The Heroism of the World’s Most Moral Army when faced with an 8 year old Palestinian child terrorist
I know it is easy to criticise the Israeli army but are only doing their duty in what are very difficult circumstances. The Palestinians living under occupation don’t like them and this is particularly true of their children.
You see Palestinian children are not what they seem. For one thing they are not Jewish and that is important. When Rabbis Elitzur and Yitzhak Shapira wrote Torat HaMelech (the King’s Torah) in 2011 they advocated the killing on non-Jewish children. As Israel’s largest circulation newspaper, Yediot Aharanotexplained:
According to the book, "Hurting small children makes sense if it's clear that they'll grow up to harm us, and in such a situation – the injury will be directed at them of all people."
Shapira explained in the interview, "Assuming that at a time of war I must kill children in order to win – otherwise my soldiers will die, then killing the enemy's children is the right thing to do rather than have my soldiers killed…
"If I believe there is an evil king, a tyrant, who is involved in many unjustified wars, and I want to win the war, and my way is for his children to be hurt in order to weaken his spirit and have him stop sending his soldiers to war – then it's permissible."
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| B'Tselem video: Search for stone throwers, Hebron, March 2017 B'Tselem |
When this book came under attack in Israel it was immediately defended by scores of rabbis. Ha’aretz reportedthat
‘Dov Lior, chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba and a respected figure among many mainstream religious Zionists, noted that the book is "very relevant especially in this time."‘
To understand this mentality one has to go back to Himmler in a speech in Posen in Poland on October 6th 1943 to senior Nazi officials, Himmler explained why the killings had to include Jewish children:
‘I did not assume to have the right to exterminate the men… and have the avengers personified in the children to become adults for our children and grandchildren.’ [Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews p. 294]
This mentality is not confined to Himmler. Ayelet Shaked, Justice Minister in Netanyahu’s 2015 government, posted on her Facebookpage:
They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.
So those of you who are tempted to blame the individual soldiers should bear in mind that they operate in a racist context, where even children are seen as legitimate targets.
It should be noted that the B'tselem human rights organisation has come under repeated attack from the Israeli government for aiding 'terrorists' by raising issues of human rights. See e.g.
The army is investigating the incident in Hebron, which was caught on film by human rights group B'Tselem. The mother says the soldiers refused to let him ago until he names stones throwers.
Gili Cohen Mar 23, 2017 7:00 PM
The Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem has released a video purportedly showing Israel Defense Force soldiers taking a Palestinian boy of about eight from house to house in the West Bank town of Hebron. The organization says the soldiers led the boy from house to house in an effort to get him to identify children who had thrown stones at Israelis.
The video, which was filmed by a number of volunteers for B'Tselem on Sunday, shows a group of soldiers taking custody of the boy, Sufian Abu Hita, and then shows him from various vantage points. In the video, the boy appears to be frightened and uncertain what the soldiers want of him.
The soldiers in the video were from the Golani brigade and had only recently been deployed in Hebron, a predominantly Palestinian city with a small Jewish population. At least a dozen soldiers appear in the video, three of them officers. In one clip, an officer with the rank of 1st lieutenant is seen calling on an older Palestinian to help translate their instructions to the boy.
In the video, which was filmed with a cell phone, the boy in seen being led by the soldiers, with two of them holding him by his hands. He is also seen on the roof of a house being led by a soldier in a search of several portions of the roof.
In a clip that appears to have been filmed by someone else, another soldier is holding the boy by his shirt, as the officer holds the boy's hand, leading him out of the house. A group of Palestinian women then approach the scene and take him by the hand, away from the soldiers as the women shout at the soldiers.
A B'selem news release quotes the boy's mother, Amana, as saying that she approached one of the soldiers and asked that they return her son, but they had refused. "[The soldier] said: 'If you want to take him, you need to convince him to provide us the names of the children who have been throwing stones.' I tried to explain to the soldier that we don't live in the neighborhood, and that we had only come to visit my parents, and that the boy doesn't know the names of the children in the neighborhood," she said.
"The soldier ignored what I had said," the mother said, adding that the boy was barefoot as the soldiers took him from house to house.
The IDF is currently investigating the soldiers' conduct. The army said it was unaware of the incident before B'Tselem released the video. Even if the soldiers suspected Sufian of wrongdoing, at eight years old, he would be younger than the age of criminal responsibility, which is 12. Children younger than 12 cannot be punished for criminal acts.
In response the IDF said: "From an initial inquiry, it appears that last Sunday, an observation point spotted a firebomb being thrown at [adjoining Jewish settlement] of Kiryat Arba. An IDF force that was dispatched to the site caught a suspect and led him to his parent's house because he is a minor. It should be noted that from an initial inquiry, the force did not demand that the minor direct them to additional suspects."