear arms far before Vanunu in 1985 leaked the photos. Also some 27 years ago now.
So the next time, you heard a rocket came from Gaza, it is good to know the facts.
- Israel’s Latest Assault on Gaza → The Lie of Who Started It – Source
- Dissecting “IDF” propaganda: The numbers behind the rocket attacks ~ by @Mondoweiss
- You only get Half the story: What #israel’s @IDFSpokesperson (and apparently HRW) leaves out about #Gaza ~ by @yousefmunayyer
- Israel and Gaza: Context Behind Projectile Fire ~ by @yousefmunayyer
- “The Israeli Army has always struck civilian populations, purposely and consciously.” Israeli military analyst Zeev Schiff.
- So you believe the Israeli “StopTheRockets” propaganda: They PHOTOSHOP a Philipin woman into a more Ashkenazi one
- This is how ‘scared’ Israel’s alleged targeted civilians get when they have to hit shelters again (REMINDER NO SHELTERS in Gaza)
- 1 YEAR of INDISCRIMINATE ISRAEL’s ASSAULTS & MASSACRE ON GAZA | In Photos
- Forget all details “The name of #Israel’s game: erasing #Palestine…” | Global Voices
Or all compiled and continuously updated with the real facts. All you did NOT READ nor SEE in your local media → Israel’s Rocket From Gaza Myth
DEC 24, 2012 | 40 VIOLATIONS OF THE TRUCE AGREEMENT
HRW daring to condemn resistance has been silent so far on the ongoing: 40 documented violations of the cease fire agreement. Including: assassinations, kidnappings and shootings of Palestinians in Gaza. It must have been to call it the least a “Christmas Miracle” that exactly 1 incident has been covered by main stream media namely by New York Times and Reuters.
OVERVIEW OF ALL ISRAELI CEASE FIRE AGREEMENTE VIOLATIONS
I may remind everyone, that Israel attacks Palestine in the first 3 months of this year over a thousands times.
Also in the West Bank (where are no rockets whatsoever) and whether not even a rock(et) is launched at all…
PALESTINE UNDER ISRAELI ATTACKS & VIOLATIONS ▶ TIMELINE
KNOW THE ISRAELI FAIRY TALE
Do you still live in fairy-tale-land about Israel? Time to wake up: The Map of the “Greater Israel” even is hammered on the currency:
All facts at Storify continuously updated. Read what Israeli ‘leaders’ have said and done even before (peace) talks and how their actions contradict the reality and ugly facts which they try to hide from you:
You can forget all details. Save yourself time. It is only about Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, enabled by bigoted NGO’s and corrupt governments… like the HRW as well:
Israel. Not looking for Peace. Nor Talks. But this…
THE LOBBY
Israel’s crimes, sustained by the lobby which is taking care your media stays biased, your government stays uninformed, or bribed so you stay ignorant. Or attack the very press so they can not cover nor convey truth. Or attack even the online activists who bring out the facts and footage.
And if you are not aware of all which is happening by ‘the force’ of this lobby or are not aware of the hidden agenda, I suggest you read the revealing speech of Stanley L. Cohen at the ICC conference in Zurich on December 14, 2012
All buttons are pushed to keep you ignorant.
HUMAN RIGHTS NGO’S BEND AND BOW FOR -, OR EVEN OWNED BY THE DIRTY LOBBY…
Now HRW can share itself into the same pathetic assimilated zionist echelon like UNICEF, whose Israeli ‘head‘ called for continuing of bombing and even opposed a cease fire, knowing how many children were indiscriminately slayed by her “State of Israel’
Or like UNOCHA, which almost succumbed, but at least submitted itself to silence the voice of a rue human rights fighter, Khulood Badawi. For which the “State of Israel” even put ads in the hasbara outlet of Ha’aretz to get her fired over the tweeting of a photo of a wounded child. (While she was not the one tweeting it as first, but hence, she’s the one with the ‘job’ to defame.
More about Israel’s Total Moral Bankruptcy which was exposed as it attempted to get OCHA employee Khulood Badawi fired ( by occpal)
On May 4, 2013 Electronic Intifada published:
It does not stop here.
On December 17, 2012: Richard Falk was fired as director of the US-based Human Right Watch.
The zionist lobby made HRW succumb to ditch Richard Falk. (Written by Gilad Atzmon, who is Jewish by the way) The alleged anti-semite but definitely also 100% Jewish Falk already once was deported by Israel itself for exposing Israel’s zionist character. Just recently on Dec 5, 2012 Falk called on Israel to abide on the cease fire agreement which it has violated at time of this post at least 40 times.
The ‘great HRW founded on the belief of superiority of American morals and values. It has close links to US foreign policy elites and to other interventionists and expansionist lobbies. Richard Falk was ‘fired’ after Ken Roth received a letter of Hillel C. Neuer, executive director UN Watch, an Israeli advocacy group in Geneva.
Ken (who is Jewish like Falk) was hired by HRW executive director Aryeh Neir (who is also Jewish). When Aryeh Neir in ’93 left HRW to become president of Jewish billionaire George Soro’s ‘Open Society Institute’ Roth runs ‘the show’ at HRW. Jewish groups and individuals like George Soro, Irene Diamond, Lewis Cullman, Leon Levy, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Robert Bernstein, Edgar Bronfman Jr., etc. are the major sponsors ($100,000 +) of the HRW.
To be 100% exact, factual and honest about Ken: it has to be said that he as well already earned the anti-semitic label by the zionist lobby when he in 2010 debunked the Israeli myth of Ahmadinejad’s alleged remark to “wipe Israel off map“ as Roth stated the truth that the Iranian president had been mistranslated.
One of the greatest humanists and scholars of our time fighting for Justice and human rights and Special Rapporteur to the United Nations: Prof Em. Richard Falk. An international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years and dedicated his life to true human rights. With all his heart and soul.
Last but not least Falk get’s labeled to be an anti-semite and defamed by the CRIF. His response on these allegations can be read here:
Open Letter of Response to CRIF (Counsèil Représentif des Institutions juives de France) ~ by Prof. Em. Richard Falk
The zionist “Lobby” even ethnic cleansing the Jewish voices of justice within NGO’s with so called values and morals.
Under the pressure and umbrella of it’s zionist funders who manipulate your ‘bakens’ of ( i assure you highly misplaced) trust in a just ‘human rights’- world, or like the HRW, the lobby literally OWNS it.
Causing this.
I urge you to behold what this world’s powers and it’s NGO’s cause, supporting not only violence, indirect or direct but even allow psychological warfare damaging millions for the rest of their lives. Dare to watch:
And you ask yourselves why Palestine uses it’s legal right to resist?
Click to enlarge
It would be better, HRW uses it’s resources on the collective brainwashing and damaging of “Israel’s Chosen Ones’ mentally abusing and brainwashing their own children and as from the pacifier (!) funneling up hatred to a grade they become self-desired assassinins at the age of 11 or 12, like one of the boys in this video predicts he is going to assassinate 85 people.
Or the Israeli little boy which says:
“I picture a dead Arab & that makes me happy”
ISRAEL’S MILITARY INDOCTRINATION OF CHILDREN
By Stephen Lendman
Follow @StephenLendman
Israel is one of the world’s most militarised societies, routinely recruiting children as young as 13 to perform military service in defiance of international law, writes Stephen Lendman
The modern roots of Zionism go back to its founding at the First Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland, in 1897, its programme being the “establishing for the Jewish people of a publicly and legally assured home in Eretz Yisrael”. Five decades later, this was accomplished by dispossessing indigenous Palestinians, denying them the right to their land, creating a new Jewish identity, legitimising Jews as rightful owners, and using superior military force to support the state against defenceless civilians who were no match against their powerful adversary.
Leading up to and after its war of independence, Israel stayed politically and militarily hard line, negotiating from strength, choosing confrontation over diplomacy, and naked aggression as a form of self- defence and occupation in order to seize as much of historic Palestine as possible and secure an ethnically pure Jewish state. These policies were called “Israelification [and] De-Arabisation” to preserve a “Jewish character”.
In his book, The Making of Israeli Militarism, author Uri Ben-Eliezer says writing about Israeli militarism involves “ventur(ing) into an intellectual minefield”, given Jewish history under the Nazis and the perception of Israel as a safe haven. Yet, decades of Arab- Israeli conflict have produced seven full-scale wars, two Intifadas, and many hundreds of violent incidents.
Ben-Eliezer believes that, beginning in the 1930s, militarism “was gradually legitimized within the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, then within the new state [it was] crystallized into a value, a formula, and an ideology.” Over time, it acquired a dynamic of its own, and then, during the 1948 war, it “acquired full legitimacy” and became decisive in setting policy.
Politics and militarism were wedded to create a militaristic view of reality. Thereafter, it was institutionalised to the point that “the idea of implementing a military solution to [political problems] was not only enshrined as a value in its own right, but was also considered legitimate, desirable, and indeed the best option.”
Today, militarism is a “cardinal aspect of Israeli society”, its quintessential element under the 1986 National Defence Service Law that requires all Jewish Israeli citizens and permanent residents to serve. The law covers both men and women, with exemptions only for Orthodox Jews, educational inadequacy, health, family considerations, married or pregnant women or those with children, criminals, and other considerations at the Defence Ministry’s discretion. In addition, most Israeli leaders are former high-ranking Israel Defence Force (IDF) officers, politics and the military being inextricably connected.
Little wonder, then, that Israel is a modern-day Sparta, a nation of about 5.6 million Jews and another 500,000 settlers that is able to mobilise over 600,000 combatants in 72 hours, equipped with state-of-the art weapons and the backing of the world’s only superpower for whatever it wants to do.
Yet on 2 March 2008, the US McClatchy Newspapers writer Dion Nissenbaum headlined that, “Israelis show declining zest for military service,” saying that “….under the surface, something has been slowly shifting in Israel as the nation prepares to celebrate its 60th anniversary on May 14. More and more Israelis are avoiding mandatory military service — something” earlier considered unthinkable.
According to author and former chief Israeli military psychologist, Rueven Gal, “in the past, it is true that not serving in the military was considered the exception. In more recent times, it became more tolerable and more acceptable to people.”
According to 1997 IDF statistics, fewer than one in 10 Israeli men avoided service. Now it’s nearly triple that number, or, according to some, even higher, given the resonance of conscientious objectors, refusniks, students unwilling to serve in the occupied territories, and “Breaking the Silence” reservists speaking out about IDF atrocities over the past decade, especially during the Gaza war.
Women are also opting out, around 44 per cent compared to 37 per cent a decade earlier. As a result, Israeli National Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau has called the IDF no longer a “people’s army [but rather] half the people’s army.” Given Israel’s hardline militarism requiring mandatory service, officials are seeking new ways to deter avoidance.
One way of doing this is by indoctrinating Israeli young people to accept the militarism of Israeli society, particularly since various organisations in Israeli, such as the pressure group New Profile, are promoting themselves as being a “Movement for the Civilisation of Israeli Society” away from militarism and a culture of violence. Israeli “feminist women and men…. are convinced that we need not live in a soldiers’ state” and should no longer tolerate one.
In July 2004, a New Profile report entitled Child Recruitment in Israel examined how Israeli armed forces and Jewish militias indoctrinate young children to be warriors, a practice it believes is essential to stop.
Child recruitment involves more than having weapons and using them, there being no front lines in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In Israel and the occupied territories, IDF soldiers are everywhere. “Many military bases are located inside population centres, and few Israelis ever spend a day without meeting soldiers on duty,” the report says.
As a result, a functional definition of child recruitment is as follows, with a child being anyone under 18 recruited by one or more of the following methods: by wearing an official uniform, having an official document, or in other ways identified as an IDF or related group member, even if not formally; by promoting or supporting IDF actions, actively or through other services; and/or by undergoing practical or theoretical training to perform or assist IDF activities, formally or otherwise.
Armed forces and security groups include Israel’s military, its police (including conscripted border police), General Security Services (GSS), and Jewish militias, mostly based in settlements.
The relevant international laws governing the military use of children include Article 38 (2) and (3) of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), which state: (2) “State Parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of 15 years do not take a direct part in hostilities; [and] (3) State Parties shall refrain from recruiting any person who has not attained the age of 15 into the armed forces. In recruiting among those persons who have attained the age of 15 years but who have not attained the age of 18 years, State Parties shall endeavour to give priority to those who are oldest.”
Article 77 (2) of the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions (1977) contains similar language, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) criminalises the recruiting of children under 15 for military purposes.
The 1990 African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child recognised 18 as the minimum recruitment age. Then, in 2000, the International Labour Organisation’s Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention No. 182 condemned “all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery… including forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict.” The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (2000) also prohibited forced recruiting and raised the minimum age to 16.
Yet, contrary to international law, Israeli legislation takes precedence over these accepted norms and standards. Conscription at 18 is mandatory, at times includes those six months younger, and children under 18 may enlist voluntarily, but aren’t used as combatants until coming of age.
Child recruitment is also done informally, the idea being to prepare underage youths for future mandatory service. Ben-Eliezer has written how early Zionist settlers established militant organisations, notably the Bar Giora (named for Simon Bar Giora in ancient Roman times), Hashomer (The Guard), and the Haganah (Defence), which were small in scale but profound in influencing younger minds.
Ben-Eliezer explained these organisations by writing that “the formative years of the younger generation produced an ethos created by local experience: guarding fields and crops, fighting with Arab children, being given a weapon at the age of bar mitzvah [a boy’s 13th birthday]. This was the childhood experience of prominent members of the young generation [tempering their outlook] with suspicion, which frequently became hostility, and they reached maturity feeling that a confrontation between [Arabs and Jews] was inevitable.”
Before 1948, very young children engaged in military activities, doing so eagerly as a sort of game. As a result, a militaristic worldview developed, especially among youths later becoming leaders. Militant groups formed at this time include Fosh (a Hebrew acronym for Field Units), the Palmach (Striking Force), Stern Gang (Israeli Freedom Fighters, Lehi in Hebrew) and Irgun (the National Military Organisation — Etzel in Hebrew).
Before Israel’s war of independence, recruitment came through a “duty to volunteer”. Then it became mandatory after the IDF’s establishment on 26 May 1948, replacing the paramilitary Haganah. Today, such recruitment is still called a privilege in Israel, a “noble and worthy action”, moulding young minds to be eager when called upon and encouraging them to participate earlier as well. In the 1948 battle for Jerusalem, Israeli Youth Battalion trainees, aged 16 and 17, were combatants. So were women.
DEFINING ISRAELI MILITARISM: New Profile calls Israeli militarism “a way of thinking, which promotes forceful solutions, usually military ones, as preferable and even desirable ways of solving problems.” As a result, security forces are Israeli society’s most valued and revered members, “whose needs and opinions come second to none”. Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, called “the whole nation… an army and the whole land [a] front”.
Today’s IDF is the world’s fourth most powerful military, nuclear-armed with state-of-the-art weapons and technology, an active space and satellite programme, biological and chemical capabilities, and a large per capita military budget, financed generously by Washington.
The military also controls 48 per cent of public land, and recycles its commanders into high government positions, including municipality and regional council heads, mayors, ministers and heads of state. Others get top public administration positions or serve as business executives or directors.
“The unquestioned prestige enjoyed by top military officers emanates downwards, and some of it can still be enjoyed by” common soldiers, the report states. Children see and feel it everywhere in Israel, including from adult family members, from religious leaders, and in school. In addition, imagery and weapons are ubiquitous, including old tanks, guns and fighter jets visible in public places.
Militarised education starts in kindergarten, at home, and on the streets. “The military is physically present in schools and school activities”, with many uniformed soldiers teaching classes to programme young minds. Further, teachers, especially principals, are often retired career officers, and school walls are adorned with names and photographs of fallen heroes among their graduates.
Field trips for all ages are to military memorials on former battlegrounds. Curricula and textbooks reflect militarism, from kindergarten through secondary schools that have mandatory programmes called “preparation for the IDF” that include training. Glorifying military heroes and conquests while vilifying Palestinians are featured.
Symbolic recruitment also precedes conscription. This consists of indoctrinating youths to feel part of the military, mobilised for war, ready for combat, and eager to participate. It also consists of kindergarten and elementary school children sending gift packages to soldiers, especially on holidays, expressing their “gratitude” in personal letters.
A 1974 Israeli teachers’ guide entitled “When a Nation Reports for Duty” promotes enlistment by saying that the people as a whole carry the burden of the war effort, and it is divided between those who wear the IDF uniform and civilians who are not directly recruited by the IDF. “Therefore, it should be understood that [every] civilian carries the burden of the war effort,” the guide says.
Children learn such values early, and they stick, preparing them for later conscription and a lifetime of military support. At school, children are exposed to ceremonies, commemorations, speeches, field trips to military bases, and holiday celebrations of battles between “us” (Jews) and “the bad guys”, earlier Nazis, Egyptians, Persians, and Arabs, and now Palestinians. As a result, children are imbued “to accept military force and war as a natural state and a natural response to conflict situations”.
Soldiers in Israeli schools are both former IDF teachers and administrators as well as “uniformed soldiers on duty, stationed in schools as part of the school staff… The presence of former soldiers, especially retired high-ranking officers, in the education system is considered by many in Israeli society, including government, to be a positive influence on children,” reports say, especially since preparing youths for military service is a core educational goal.
In collaboration with the ministries of education and defence, the IDF operates two large-scale youth programmes, the Teacher-Soldier programme that trains soldiers to become teachers and to complement civilian staff despite their poor qualifications, and the Youth-Guide programme that works with underprivileged children, in some cases for Youth Battalions and in others as preparation for military service coordinators.
Soldiers working in Israeli schools are nearly always in uniform, report to civilian and military superiors, promote militarism and wars for defence, and children acclimatise themselves to viewing them as an integral part of their education and a future obligation.
Indoctrinating youths early on blurs the line between Israeli military and civil society, promotes militarism, and makes conscription seem inevitable, necessary and desirable.
PREPARING FOR MILITARY SERVICE: For most male and female Israeli young people, military service is a rite of passage and a natural step in the preparation for adulthood, something that policymakers have been cognizant of for decades.
After the 1973 War, the above-mentioned “When a Nation Reports for Duty” guide explained the role of all Israelis during emergencies and helped children understand it clearly. In 1984, actively preparing youths for military service began when the IDF and Israeli Ministry of Defence published a guide called “Towards Service in the IDF”, which explained the privilege of serving in the Israeli armed services, adapting to military and basic training, developing fitness in preparation, the IDF as a positive force in society, and preparing parents to accept their children’s role as future soldiers.
Since the run-up to the 1948 War, training for military service was common in Israel, especially through the Youth Battalions, but the 1984 programme included school indoctrination “as part of the ordinary curriculum”.
Today’s school programme is called “Willingness to Serve and Readiness for the IDF”, which is mandatory for three years in Israeli secondary schools, the programme’s goal being “preparing the entire youth population to service in the IDF, while strengthening their readiness and willingness to perform a substantial and contributing service, each to his abilities, and emphasising the importance of serving in combat units”.
Content includes combat legacy stories on field trips, the ethics of war, familiarisation with different IDF units, physical education and Arabic studies to enlist Israelis for intelligence. The format is regimented, emphasising discipline, and the “Soldier for a Day” programme takes children to a military base for descriptive presentations, especially about elite combat units.
Several civilian programmes also prepare children for future service, including “Preparation for Combat Fitness” courses, “Youth Battalions Special Forces Induction” and “Follow Me”. It is common in Israel “to see large groups of young men run about on public beaches, in preparation for military service”.
The Naale Programme (a Hebrew acronym for “Youth Immigrating Before Parents”) also promotes immigration for foreign Jewish children, encouraging them to come to Israel, attend school and become citizens. It presents military service as a major socialising force, stressing benefits such as acceptance in Israeli society.
Moreover, Article 44 of Israel’s 1986 National Defence Service Law authorises the IDF to obtain information about everyone eligible for service. Educators, employers and others asked to help must cooperate. Under Article 43, persons “Intended for Security Service” cannot travel abroad without Defense Ministry permission, although exemptions are granted with restrictions, such as time limits.
Prior to their conscription, most Israeli young people receive a warrant at home, requiring them to report to a regional conscription bureau in a practice called “first call-up” for initial screening, data verification, medical and intelligence tests and a personal interview. If after three warrants young people do not comply, police intervention may follow.
In addition to regular Israeli secondary schools, there are military high schools that include Mevo’ot Yam, which has 500 students who wear uniforms, participate in parades and learn weapons use in preparation for future Navy service, Israeli Air Force technical schools for cadets preparing for future IAF service, and the Amal 1 network, one of the largest in Israel, which carries out joint military-civilian projects for future Air Force service.
Courses at such schools combine civilian and military studies, children being groomed to become soldiers. This is the case even though Article 77 (2) of the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions (1977) prohibits recruiting children under the age of 15. In Israeli military schools, children are “regularly recruited” as young as 13 or 14, a practice that persists because of the pervasive influence of militarism in Israeli society and culture.
In all Israeli secondary schools, mandatory Youth Battalion Training Week simulates army life for those in 11th and 12th grade on military bases. With the children wearing uniforms, this training includes reception, processing, orientation and marches, night and day weapons and field training, and lessons about battle heritage, military ranks, discipline, adapting, service commitment, and the purity of arms.
During the entire training, Israeli children are surrounded by soldiers and treated like them in order to gain familiarity with military life. In groups of about 20, treatment and conditions are rigorous, obedience a must, and for those who disobey, punishments include extra calisthenics, running and chores like latrine duty.
In times of emergency, Israeli Youth Battalions may be recruited for active service as they were during the 1948 War. For boys aged 16 or older, elite combat unit try-outs are held, initially for two days, and for qualifiers of up to five, involving demanding and exhausting mental and physical fitness tests. The IDF’s reference to “substantial service” strongly emphasises Elite Combat Unit enlistment, being the “cream of the crop” destined for the “most exciting fighting activities”.
For the few selected, pressure to be accepted is intense because participation is considered a great honour.
Arranged through schools, children are also enlisted to support the IDF, especially during times of emergency or special needs. Besides training, they do laundry, sort uniforms, wash dishes, set dining room tables, clean vehicles, and do other chores, freeing soldiers for military duties.
To support a war effort, children as young as 15 and a half are enlisted for “labour service [to protect] the state or public security or for providing vital services to the population”. In all cases, schools cooperate, and during extreme times children have no choice.
Another way in which children are used for military purposes in Israel is in the Israeli Civil Guard, a police- run community-based organisation founded in 1974 to mobilise civilians for protection against Arab militia attacks. Today, the Guard patrols community areas, challenges Palestinians, harasses them, at times shoots them, and performs other services like securing public transportation, educational institutions, open markets and parking lots, as well as helping out at checkpoints.
About 15 per cent of Guard volunteers are children, eligible at age 15 to join with a restricted status that is removed a year later. Parental consent is also required. The youths are armed, and some schools give extra credit for participating.
Members of Israeli Emergency Squads are mostly adults to be called on as needed, but since 2002 secondary school pupils have increasingly also been enlisted. Although part of Israel’s police force, the Squads, set up under Section 8 of the 1971 Police Orders, allow the Israeli government “at times of war or emergency… to declare the Israeli Police Force, or a part of it, a military force which might be employed in military functions for the protection of the State.”
In the West Bank, Israeli children as young as 15 guard settlements and do other security work, performing functions that include working in police headquarters and patrolling with arms they’re trained to use.
Some of these children “grow up believing they must banish the Palestinians, and act” violently with impunity, including harassing them, beating them, breaking into their homes, destroying their property, and at times killing them.
There’s little difference between “training and assigning a child to do work as an armed [settlement] guard [or] assigning [them as] soldier[s] at the front in wartime… The formalities of whether one officially belongs to the army or not are hardly relevant,” reports say, given the pervasive militarisation of Israeli society.
Although civilian service is voluntary, children are raised “in a hostile and violent environment in the middle of a confrontation area”. In the occupied territories, many believe the land is their land. They must protect it, and the Palestinians are enemies. Under intense social pressure, children are encouraged to perform at a very immature age when they’re too young to know the consequences, yet they are conditioned to be militant and obedient.
A last feature of the military use of children by Israel is its use of Palestinian children as collaborators. Israel recruits Palestinian informants, including children, as field agents to provide intelligence, asking them to work as collaborators that most Palestinians call traitors.
Tactics involve detaining Palestinian children, then pressuring and torturing them to comply, much like the tactics Israel used in recruiting for the South Lebanon Army (SLA) after the 1982 Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon. Under Israeli supervision, SLA Lebanese citizens, including children as young as 12, were used as collaborators for intelligence purposes.
During the second Intifada, Palestinians, including children, were also used as human shields by Israel, forced at gunpoint to comply.
Militarised education starts early in Israel in both overt and symbolic ways, the aim being to condition young minds to accept military service as natural, vital, and an honour for Israeli citizens. The “educational system is so committed to [promoting] military service that it [fails] to consider” the harm done to new youth generations, who grow up thinking wars and violence are natural, peace unattainable, Arabs inferior, and Palestinians enemies.
The militarisation of society is corrupting and self- destructive, and the recruiting of child soldiers is criminal and unconscionable. All forms of it must stop. The alternative is unacceptable, illegal and intolerable.
The writer is a research associate of the Centre for Research on Globalisation.
(end)
And than one wonders, why the suicides in the Israeli army pass any death-rate over every level than caused by Palestinians?
DEADLIER THAN PALESTINIANS: SUICIDES IN THE ISRAELI ARMY
If you have the slightest thought Israel is bothered by this I have to disappoint you. Israel not so long ago, revived the Hannibal protocol.
From than on, Israeli (soldiers or not) are allowed to gun down, or obliged to, kill their comrades or to commit suicide in order to prevent capture for the sole purpose to prevent talks. Any talks. Exchange of POW talks. And even peace talks. And you wonder: Why they grow up to do this?
The “New” Abu Ghraib existed long before the real one. Behold Israel’s own “Army IDF Fashion” as well as their own “Trophy Pictures” as soldiers published those themselves – even boasting about their insane crimes – on social networks.
Go be ashamed of yourselves HRW!
While you might be worried about your ‘careers’ and worldly gain, know there are those among us who do not care about such. We only care about real human rights. The ones valid for all human life. And know as well, that we are sick and tired of bigoted NGO’s and holders of mandates (ab)using them for a cause which is violating it’s mission in the first place.
We will not be silenced. We, on the contrary to those who sell their moral’s and souls to a corrupt system will not bow for the shekels nor the dollars. And any one of you having a spine and a conscience neither should do so for:
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” ~ Bishop Desmond Tutu
I sincerely hope, all writing crappy biased reports will remember that every second wasted on the sustaining of violation of suppressed people of Palestine cost lives too.
And know too, that while you slam the door behind your back to indulge yourselves in the benefits brought to you by the ‘work’ you’ve achieved, we don’t observe ‘working hours’ for human right violations know no time span. It only knows unrepairable damage which is timeless. So we won’t be silent anymore. Not about oppressors. Not about those sustaining the status quo by becoming complicit by ‘condemning’ or use of any verb related to inaction.
The War on Truth has been declared by Israel. So we engage and resist…
We will act, we will report. Until all know the facts you silence. Watch us!
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Understand Resistance read: The Eagle of Palestine |
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Masked in Gaza: The Untold Story by Ramzy Baround |
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Palestine’s Right of Self-Defense by Stephen Lendman |
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There comes a Rocket from Gaza? And now the Facts! |
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All Israeli Massacres An Ongoing Genocide |
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Israeli Attacks and Violations on Palestine – Timeline |
Occupied Palestine | فلسطين 
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