Reply With QuoteAFIAK the term 'child' refers to a person who is between birth and puberty... I highly doubt that this is the case here.
But I guess the term 'minor' doesn't make it sound as dramatic while portraying the Juice as evil enough.
Imprisoned Palestinian Children Must Be Treated Justly (op)
"UK ready to take on Israel over fate of children clapped in irons," read the headline in a leading UK newspaper the morning after the latest report on the treatment of Palestinian children held in military detention was released in London in June. The Foreign Office-funded report -- Children in Military Custody -- was written by a delegation of UK lawyers that included a former Attorney General and a judge of the Court of Appeal, following their visit to Israel and the West Bank last September.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerard...b_1757094.html
- Came across this OP article, any thoughts?
AFIAK the term 'child' refers to a person who is between birth and puberty... I highly doubt that this is the case here.
But I guess the term 'minor' doesn't make it sound as dramatic while portraying the Juice as evil enough.
The author of this drivel (Gerared Horton - International Advocacy Officer and lawyer for Defence for Children International - Palestine Section.) needs to receive a basic education on UNSC 242.
There are of course different definitions of the term child.Originally Posted by EITAN88
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child "Biologically, a child ... is generally a human between the stages of birth and puberty. .... The legal definition of "child" generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger than the age of majority."
As the article is about laws, the legal definition makes more sence.
From: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc.htm Article 1 "For the purposes of the present Convention, a child means every human being below the age of eighteen years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier."
Before I call your post drivel, I would like to know, why you believe that UNSC 242 has anything to do with the legal treatment of children.
Here is UNSC 242: http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/...256EE700686136
It is quite short and I saw nothing about the treatment of prisoners in there.
The term 'minor' (as that is the legal term for someone who is under the Age of Majority) would be more suitable but as I've pointed out already, this would diminish the dramatic affect of the title and be less helpful to the writer's agenda.
The relevance of 242 is that Palestinian residents of the WB are not Israeli citizens and therefore are not eligible to enjoy the protections offered to Israeli citizens accused of criminal violations under the Israeli Criminal Justice system.
Horton misses that very important distinction in the following paragraph:
But, the above paragraph does tell us a thing or two about Horton's ulterior motives. Certainly, he is playing the race card - a claim of apartheid and undemocratic behavior, no less.The response from the Israeli authorities to these complaints is that throwing stones is dangerous, and sometimes lethal, implying that death is commonplace. Although any loss of life is a tragedy to be avoided, evidence collected by B'Tselem indicates that in the past 11 years, four people, including one Palestinian, have been killed by stones thrown at vehicles traveling in the West Bank. No one argues that offenses should not be punished, but we should all be able to agree that children accused of the same crime must be treated with equality under the law. Why then is a child accused of throwing stones in the West Bank prosecuted in a military court just because he is Palestinian, whereas an Israeli settler child accused of the same offense is processed in a civilian juvenile justice system, with all the added protections and safeguards this implies? Most would agree this is discrimination based on racial grounds, as I believe -- something that has no place in a modern democracy.
So, because Horton ignores a) the international accord under which Israel has sovereignty in the WB (UNSC 242) and b) empirical evidence that Israel is most certainly not an apartheid state (as over 1 million Arab Israeli citizens serve as irrefutable testament), yes, I dismiss his work as drivel.
Perchance, I should dismiss it as something worse than drivel considering his blatant double standards and myopia?
Again, the Convention of the Rights of the Child states:
"1. States Parties shall respect and ensure the rights set forth in the present Convention to each child within their jurisdiction without discrimination of any kind, irrespective of the child's or his or her parent's or legal guardian's race, colour, ***, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, property, disability, birth or other status.
2. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that the child is protected against all forms of discrimination or punishment on the basis of the status, activities, expressed opinions, or beliefs of the child's parents, legal guardians, or family members. "
So when Israel is treating WB-children diffrent from Israeli children, they seem to be (as I am no lawyer for international rights) in violation of said convention which Israel after all did sign. So claims of apartheit seem at least in this case applicable. It would of course be worse, and closer to racism, if Arab-Israeli-children would be treated the same as WB-children. However, it would be ignorant to claim racism from both sides has nothing to do with the problem at hand...
The Convention does not require Israel to treat Palestinian children the same as Israeli children. Rather, it requires that Israel "respect and ensure the rights set forth in the present Convention." So then the question is whether or not Israel has failed in regards to the rights set forth in the Convention? So if you or Horton can demonstrate a failure vis-a-vis the convention rights, then you may be able to claim a violation of the convention.
All that said, this convention seems to be silent on the matter of juveniles/minors accused of criminal acts, likely the potentially deadly act of stoning - because in acts of crime and violence, the best interest of the accused child is not axiomatic.
From the OP article
I have no idea about the claims, I've never researched it, nor do I have much intention to. I am curious however, why people are arguing about the emotive world "child" instead of "minor", instead of the veracity of some pretty damning (if true) claims.The report, the findings of which have been described as "shocking" and "damning," describes how children as young as 12 years are prosecuted in military courts after being arrested by soldiers in terrifying night-time raids. The report refers to evidence collected by Israeli and Palestinian lawyers, as well as UN agencies, which describes an abusive system in which children are threatened and physically coerced into signing confessions, some of which are written in Hebrew, a language they do not understand. Following their conviction in a military court, most of the children are shipped off to prisons in Israel, in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits their transfer out of the West Bank.
Because even the people who wrote this report admit that they can't prove the veracity of such claims, only that such claims seem to be repetitive and are thus "worrying".
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...248582,00.htmlHowever, the legal team charged with compiling the report said that Israeli authorities offered unprecedented access to the delegation, and claimed they were in no position to prove the truth of the claims of cruelty made repeatedly by Palestinian children.
Good thing those kids didn't tell them Israel did 9/11, they'd probably take that at face value as well.
P.S
The Geneva Convention applies to countries, the West Bank isn't a country, not to mention that if a person (even a minor) is involved in warfare/terrorism of any kind he thus loses its protection as a civilian.
Last edited by EITAN88; 08-09-2012 at 05:02 PM.
Which part of "each child within their jurisdiction.... (shall be) protected against all forms of discrimination or punishment on the basis of the status (etc of the child)" is not clear? If Israel has jurisdiction in WB (de facto at least it has), it has no right under said constitution to tread arab-children different from stettler-children or proper Israeli-children or Arab-Israeli-children.
Again you fail, at least in your first part of your response. Article 40 does go into detail of legal matters and is even the longest article of said convention. The second part is a strawman, as I never claimed, that there should be no punishment for children who commit crimes, nor does the convention say anything in that direction.
Sure, Israel is within its rights to not co-mingle a) civilian criminal justice matters (juvenile or otherwise), and b) security cases arising amongst the WB Palestinian population.
There is a valid separation between the two because the WB Palestinian population are not Israeli citizens. No convention, neither the one you cited nor UNSC 242, requires Israel to annex the WB.
Oops; you got me; I failed to read the entire Convention, and missed Article 40. I still stand by what you dismiss as a strawman. The fact remains, that in some criminal cases, the interest of the accused child is subordinate to other interests.
But now that you have drawn my attention to Article 40, I raise the question as to how many ratifying countries really do grant minors - minors who are citizens of the state - the presumption of innocence, legal counsel, and due process before a competent and impartial judicial body?
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