Someone is pounding on the door. It is 3:45 a.m. The pounding gets louder. The father goes to open the door, and immediately they enter: two men dressed in civilian clothes, flanked by police officers bearing heavy guns. They go straight towards the boy, who has pulled on a baggy sweatshirt and stepped out of his room, snake their hands under his arms, and take him. "He will only be gone for a few hours," they say. "Don't worry." Outside the house, the boy's hands are tied with plastic packaging bands and he is pushed into the police car. He does not understand much Hebrew, but he knows enough to understand the officer who leans close to him and whispers:
"Fuck your mother."
30 days later, after being beaten with a chair, held in solitary confinement, taunted with a knife, forced to stay awake, and otherwise abused, the boy is released from prison. He now has trouble falling asleep at night, and when he does he often has nightmares which feature his interrogators. And his punishment continues: He is under house arrest, indefinitely, and is not allowed to go to school. He is afraid that he will miss the end of his 9th grade year.
Suhaib Alawar, 14 and a half years old, is from Silwan, an East Jerusalem village directly South of the Old City. Silwan is home to a large and largely poor Palestinian population that is gravely underserved by state and municipal bodies (There are about 50,000 people living in Silwan. There are a total of eight elementary schools. There are zero public playgrounds). It is also inhabited by a small-but-visible Jewish settler population supported by Israeli governmental funds and services. Houses and other structures in Silwan are built without permits, because Palestinians are virtually never granted building permits (for example, in the neighborhood of Wadi Hilweh, Silwan, pop. 5,000, there are under 20 recorded cases of permits being granted to Palestinians since 1967). There is sporadic violence from the Palestinians towards the settlers and police, mostly in the form of rock throwing youth, and heavy-handed responses from the police and army.
In all of these ways, Silwan is a microcosm of the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territories writ large. There is one phenomenon, however, whose ubiquity sets Silwan apart from most places in the West Bank and East Jerusalem: child arrests.
In the middle of the night, on March 5th, 2012, Suhaib was arrested without warning, along with four other boys from Silwan. He had already been arrested twice before, the first time when just after his thirteenth birthday. Both times the police claimed that he was "throwing rocks." 14 minors were arrested in Silwan in the month of March 2012 alone, according to Saleem Seam, a Palestinian activist from the Wadi Hilweh Information Center in Silwan, an organization that provides services and psychological care to youth in Silwan.
Suhaib was released from detention on April 5th but has remained under house arrest and is indefinitely barred from attending school. Last week, I went with Saleem to visit Suhaib and to hear his story. I am an Israeli, and I wondered about going to see someone who had recently suffered such serious abuse at the hands of other Israelis. I was greeted enthusiastically by Suhaib's grandmother, who offered lemonade and coffee and brought me into the living room where Suhaib was waiting. He smiled hesitantly and held out his hand. I was mostly struck by how he looked: like a fourteen-year-old boy.
I asked him to tell me what happened.
Suhaib nodded, took a sip of lemonade, and began, the words spilling swiftly from his mouth. After the police stormed into his house and arrested him, along with the other boys, he was moved into the police car and then to a facility called Room 4. (Suhaib: "The interrogator asked me if I knew why it was called Room 4. I said I did not, and so he told me that it is called Room 4 because this is where you Arabs leave on all fours, crawling like a baby after we've finished with you"). There, the interrogators handcuffed Suhaib and hit his head, both with fists and with keys, calling him names and taunting him as their blows rained down. He was then made to sign a document in Hebrew stating that he had not been physically abused. Suhaib, who cannot read Hebrew, and signed the document.
According to Israeli Human Rights group B'Tselem, the Israeli law known as the Youth Law mandates that a minor's parents be present during any interrogation (this same law also forbids arresting children in the middle of the night and enacting violence against them while they are held). Suhaib told me that his father was not called in until 11:00 the next morning. When his father arrived, he was cautioned not to talk directly to his son. The investigation proceeded: they asked Suhaib a number of questions, all of which he declined to answer. Then, all the detectives left the room.
"I took the chance, and told my father that I had been beaten. I think that they were listening, because they came in right away and told my father to leave, and that the investigation was finished. I asked if I could go too, and they laughed. My father left, and the men started hitting me again, and saying that my mother is a whore. They left me in the room without food until midnight."
Suhaib's interrogation continued for the next ten days, during which he eventually found out he was accused of teaching other boys how to build Molotov Cocktails, which he denied. During these ten days, Suhaib was kept in a room that stank of feces and rotten food. He was hit with a chair and threatened with a knife. He was also told that if he did not admit he was guilty he would be "taken to an electric chair to help him." On the fourth day, Suhaib was put into a police car along with another boy "to be taken to the electric chair." The two exchanged some of their experiences and advised each other on what not to say. Video footage of this conversation was shown to him on the 10th day and was used as a confession. Suhaib continued to deny that he was guilty.
The detective extracted sentences from the conversation in the car, and forced Suhaib to sign the statement. After signing, Suhaib was held for twenty more days. During this period, he was moved into a cell with adults. "They were regular criminals, some of them were rapists and some were drug addicts, and they tried to beat me also."
He was then moved into cell of his own, where the floor was wet from a small toilet which was overflowing with excrement. Next, he was moved back with another one of the boys. There the guards prevented them from sleeping.
"Whenever we would fall asleep, they would start banging on the cell door and screaming 'Wake up, boys! You'd better watch out for the rats!' Or they would point laser pointers at ours eyes until we woke up." During the whole time he was held, Suhaib was not allowed to see his family again, and the police allowed him to call his parents only twice. After 30 days, Suhaib was released, having lost over 20 pounds during his detention. He was sentenced to house arrest at his grandmother's house and his family was required to post a deposit of 50,000 Shekels (about $15,000) in case he violated the conditions of his house arrest. One of those conditions was that Suhaib, who should be in 9th grade, was prevented from returning to school.
"I like studying history," Suhaib told me, smiling slightly, "and I want to be a human rights lawyer when I get older."
The right to education is enshrined in Article 26 of the UN's Declaration of Human Rights. Access to education is a sine qua non of democratic and liberal societies. The fact that Suhaib's punishment includes his being barred from school indefinitely -- in a neighborhood in which dropouts rates are, according to Saleem Seam, "astronomical" -- raise a number of grave questions.
Are the arrests in Silwan aimed at remedying the violence present among many youth living in Israeli controlled territory, or are they part of a larger strategy to frighten the Palestinian population of Silwan in particular and East Jerusalem in general into submission? In other words, is the purpose of these arrests to reform violent youth, or is the arrest itself the purpose, to terrorize the village's youth -- whether violent or not -- and to make an example out of a few so as to deter the collective? Whether Suhaib is guilty or not, will any efforts be made to investigate the horrible stories this fourteen-year-old boy has told of his 30 days in prison? If investigations are pursued, will their results be taken seriously, or will children continue to be arrested and abused en masse in Silwan? And, most immediately, will Suhaib be allowed to return to school and finish his 9th grade year?
This needs to end --"this" being both the Israeli occupation of Silwan and East Jerusalem in general, and, meanwhile, the maltreatment of the children living under occupation, including nighttime arrests, physical abuse, separation from parents and, as in Suhaib's case, barring children from school and from any chance at rehabilitation or creating a better life.
---
Moriel Rothman is an American Israeli activist and writer. He is active with Rabbis for Human Rights and the Solidarity Movement. He blogs independently at www.thelefternwall.com.
Follow Moriel Rothman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MorielRothman
"This piece is based in part off of Suhaib's testimony-- of course it is any reader's choice whether to believe this testimony or not, as with any news story."
Not. This youngster had a journalist's ear and grabbed the chance to spread what is clearly vile propaganda. No country is watched more closely than Israel and she has to be careful how prisoners are treated. Everyone saw how great the released horde looked last fall, especially compared with the wan, malnourished, and dazed individual Hamas had in their care. And there are lost benefits and other consequences for professional misconduct; this is a nation that indicted a former president.
If these fools would stop throwing rocks, retaliation and punishment would cease as well, but they know that. It's the usual smarmy p.r. designed to bash Israel; that some earn money out of helping them is kind of smarmy too.
Or ANY author.
Or Cartoonist.
Friday 01/06/2012,
Search for : Suhaib Alawar
Results: 0
No results found!
http://www.maannews.net/eng/Search.aspx?KEY=Suhaib%20Alawar
Searching for:
Title=Suhaib Alawar,
Displaying 0 - 0 of 0 matches
http://www.miftah.org/docsearch_rslt.cfm?CategoryID=&DocSource=&DocTitle=Suhaib%20Alawar&DocAuthor=&PublDate=&PublYear=
HP should do better than to allow inflammatory *stories* that are completely uncorroborated.
You can't ask them to do so. That's what they do for a living inflame.
Or is it another fantasy that palestinians like to make up?
Can't find anything about this supposed event on any reputable news website.
It's an invention. Hard to take HuffPost's Israel-bashing contributors seriously.
Does anyone have any information on this story, a credible link that talks about this specific incident?
Thank you in advance.
The role of the journalist is to expose us to what is really going on. It is evident to anyone who has stepped foot in this area. This piece is true journalism and therefore credible. The Israeli news would never consider even looking at such a story and that is why you never found it online. Go to Susya or any other Arab village in the region and see for yourself if you are so after the truth!
If this story is true, which is highly doubtful, chances are good that this particular "boy" has a record, in fact it appears that he does.
The Palestinians who have become refugees are men women and children. The children can't stay out of this.
Google: "Children killed by IDF massacres"
But if you google Pigs Can Fly you get about 17,400,000 hits. So obviously it's much more likely that pigs do fly. Maybe even regularly.
Secondly, Anne Frank didn't throw rocks.
Third, there is concrete evidence to Anne Frank's existence, there is zero evidence to this story other than someone wrote it and it got published on the HP.
Unless you or the author of this piece can provide evidence that this actually took place, I call it bluff.
I think this is happening in Israel. Considering the almost 70 years of conflict, what would normally be healthy good people have been exposed to such a "tumultuous household " it has become the norm for them.
Nobody should be so jaded that they read about the injustice and abuses depicted in this article and then try to rationize it, or deny it.
If you feel so inclined, stop and ask yourself: why am I seeing this as "the norm", and how can I regain my humanity?
If that were the standard human response to these instances of inhumanity and injustice can you imagine what kind of world we would be living in?
Whatever semblence of order and humanity exists now would be only a dream for those without the means to fight their way to the top of the heap.
That would be a world you would not want to live in, or have your children and family living in.
These are not lies. This story is only one of the THOUSANDS of similar stories from that dysfunctional dynamic of the oppresser and the oppressed.
Enjoying your freedom to type on a keyboard are you? Enjoying your health and possessions? This exists for you only because of the order and humanity which keeps the "might is right" mode at bay.
Otherwise, as soon as your wife and, or children went into the city they would be attacked for their things, and whatever else was desired from them.
As would you by the roving gangs.
Realize what the alternative is to what we have if your attitude became the majority one. It would not be a pretty site.
These are PEOPLE, and people never deserve this abuse and injustice, never.
"Kadima MK proposes transporting human rights activists to a detention camp, adding 'Let them work there.'
Yulia Shamalov-Berkovich...media and marketing expert. She's also a member of Knesset from the ruling coalition's centrist Kadima party. And if you live in Israel and your politics are not to her liking, she may want to round you up and send you to the camps."
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/who-would-this-israeli-lawmaker-round-up-and-send-to-the-camps-it-could-be-you.premium-1.433627
Never happens in other countries?
But nevertheless you still posting it. :-)
What a great way to make fun of yourself ;-)
the excavation and presentation has
"been placed in the hands of a Jewish settler non-governmental organization. Their incorporation of this site into the Jewish-Israeli narrative is multifaceted — mixing religious nationalism with theme-park tourism. As a result, conflict with local Palestinians occurs at the very basic level of existence, where the past is used to disenfranchise and displace people in the present."
"Never forget, never again" Are those words only used if the victims are YOUR favorites?
To many, it's "administrative detention" for years and years, without ever seeing a judge, a lawyer, or an accusation, without an end in sight.
For some reason a 15 year old maksed Palestinian endangering Israelis by throwing rocks at moving cars which could easily lose control and cause death to the driver, bystanders or even the rock thrower themselves. Is considered a poor child, but if the offender is an under aged Jew he will always be considered a ruthless settler and his age is never mentioned.
Soldier idly standing by.....