NGOs call for public support in ending use of Palestinian child soldiers

An estimated 10,000 children are trained in Gazan terrorist camps each year, and that at least 160 have died digging terror tunnels into Israel.



A coalition of non-governmental organizations is urging the public to help stop the use of Palestinian children as soldiers and war resources by their leaders and terror groups in the region.

There are an estimated 300,000 child soldiers in 20 countries worldwide, including any person under 18 who is either recruited or used by an armed force or armed group in any capacity, according to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
While the plight of child soldiers in Africa in particular has received global attention, their Arab counterparts in the Palestinian territories have often been ignored by the international community, as the human cost of using children to carry out terror attacks or as human shields has become overlooked in the political battles raging over the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Yet the children who survive their ordeal often carry the scars of trauma, preventing them not only from having a normal childhood, but also from being able to live fulfilling lives as adults.

Now, a group of NGOs has banded together in a bid to raise the issue of Palestinian child soldiers on the world stage.

From February 18-21, the Coalition to Save Palestinian Child Soldiers is holding a Solidarity Week, and is urging members of the public to sign an open letter to MEPs and US child welfare advocates to condemn the use of Palestinian children as soldiers.

For decades, the letter states, Palestinian children "have fulfilled the role of combatants, human shields, rioters, laborers, support staff, and even as suicide bombers – and as a result, their childhoods have been shortened by death, severe injury, or imprisonment."

The global community's unwillingness to address the issue, "has emboldened organizations such as Hamas, Fatah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and PFLP in their exploitation of children as war resources," the letter continues.

A 2016 report found that 240 US-government approved textbooks, used in hundreds of UNRWA-sponsored schools, were teaching Arab children between the first and ninth grades to kill Israelis and martyr themselves. Other reports have reached similar conclusions. Yet despite this, it was not until August 2019 that the UN finally called on Palestinian leaders to act against "racist speech and hate crimes," including incitement to violence against Israelis and Jews.

"These organizations expose them to inciteful and violent children’s shows, and flood social media with calls for jihad and terrorism," the letter reads. "When the children are older, they’re sent out to partake in violent riots and to act as human shields as thousands of others have before them."

The letter notes that an estimated 10,000 children are trained in Gazan terrorist camps each year, and that at least 160 have died digging terror tunnels into Israel.

The NGOs hope that public pressure put on the terrorist organizations will eventually force them to abandon their use of children to fight their wars. As part of that effort, they are also encouraging people to hold rallies and share material online to raise awareness of the fact that the children are being used in this way.
One video, entitled Palestinian Child Soldiers in Numbers notes that 17,000 children were enrolled in Hamas's child militia programs in 2019, and that 29 children have already lost their lives as suicide bombers. "Dozens more" were prevented from carrying out their attacks.

"In combat, children from 17 to as young as nine have been pushed into the battle fray, to fight and die alongside adult militants and terrorists," the organizers noted in a statement on their website. "While in some cases the youngest of these casualties has been covered up with older, fake ages on casualty lists, Hamas and PIJ have been proud of the teenagers that have been “martyred” in battle."
"These practices have led to a strategic culture that views children as resources, and denies them their childhoods.

"For the future of the Palestinian people as a whole – and for these children as individuals with rights according to international law and decent moral doctrine – the above practices must be stopped."

PMW report slams Palestinian Authority for using child soldiers

he Palestinian Authority’s systematic incitement in school textbooks, television broadcasts, active recruitment and payment to terrorists’ after-the-crime serves to weaponize its child population into soldiers, says a new NGO report obtained exclusively by The Jerusalem Post.

While other Israeli groups have also worked on this issue, Palestinian Media Watch’s (PMW) Sunday report is unique in tracing the PA’s recruitment step-by-step to explain why a substantial number of Palestinian minors end up arrested by Israel.

Contrary to conventional global media wisdom that the Israeli occupation is causing innocent Palestinian minors to become violent, the PMW report, which covers 2019, says that PA incitement is the primary cause.

“Damningly, PMW’s report shows how the PA leadership openly admits that child terrorists are the PA’s soldiers,” said the report.

Moreover, the report's authors, PMW Director Itamar Marcus and Maurice Hirsch, submitted a letter to UNICEF demanding that it name the PA’s violations and invest at least as much time in documenting these violations as it has regarding alleged Israeli violations of Palestinian minors’ rights.

UNICEF responded to the report telling the Post that it has filed submissions with the relevant UN human rights bodies, “highlighting areas where further work is needed to ensure all Palestinian children are provided with the necessary conditions to reach their full potential.”

Summarizing its position on the issue, UNICEF told the Post that “Children are disproportionately affected by armed conflict in Israel and the State of Palestine. UNICEF advocates with all parties to put the interests of children first.

“This involves advocating with Palestinian authorities on shortcomings, making clear that no child should be enlisted to violence and advocating with Israel to make sure children are not targeted by violence. In the UN’s Children and Armed Conflict Bulletin for 2018, which can be found on UNICEF’s website, the UN documents verified incidents by all sides,” UNICEF said.

“For example, in this report three cases of recruitment and use of Palestinian children in the conflict are included,” UNICEF added, explaining that an even-handed critique of both the Israeli and Palestinian side (even naming specific groups which are recruiting Palestinian minors) were part of UNICEF’s contribution to a 2018 report by the UN Secretary General.

Reviewing this response, PMW’s Hirsch said that UNICEF has only named Hamas or other Palestinian groups that are not affiliated with the PA, while carefully avoiding any confrontation with the latter.

Asked if it has publicly taken the PA to task for exploiting Palestinian minors, UNICEF did not issue an additional response.

PMW added that in the past, UNICEF has avoided naming the PA because allegations against the PA “did not meet the definition of recruitment or due to access reasons and the security of witnesses,” and that children had occasionally been paid to make Molotov cocktails and transport weapons in the Gaza Strip, but “it could not be verified if this activity was organized by a party to the conflict.”

PMW clarified that UNICEF was taking an unduly narrow interpretation of its mandate out of fear of confrontation with the PA, but that such an approach does not help solve the underlying issue of Palestinian minors involved in violence.

The report said that “In 2019, the PA continued its systematic and widespread abuse of the Palestinian children, indoctrinating them to hate Jews and Israel, brainwashing them to admire murders and using them to promote violence.”

A children’s program on official PA TV broadcasts shows in which seven-year-old girls recite poems saying “I learned… the art of the rifle... [PA President] Mahmoud Abbas... my blood is your blood,” said the report.

The report said that Abbas’s Fatah Party broadcasts stories of mothers telling their children that “My son, we were not created for happiness. In my eyes, you are meant for Martyrdom! Jerusalem is ours, our weapon is our Islam and our ammunition is our children.”

The PA schoolbooks, the report noted, teach Palestinian children to emulate the Palestinian “heroes” who include mass murderer Dalal Mughrabi – a terrorist responsible for killing 37 Jews, among them 12 children.

Summer camps organized by Abbas’s Fatah party and the Palestine Liberation Organization teach the children to admire mass murderers such as Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) – who according to PA sources is responsible for killing 125 Jews, said the report.

According to the report, school is regularly cut short to encourage Palestinian minors to take part in potentially violent protests against IDF soldiers.
Next, the report said that “Having acted in accordance with the PA guidance, the child-terrorist-soldiers, once arrested, injured or killed, then enjoy the substantial monthly salaries that the PA pays them or their families and the adulation of Palestinian society.”

Moreover, the PA has stated numerous times that it sees all Palestinian terrorists in Israeli jails as soldiers and prisoners of war, and has never differentiated between adults and children.

During every month of 2019, the PA paid Khalil Jabarin – the Palestinian minor who murdered Ari Fuld – NIS 1,400, and paid Morad Adais – the Palestinian minor who murdered Dafna Meir – NIS 2,000.

The report cites numerous additional examples.

Returning to how UNCIEF could improve the situation, Marcus explained, “If UNICEF had any serious concern for Palestinian children, it would not criticize Israel for arresting child terrorists, but would thoroughly condemn the PA for creating child terrorists. The indoctrination, brainwashing and rewarding of child terrorists by the PA is clear child abuse by the PA leaders.”

Is it time to wave the flag, give us a recipe or recite a poem?

Horror on Gaza Beach: New York Times Photographer Witnesses Israeli Killing of 4 Palestinian Boys.. And the list goes on..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mEpCZTsZes

The world would be immensely better off if Jerusalem, Mecca and the Vatican suddenly ceased to exist.

Totally agree Seamus, I'm resisting adding to that list..

4 boys...

This past week, about 30 NGOs joined the Coalition to Save Palestinian Child Soldiers to raise public awareness and to put an end to the use of Palestinian children as soldiers against Israel. Too often, Palestinian children (as well as children around the world) are used as political pawns during war and conflict. In fact, the United Nation reported about 300,000 children used as soldiers from 20 countries around the world. About 40% of child soldiers are young girls, who are often used as sex slaves and taken as “wives” by male fighters.

Palestinian children are often used as human shields to carry out terror attacks by Hamas operatives. Terror groups like Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine exploit Palestinian children and raise them to become combatants, human shields, rioters, laborers, support staff, and even suicide bombers. These groups, along with the Palestinian Authority have allowed antisemitic propaganda to seep into their education system by providing school textbooks that teach Palestinian children to kill Israelis and become martyrs. In the Gaza strip, Hamas trains about 10,000 children and teens every year in terrorist “summer camps”. These training boot camps are practical lessons that are meant to be implemented in warfare and battle. fight and die alongside adult militants and terrorists. Hamas and other terror groups fully use trained child soldiers for battle, with the knowledge and intention that these children will die alongside adult militants and terrorists.

And there it is, all proof anyone would need..

I suppose 4 boys playing ball on a beach is a big threat to one of the most well equipped armies in the world..

Oh hold on, they may have grown up to become resistance fighters.. Or Poets even.

The international community has turned a blind eye to the abuse of Palestinian children as soldiers by these militant and terrorist groups and it’s time for the world to hold these perpetrators accountable.

Join the campaign now:

Website: www.PCSWeek.org
Twitter: @PCSWeek
Instagram: @OfficialPCSWeek
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/KidsChasingParadise

#PCSWeek
#KidsNotSoldiers

Group Launches Campaign to ‘Save Palestinian Child Soldiers’

02-10-2020

Jerusalem, ISRAEL – While the world prepares to observe International Day against the Use of Child Soldiers on Wednesday, one group is calling attention to the children who are often overlooked – Palestinian children.

A campaign called “Palestinian Child Soldier Week” seeks to condemn the exploitation of Palestinian children by terror groups.

“Several Palestinian terrorist and militant factions use children in their operations. PFLP, Hamas, Fatah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad blatantly abuse these child soldiers in the face of weak condemnation. Unless awareness is brought to this issue, Palestinian children will continue to be used as war resources,” PCS Week says in a statement on its website.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child defines a child soldier as “any person below 18 years of age who is or who has been recruited or used by an armed force or armed group in any capacity, including but not limited to children, boys and girls, used as fighters, cooks, porters, messengers, spies or for sexual purposes... It does not only refer to a child who is taking or has taken a direct part in hostilities.”

Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza strip hold training camps to teach children how to be militia members and die as martyrs for the Palestinian cause.

“Approximately 10,000 children and teens are trained each year with terrorist ‘summer camps’ which are grueling basic training boot camps. There, children learn to march, combat maneuvers, weapon operation, and terrorist tactics. This is not watered down as showcase or theatre, but are practical lessons meant to be implemented,” the campaign said.

Palestinian terror factions have a history of recruiting minors to attack Israeli targets through suicide bombings, rock throwing, and other terror attacks. CBN News has previously reported that Palestinian textbooks often praise convicted terrorists and incite children to violence.

Children are also encouraged to go to the frontlines of the often-times violent “March of Return” demonstrations on the Israeli-Gaza border, essentially turning these young Palestinians into human shields.

The campaign is urging people around the world to bring attention to Palestinian child soldiers by holding rallies and informative events on school campuses and online.

“The week of solidarity will begin on February 18th until the 21st, with all organizations and individuals welcome to join online and offline. On campuses across the US, students will hold solidarity rallies, urging everyone to sign the international open letter,” the organization says.

The group says it is supplying anyone interested in holding a solidarity rally with all necessary supplies.

Breaking the Silence is an organization of veteran soldiers who have served in the Israeli military since the start of the Second Intifada and have taken it upon themselves to expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories. We endeavor to stimulate public debate about the price paid for a reality in which young soldiers face a civilian population on a daily basis, and are engaged in the control of that population’s everyday life. Our work aims to bring an end to the occupation.

https://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/

Palestinian Child Soldiers: A Gross Human Rights Abuse

https://honestreporting.com/palestinian-child-soldiers/

HonestReporting joins a number of NGOs campaigning to bring awareness and “combat the abuse of Palestinian children as political weapons of war.

B’nai B’rith Canada Urges Canadian Gov’t to Condemn Palestinians’ Use of Child Soldiers

B’nai B’rith Canada issued a petition on Feb. 18 calling for the Canadian government to denounce Palestinian terrorists for using child soldiers.

The petition singled out Fatah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine for the practice, noting that around 10,000 minors receive training for terrorism in camps in the Gaza Strip annually.

“Children have been used in violent riots and as human shields,” the petition states. “Many have been recruited into terrorist activity, sent to stab people in the streets or used as suicide bombers. Still others are sent to work in attack tunnels, digging in unsafe conditions. At least nine have died in collapsing tunnels.”

The petition added that world leaders garner enough attention to raise awareness on the matter and pressure Palestinian terror groups to end the practice.

“We, the undersigned, ask that you take a strong stand in opposing the usage and exploitation of child soldiers around the world — including by Palestinian terrorist and militant groups,” the petition concluded.

According to The Jerusalem Post, the Coalition to Save Palestinian Child Soldiers has been hosting a Solidarity Week that started on Feb. 18 and ends Feb. 21 to raise awareness on the matter, and has been sending letters similar to the B’nai B’rith Canada letter to members of Congress and European parliaments.

In August, NGO Monitor released a video showing five children wearing Palestinian Islamic Jihad gear staging a mock terrorist attack at an Israeli outpost during a March kindergarten graduation at a Gaza school. The school, Dar al-Huda, held similar mock terror attacks in 2016 and 2017.

Pure Zionist propaganda, trying to justify their slaughter of innocent children..

Palestinians Accused of Piggybacking on Riots to Wreck Synagogues

The riots over the killing of George Floyd have turned Eyal Dahan’s Los Angeles neighborhood into “a war zone”—and according to Dahan, some Palestinians are taking advantage of the chaos to wreck synagogues.

A number of Los Angeles synagogues have been vandalized or even destroyed during the riots, including one in Beverly Hills. According to Dahan, an Israeli living in Los Angeles, the buildings were not targeted by any of the protesters demonstrating against Floyd’s death, but rather by Palestinians who “exploited the opportunity.”

“I saw a PLO flag and them shouting to ‘free Palestine.’ I don’t think it was black protesters who did this damage,” he said.

Dahan, a clothing supplier who has lived in the United States for 41 years, told Israel Hayom the chaos is “immense.”

“The army [National Guard] is in the streets. Businesses have been burned and torn apart. [Rioters] tore down pharmacies, stole all the medicine. All the electronics stores have been destroyed. It started bad, and because the police didn’t pressure them, it got worse,” he said.
According to Dahan, the businesses that haven’t yet managed to get back on their feet from the coronavirus crisis are crashing.

“It was terror on Saturday and Sunday, the entire city was engulfed. [Monday] there was some quiet, but that night the break-ins and looting started again. … Right now, 90 percent of the demonstrators are peaceful, but the 10 percent who come after them have been looting and causing huge damage,” he said.

The National Guard deployment, he added, has been only partially effective.

“They brought in the [National Guard] and they started to patrol the big shopping malls, but the small stores, which are barely hanging on, caught it. The [National Guard] can’t arrest civilians, they can only protect certain places,” he said.

While speaking with Israel Hayom, Dahan reported a new wave of rioting and looting: “Now the looting has started again. After eight or nine at night, they start their mess.”

Dahan, who was in Los Angeles during the Rodney King riots in 1992, said that “this time, it’s completely different. I didn’t think it would happen again, I thought that the police learned a lesson about how to handle it, but it was the rioters who learned. Social media helped them form groups, split people—like platoons in a war. It’s completely organized.”

Palestinian Child Soldier Week seeks to raise awareness about the use of child soldiers in conflicts

PCS Week is a global movement to end the use of Palestinian children as child soldiers. It is non-partisan and non-political, and all inclusive. By bringing awareness to the plight of Palestinian child soldiers, the movement hopes to pressure and shame the offending organizations into cessation of their abuses.

The week of solidarity will begin on February 18th until the 21st, with all organizations and individuals welcome to join online and offline. On campuses across the US, students will hold solidarity rallies, urging everyone to sign the international open letter. If you would like to take part in the campaign online, visit our action center to see how you can help. If you want to hold your own rally, visit the resource center, and download printable content. Together, we can save Palestinian child soldiers. #KidsNotSoldiers



While talking to ITCT Newsdesk, ITCT Executive Director Noor Dahri said, “The use of children in conflicts by an assortment of groups, and in particular by Islamist groups, is a major human rights concern. It is against all rules of war, both international as well as Islamic. Today, children all around the world in a variety of conflict zones are being used by an assortment of bad actors. From child soldiers in Africa being used by militia to Palestinian children being used as child soldiers by groups like Hamas to carry out attacks against Israel, from Pakistani Taliban’s use of child soldiers for attacks against Pakistani security forces to the use of children by Islamic State in execution videos, this remains one of the worst evils of our world today. As an organisation that is firmly against extremism and terrorism in all its forms, ITCT is proud to support the Palestinian Child Soldier Week campaign, which aims to raise awareness about the use of Palestinian children by groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad for various terrorist activities including suicide attacks. These poor children belong in a school, not in the battlefield. We as a civilized society have a responsibility towards these misguided children.”

just propaganda...numerous sources from numerous countries...

Lost Childhood: Palestinian Child Soldiers in Yarmouk

In the Jaramana refugee camp, at least 400 teenagers between the ages of fourteen and sixteen were recruited in exchange for a monthly $20 paid to their families.

Growing up, it appeared as if every Syrian child was being recruited for the armed forces. For those of my generation of Palestinian refugees, secondary school was a ritual of military uniforms and drill instruction organized by al-Shabiba, the youth-wing of the ruling Ba'ath Party.

These rituals were not about combat or arms training. I never learned how to use a weapon; instead, they were about the obedience and discipline of military command. Teaching us to obey orders without dissent or criticism, we learned by heart the chant “Do as you're told” and conscientious objection would have to wait until after doing as told. Of course, in a dictatorship, this last bit was perfunctory and meaningless.

Saying no would be treason. It might not lead you to jail, but your parents might become suspect in the eyes of the state. Even within the family you're taught to obey. Growing up in Syria, there was always this sense of the Big Brother from Orwell's 1984, endlessly monitoring you and duping you into thinking that he was all-knowing and all-seeing, like God.

In 2000, upon succeeding his father, Hafez, Bashar al-Assad ended military drills in the nation's schools. Although a less militaristic curriculum was enforced, the Ba'ath regime's martial pedagogical pretensions were never truly uprooted and were revived after the civil war erupted. Today, al-Shabiba is an auxiliary militia for the Assad war machine, its young men often triumphantly driving into town and looting and harassing locals still in shock after the regime's aerial bombing campaigns.

***

Unlike their Syrian counterparts, Palestinian refugee children were first targeted for armed recruitment by Palestinian factions following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. I still remember a woman who stopped a bus headed to Baghdad and started yelling at her sixteen-year old son to get off. The teenage boy was being sent off to fight the Americans. A Syrian security officer told her to “shut up.” Instead, she protested. “No countries accept to take us in. We only ever get a visa to wherever death awaits us. I want my son alive, I will not send him to fight and die in Iraq. For whom? For what?”

Fatah al-Intifada first started to recruit children during the 2003 Iraq War and has resumed the practice since Syria's own descent into war after 2011. The organization is a dissident off-shoot of the Fatah faction that dominates the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank and has been backed by the Syrian regime since 1982. It is presently active in Syrian and Lebanese refugee camps.

Economic hardship forces families to seek whatever support they can muster. Fatah al-Intifada exploits the grim predicament of poor families in Palestinian camps. In the Jaramana refugee camp, for example, eight kilometers southeast of Damascus, at least 400 teenagers between the ages of fourteen and sixteen were recruited in exchange for a monthly $20 paid to their families. A camp survivor told me that 65 to 70 percent of the fighters he saw at the checkpoints controlled by the PFLP-GC [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command, a pro-Assad Palestinian faction] and Fatah al-Intifada are boys between the ages of fourteen and seventeen.

In the city of Qudsaya, home to about 30,000 Palestinians displaced from Damascus' Yarmouk camp, children are joining the anti-regime Free Syrian Army (FSA) to win favor with the local people. Many parents believe that the only way to convince Syrian armed factions opposed to the regime that not all Palestinians are sympathetic to the pro-regime Fatah al-Intifada or the PFLP-GC is by sending their children to join the FSA. Anti-regime groups, for their part, often arrest and humiliate Palestinians and even prohibit humanitarian assistance from entering the camps. Sending your child to join the FSA has become one way of coping with the hardships of war.