Apartheid

135
Palestinian children in Israeli state custody underlines the brutality and the lack of minimal
respect for human rights and children’s rights manifested by the Israeli authorities.
Child prisoners are placed in a dirty, foul smelling solitary
confinement cell (200 cm by 150 cm) known as ‘zinzaneh’, the floor
of which may be wet or covered in human excrements. The cell may
either be almost completely devoid of light, or have light on at all
times. If the prisoner attempts to sleep, a guard will come and wake
him or her. Moreover child prisoners are often deprived of food and
not given access to toilets. . . during interrogations child prisoners are
tied, blindfolded and severely beaten. Moreover the methods outlawed
by the Israeli High Court are nevertheless used with children being
violently shaken, severe cases can lead to brain damage, tied to a
small chair in uncomfortable positions that force the body to cramp
for extended periods of time and exposed to severe heat or cold, for
example removing the prisoner’s clothes and locking him in a small
cupboard whereupon the air conditioning system is switch[ed] on to
produce extremely cold conditions. Furthermore there have been
several documented cases where prison guards have attempted raping
child prisoners, and if they fail to succeed the children are placed with
the adult Israeli criminal population whereupon they are sexual
assaulted and abused, under the watchful eye of the prison guards. 249
A former torturer, Carmi Gillon, was appointed Israel’s ambassador to Denmark in
2001. His arrival there was met with demonstrations by anti-torture activists and a formal
criminal charge of torture by the Danish state. Gillon was accused of responsibility for at least
100 cases of torture against Palestinians when he was chief of the Israeli security service in
the mid-1990s (between the Intifadas, i.e. when there was comparatively little violence). After
his nomination as ambassador, Gillon had also made remarks to Danish television, reiterating
his support of the use of torture against Palestinians in order to stop terrorist attacks against
Israelis. Danish police, however, eventually dropped the charges, quoting statements by
have reportedly been carried out by the Israelis in the occupied territories since 1967. The UN Security Council
has also condemned Israel for its use of torture and other kinds of violence illegal under international law. See,
for example, footnote 733.
249 N.N.: The Torture of Palestinian Children under Israeli Occupation, February 22, 2003. See also N.N.: The
Use of Torture against Palestinian Prisoners in Israeli Jails, February 15, 2000; Bolender: Israelis Torture Arabs
Too, 2004. On rape-murders of Palestinian women by Israeli armed forces, see Shavit: Survival of the Fittest?
An Interview with Benny Morris, 2004. An ultra-secret prison, believed to have been located in central Israel,
and usually referred to as ‘Facility 1391’, was believed to be the only prison in the country which was entirely
closed to visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Systematic torture was alleged to be routine
procedure at the prison, which was challenged by Israeli rights groups and a parliamentarian, after its existence
had been uncovered in 2002. See Goldin: Israeli Supreme Court Asked to Shut Down Secret Jail, Reuters, 2003.
On June 2, 2004, the director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, Hanna Friedman, announced at
the Bruno Kreisky Forum in Vienna that she was now convinced that Facility 1391 had been closed. She
suspended judgment, however, on whether there were any further secret prisons in the country. It is almost ironic
that the USA decided to charge its state torturers in Iraq with serious crimes (once they had been found out and
publicized by the world’s mass media in 2004), while it continues to pay Israel military aid apparently without
even asking about the many documented cases of torture in Israeli military jails, documented not only by
Palestinian and foreign-based human rights groups, but even by Israeli human rights organizations, such as the
Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and B’Tselem. See N.N.: Folter im Irak, Routine in Israel, May 24,
2004; Williams: Israel Probes Army Abuse Claims in Photo Exhibit, 2004. The exhibition referred to in the latter
article was not closed down by authorities, but a video tape documenting abuses by occupation soldiers in
Hebron which was part of the exhibit was confiscated by Israeli military police. The exhibition’s organizers
accused authorities of wishing to hush up criticism of Israel’s actions in the occupied territories.