40% of Palestinian Children Detained by Israel Are Sexually Abused; Virtually All Are Tortured

From: falastinews.com
40% of Palestinian Children Detained by Israel Are Sexually Abused; Virtually All Are Tortured
April 1, 2015
According to a new report by the independent, non-governmental, human rights organization the Palestinian Prisoners Club (PPC), at least 600 Palestinian children have been arrested in Jerusalem alone in the past five months. Of these, roughly 40% were sexually abused. …
Sexual abuse and rape are indeed a form of torture. Palestinian children, illegally detained by Israel without charge, are also tortured by authorities in other ways. In a June Mondoweiss article, “New Testimonies from Palestinian Children Tortured by Israeli Authorities,” I summarized a report by the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adalah). The report stated that:

[Israeli] Investigators threatened children with beatings, isolation, torturing their fathers and raping their mothers and sisters; children were denied food for dozens of hours unless they confessed to the charges against them. …

The CRC report also explained that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has used Palestinian children as human shields multiple times.
The following is a collection of points made in the children’s testimonies, as I outlined in my article on Adalah’s report:

The majority of arrests were made during late-hour night raids.
Palestinians’ homes were “violently broken into by dozens of soldiers who intimidated both the children and their families.” In 100% of the testimonies, children said they were bound and blindfolded, before being transferred hundreds of meters away in military vehicles.
In many of the testimonies, children revealed that soldiers went into their rooms, “aggressively woke them up, and shackled their hands and feet while they were still in bed.”
In one testimony, a child who had been sleeping in his bed when the “brutal kicks of the soldiers” woke him up, had to have his finger amputated. Israeli soldiers ignored his wounded finger, tying up his hands and feet, for over 12 hours, leading to an inoperable infection.
When family members inquired as to why exactly their young children were being harassed, assaulted, bound, blindfolded, and taken away in the middle of the night, Israeli soldiers often replied by beating and insulting them.
In the preponderance of the arrests, neither children nor their families knew why they were being taken away. Family members would not be allowed to accompany the minor, and they would not be informed as to where Israeli authorities would be taking them.
While soldiers were transferring the detained children to interrogation sites, soldiers regularly “used extreme physical and verbal abuse against them, including beatings, smashing the child’s head against a wall, threats of violence, and threats of sexual assault and rape.”
In one testimony, a child was separated from his family so that soldiers could interrogate him. When finished, the soldiers ordered in four of the child’s friends, to see their peer being beaten before their eyes. In this torturous event, the detained child “confessed” that he, along with his friends, had thrown stones. Later, however, the same child admitted he had only confessed in order to stop the beatings, and he withdrew his “confessions.”