By Robert Inlakesh
A child named Karim, who was detained by the Israeli occupation forces, testified that “they (Israeli soldiers) insulted us, slapped me on my face, and kicked me in my stomach and waist.
A recent report released by ‘Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P)’ has accused the Israeli military of abducting, torturing and even using Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip as human shields. However, this report doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.
So far, during the war on Gaza, at least 16,000 children have been murdered by the Israeli military’s genocidal onslaught, with tens of thousands more left with varying degrees of injuries.
Of Gaza’s some 2.2 million, just over half are under the age of 18, meaning that over one million children have been terrorized for 11 months straight.
This war in Gaza has led to the invention of a new acronym by medical professionals and emergency workers: WCNSF, meaning Wounded Child No Surviving Family.
There is currently no metric by which we can properly quantify the sheer scale of child trauma inside the besieged Gaza Strip and there are no comparable conflicts in which we have seen every single child living inside a single territory traumatized. It suffices to say, we are witnessing something new in human history in terms of the long-term impacts that this genocide may have on children.
The report published by DCI-P, cited data that the rights group collected to conclude that Israeli forces are “systematically detaining and torturing Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip, including using some as human shields.”
The report goes into details of varying cases, including one in which 8 children were taken hostage by Israeli forces in Gaza City’s Al-Tuffah area on December 27, 2023. It noted the cases of 13-year-old Abdullah H. and 11-year-old Abdulrahman H. as well as 12-year-old Karim S., whom Israeli soldiers forced to “take off their clothes and bound their hands before forcing them to walk in front of Israeli tanks”.
A child named Karim, who was detained by the Israeli occupation forces, testified that “they (Israeli soldiers) insulted us, slapped me on my face, and kicked me in my stomach and waist. I almost died from the beating,” adding that “then they made us walk in front of bulldozers and tanks in the streets so that the resistance wouldn’t target them.”
Back in March, the NGO Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor also released a report on similar trends of human shield taking during the Israeli invasion of al-Shifa Hospital.
Israeli forces have also used Palestinians frequently to inspect tunnel openings that they suspect of being rigged with explosives and have used children for such tasks, the reason for this practice allegedly came from them originally using dogs for this activity, but after losing too many they decided to use Palestinian civilians. It is unclear how many civilians have died due to such practices.
The DCI-P report notes cases of children who were detained being beaten with rifles butts, blindfolded, stripped naked, attacked with dogs, threatened with knives, spat upon, and a whole litany of horrifying forms of torture.
A United Nations report, released on June 12, also revealed that Israeli forces “systematically targeted and subjected Palestinians to SGBV (Sexual and Gender-Based Violence) online and in person since October 7, including through forced public nudity, forced public stripping, sexualized torture and abuse, and sexual humiliation and harassment.”
In this report, it is revealed that men and young boys were taken captive by Israeli soldiers who forced them to take off their clothes, before taking videos of them naked and forcing women to watch while some were even “coerced to do physical movements while naked.”
These practices, of sexual violence against children are not new to Israeli occupation forces. Josh Paul, a former US State Department official told CNN about a case that he had dealt with of a 13-year-old Palestinian boy being raped by Israeli guards in the al-Moskobiyya detention center, located in Jerusalem, back in 2021.
As for the use of children as human shields, we also only need to look back to 2022, when Ahed Mereb, a 16-year-old Palestinian girl, was used as a human shield by Israeli forces during a raid on Jenin. Ahed described being called a “terrorist” by soldiers who held her at gunpoint, stating, “I was trembling and crying and shouting to the soldiers to remove me because the bullets were passing over my head.”
If we look at the cases of the now infamous Sde Teiman detention center, described as “worse than Abu Ghraib” or “Palestine’s Guantanamo”, where Palestinian detainees who are held without a charge have been gang-raped, raped with metal and electrified sticks, in addition to being sexually tortured with dogs and other methods, children are also being held hostage in such facilities.
At least 38 Palestinians have died so far in Israeli detention and prison facilities, with many suspecting that number to be much higher and so far undisclosed.
It suffices to say that Palestinian children are being actively targeted for torture, murder, and sexual abuse and are being used as human shields. Despite the mounting evidence of such violations of international law, there still seems to be little focus on these crimes in the international media and from Western public officials.
Author:
Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.
(Originally published in The Palestine Chronicle)
