February 14, 2017
A Palestinian academic sounded the alarm over the preplanned tactics of psycho-physical torture perpetrated against Palestinian children in Israeli jails.
Director of the research unit at the Treatment and Rehabilitation Center for Victims of Torture (TRC) referred to the dubious nature of a decision by the Israeli High Court to cease all forms of physical torture against the detainees. However, the court rule legitimized the torture of those who fell under the “ticking bomb” blacklist, a category from which no Palestinian detainee seems to have been safe.
According to Sahwil, Israel categorizes as “ticking bombs” those who hold pieces of information that “might affect Israelis’ lives.”
The academic dubbed such a two-faced court rule “a cover to legitimize torture and grant Israeli investigators more protection and immunity.”
In Sahwil’s terms, facts on the ground prove that Tel Aviv is violating its obligations as a signatory of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
The researcher said torture in Israeli jails often proceeds along the following four lines, respectively: Psycho-physical torment, internment in isolated cells, and criminalization by calling the child a terrorist and a criminal until he/she internalizes that indignation and reaches a stage of self-loathing. The last stage revolves around a process of indoctrination and brainwashing to force the child to spy for Israel.
“Torture in Israeli jails does not just aim to force confession; it also seeks to dampen the children’s spirits and to paralyze them both intellectually and socially,” warned Sahwil. “Such policies aim to give birth to a generation of traumatized youth.”
Referring to the psychoanalytic studies, Sahwil said a child who had been subjected to torture and violence in his/her early childhood is also at high risk of internalizing violence and thus “behaving violently towards their family and society.”
He further spoke out against the psychotic disorders wrought by torture, most notably insomnia, nightmares, tachycardia, and voluntary solitude.
Ramallah-based TRC kept record of the arrest of 2,000 Palestinian children in 2016, up from 600 in 2015.
The center further documented cases of “immoral” violations and aggressions by the Israeli occupation soldiers against the Palestinian minors while being handcuffed and blindfolded.
“The most dangerous of such felonies are rape threats and molestation simulation. At a certain point, Israeli investigators start to take off their clothes and force the child to do the same until he/she is psychologically broken down,” said Sahwil.
“Even girls below the age of puberty are not safe from such torture tactics . . . at an age where they quite normally need psychological support,” he further stated.
The researcher called for an urgent action to save Palestinian children in Israeli jails, heal traumatized minors, and force Israel to cease all forms of mistreatment against Palestinian children.
The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly resolution 39/46 on December 10, 1984 and which entered into force on June 26,1987 defined torture as: “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind.”
Article 2 of the convention also stipulated that: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”
Source: The Palestinian Information Center