Friends can strengthen their opposition to caging children by joining the No Way To Treat A Child campaign. Spirit continues to lead Northeast Kingdom Quaker Meeting to explore, discern, and season our support of No Way To Treat A Child over a year whenNorthwest Quarter (comprising Friends from Vermont and western New Hampshire) supported passage of Rep. Betty McCullum’s H.R. 2407: Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under the Israeli Military Occupation Act. Friends in Maine and New Hampshire—Belfast, Midcoast, and Hanover Monthly Meetings—recently sought our help to learn more about this effort to prohibit U.S. taxpayer funding for the military detention of children by any country.
Friends agree that no child should be tortured and no child should be denied due process. AFSC’s campaigns for justice in Palestine and Israelreflect a rights-based approach. Since HR 2407 died in the last Congress, a new “House Resolution” is likely to come forward during the opening months of this current 117th Congress. We urge Friends to engage with your members of Congress to become co-sponsors of legislation supporting the rights of children.
Reminding us that “there are 200,000 young people under 18 years old in prisons throughout the United States” AFSC’s Healing Justice Coordinator Lewis Webb asserts that America’s criminal justice system targets black and brown children in the same way that the Israeli military occupiers target Palestinian children. Monthly Meetings can respond to New England Yearly Meeting’s Two Calls to Action transnationally by examining settler colonialism both here in the States and in Israel/Palestine. Join AFSC’s effort to defend immigrant rights and broadcast how enforcement, detention, and deportation is, as Kristin Kumpf calls it, a “cycle grounded in violence.”
An Israeli soldier holds down 11-year-old Palestinian boy Mohammed Tamimi in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh. ABBAS MOMANI/AFP/Getty
202038. A number of Meetings in the Quarter have considered the Quarter’s charge to look at the AFSC’s No Way to Treat a Child program. Friends in Bennington, Burlington, and Putney as well as Friends present report being in unity with this program. Others are still considering or have not yet had a chance to complete this task. We spoke of ways to continue with this concern.
We ask New England Yearly Meeting to consider supporting the AFSC program “No Way to Treat a Child” and support the bill HR2407, entitled “Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under the Israeli Military Occupation Act” at Sessions.
We might like to hear more information on a Zoom call or a webinar, although we may tap into existing webinars on this topic. We would like to have a Quarter letter-writing campaign, and Progressive Secretary might be a tool to accomplish this. We might host speakers at a future Quarterly Meeting. We are in this for the long haul.
Several people stepped forward to move this work forward. Carl Williams, Connie Kincaid-Brown, Scott Rhodewalt, and Susan Rhodewalt will work on a letter packet. Ruah Swennerfelt will work with Progressive Secretary to post the letter. Ruah Swennerfelt will also invite Brad Parker of the National Defense for Children and Jennifer Bing of the American Friends Service Committee for our Zoom call or webinar. Cliff Bennett and Scott Rhodewalt will help.
We leave the discussion of this topic reminding ourselves again to search for the courage to talk with our neighbors on these hard topics. It is part of a larger picture. Concern for the safety and welfare of children applies not only to the Israeli/Palestinian border but also treatment of children at the U.S.- Mexico border and in our detention system. We need to hold ourselves accountable. We also need to trust in the Spirit.
Palestinian children arrested in Jerusalem, from the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association siteMore than 15,000 children have been detained when they tried to cross the southern border of the United States unaccompanied
Americans are grappling with the incarceration of 10-year-olds and the concept of “tender age detention centers” while morally bankrupt politicians wring their bloodied hands. As courts begin to respond, many folks across the political spectrum are wondering, “What happens to the children caught in this catastrophe?” Interestingly, there is much we can learn from research in the US and from the Israeli experience with regard to children and prisons. The US and Israel both perceive themselves as enlightened “western democracies,” yet both have high incarceration rates, particularly for children of color, sometimes involving the same global prison industries. In both countries, these kinds of children are perceived as the “other,” the “enemy,” the “invading hordes ready to destroy America,” the “Muslim terrorists seeking to kill Israelis.” They are presented as less human and less deserving than white and/or Jewish children and less likely to evoke an empathic reaction….
….The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children should not be deprived of liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily and that arrest, detention, or imprisonment should only be used in extreme circumstances for the shortest period of time. Ironically, the US is the only country in the world that has not signed the treaty as reported by the ACLU.
But signing the treaty is clearly not enough. According to Defense of Children International-Palestine, last year an average of 310 Palestinian children were imprisoned for “security offenses” each month, with 60 children 12 to 15 years of age. An estimated 700 children are prosecuted each year in military courts with a 99+% conviction rate. The most common charge is stone throwing which can result in up to 20 years in prison. There have been multiple reports of physical, sexual, and verbal abuse during arrest and interrogation, with 74.5% of children reporting physical violence during arrest and 62% reporting verbal abuse, intimidation and humiliation. Solitary confinement during interrogation has been documented, with an average period of 12 days. The Israeli military courts also put children in administrative detention for months, basically imprisoning them without charges or trial.
To be absolutely clear on this, if a Jewish Israeli child was caught throwing stones at a PA security officer or a Palestinian farmer harvesting his olives, he would not end up in detention. Indeed, if he was from certain Jewish settlements, he would be celebrated as a hero. Such is the justice under military occupation. Jewish children live under civil law and of course are not viewed as the enemy….
