 Hi, I want to thank everybody for joining us and we're here with Jennifer Bing from American Friends Service Committee who is runs their participation in the no way to treat a child campaign to end Israeli military detention of Palestinian children. It has been just a few days since now 17 year old Ahad Tumimi was released from Israeli prison. Ahad had been imprisoned for eight months with her mother in prison and when she got out she spoke about now she is out of prison but she left so many people behind in prison including so many children. So we're going to be talking with Jennifer about the situation of Palestinian child detention by Israel. Thanks so much for joining us Jennifer. Thanks Ariel and welcome everyone. Can you tell us about how many Palestinian children are arrested each year by Israel? How old they are and how many are currently being detained? Right, so one thing that's important to talk about when we are learning about Palestinian children and military detention is to know that a lot of kids are detained by soldiers, sometimes at checkpoints, sometimes coming out after school, maybe at a demonstration, anytime and if you're a visitor to the occupied West Bank you'll probably see that. But the age in which legally Israel can detain children starts at age 12. So when you say how many people have been detained children that go through the military court system starting at the age 12 to the age 18 which is the internationally recognized age as majority. This is about 700 children a year that actually are prosecuted in the military court system. But as we, as you know you might see in videos sometimes even children as young as five years old might be held by a soldier at a checkpoint or something like that. And that sometimes is confusing to people. But so at age 12 is still an incredibly young age for children to be taken away from their families and held in military detention system. It's a system that is rife with abuse and certainly no respect for international law norms and treatment of children. So this is a head story has kind of shed a light on a problem that has been in existence as long as the occupation. So if people have ever traveled to the region they probably have met people who have spent some time in prison, 40% of the male population that said has spent time in prison at some point in their lives. So it's a pretty common experience sadly a common experience for a lot of children young people and adults, typically the detention, what we can talk about like the system of law that that exists is a military legal system so that it isn't really a system about justice and finding truth to allegations it's really a system of control and that I think that it becomes clear when you see the patterns of who gets arrested and and why and what are the charges and that kind of thing. In the last month, but Salem said they were about 291 children in military detention. Most of them are young boys, and they are often taken to detention centers that are not in the West Bank. Now, if people remember about the kind of intricacies of permits and being able to travel what that means then is children are often held into detention centers inside Israel. And that means it's very difficult for for family visits and for any kind of connection to their homes so. So there's about 291 so any any month it can vary. Children, the typical sentence for children for the most common charges for detention happened to be stone throwing about, you know, three, three quarters of the charges are stone throwing. And I think it's always shocking to hear about what is the, the sentence potential sentence for stone throwing, because that has a maximum sentence of anywhere from 10 to 20 years, since it's considered a security offense. So, but a 12 year old is not being typically held for that long, a typical sentence for a child of 12 to 13 years is about three months. And actually, there are some limits to how long children can be held. And for 12 to 13 years, a maximum that a child could be held in prison is six months 14 to 15 years they can spend up to 12 months in prison. So once you're 16, you just can be held like an adult so the older you are can determine the length of your sentence. So if this is your first time being arrested versus multiple times also impacts the sentence. But as I said, most of the, most of the time, children are away for three to four full four months. And another shocking fact about this whole system is the conviction rate that if you are charged with throwing stones and brought into a military court. 99% of the time, you will be found guilty. So that it basically know if if you're brought to court in your charge, you know that you're going to be found guilty so what often happened what lawyers often try to do is, given that scenario what trying to do in the military court is basically get a shorter sentence. So you're negotiating and not about guilty or innocent it's just about how, how little time can it possibly be that a child will be detained and again it's totally pretty arbitrary about what the military court judge will say and yeah and depending on the child and where they're from and all that. So a lot of us saw the video ahead being interrogated shortly after her arrest and saw that threats were made against her family and even sexually inappropriate conduct. The interrogator telling her how attractive her eyes are. Can you tell us a bit about the interrogation process, maybe day versus night, laying a story of such and I know that it's predominantly boys so I imagine this type of sexual inappropriate conduct is well maybe less common but anyway yeah if you could tell us a bit about that. Yeah, so UNICEF and Defense for Children International Palestine that is the partner in this no way to treat a child campaign have done a bulk of the documentation of what happens to children because Defense for Children International Palestine. Not only does the documentation but they also represent children in the military court so they have a lot of firsthand knowledge about what happens and there is a pattern of how children are detained. Often they are arrested a majority of time they're arrested in the night as ahead was and taken in the middle of the night. Many times they are blindfolded and hand tied and taken in a military Jeep to an interrogation center. And often these interrogation centers or police centers and Israeli settlements nearby or yeah other army camps so at that point, the kind of process that happens as a child becomes very disoriented. For some children it's the first time they've left their village, you know they don't know what's happening to them, their parents aren't able to come with them or intercede or do anything to stop the soldiers taking them. And then that next 48 hour period is pretty critical because at that point is interrogation process that you saw the video of I had interrogation and there have been other videos that have come out as well. And interestingly, they're taped by the Israeli military that show the process of trying to get information from the children that I think that's always a big question for us like why are they arresting children and in that interrogation period is where they, the interrogator might say, look, you know, just sign this confession that you threw stones and will let you go home, or if you just, and they'll take out a photo book of like a funeral procession and just the names of who all the people are in this funeral procession and who is the one in your village that organizes these protests and and basically it's an information gathering period that can go from if someone like ahead says, I'm not going to answer. I'm going to stay silent. That that that kind of escalates the interrogation for the interrogator to be become more aggressive I think that has been a pattern. What is important to note that over 88% of the time there isn't a lawyer present. There's not an adult present as you saw in a heads case. So it's, it's incredible psychological pressure you don't even have to physically abuse a child to usually get them to be so scared that they want to sign a confession. Sometimes they're held in solitary confinement to that's also been a pattern, so that that is another way of making a child more and more scared, you know, going into into that situation, I think even us as adults, much less 12 or 13 year old would, you know, feel quite anxious and and eager to go home and eager to get out of the situation. There's like a head who has people in her family and in her community who experienced the military court and detention system. I'm sure she's, she's heard stories since a child about what happened so in some ways she probably was more prepared than others to, to know what her rights are. And that's also some of the work that Defense for Children International Palestine does in the communities is helping to prepare children for what they might encounter and to tell them, you know, cut, there's really nothing you can do. And that's it scenario you saw it just escalate with a head didn't get her free, it didn't change anything. And oftentimes the confessions that children are asked to sign are written in Hebrew. So it's a language that they don't even read so they have to kind of trust the interrogator that what they're signing is what they say. We had a case that was featured in the documentary we made called Detaining Dreams, where the young boy who was interrogated, someone came in and said I'm your lawyer. So just confessed to the, to the, to throwing stones and, and the young boy said, No, I'm not going to confess I didn't do it like I didn't do it and, and then the soul of the lawyer started to beat him up. And he was like, wait a minute if you're my lawyer why are you beating me up and clearly he wasn't a lawyer he was a soldier posing as a lawyer so again that's another. These children are really at the mercy of, of, of the interrogators and, and just an incredibly unjust system. It's really shocking that Israel is putting 12 and 13 year olds 14 year olds in solitary confinement and I know I hadn't thought about it being part of a strategy to gain information about who's organizing protests and who attends funerals and all kinds of things. So some of the communities that are targeted in these nightrests are the communities that are close to Israeli settlements. So you see, you know, Palestinian villages or communities that are close to settlements that have the most army raids or where resistance like in Berlin or, or, you know, where a head is from or other communities in the West Bank that that is where you see more of the rest and more of the, as the Israel calls it mapping the villages of getting information about all the people in order to control them. In order to control any type of resistance to, to the occupation and, and that's, that's what it's about. So it's, it's about mapping the village often through the children and through. One of the things that I had spoke about after her release that struck me the most and heartbreaking to me was that she spoke about Israel trying to prevent her and the other child prisoners from studying for her from finishing high school while she was in prison. She said that having classes which were run by the prisoners themselves were in themselves an act of resistance. Could you talk about what education is like for Palestinian children who are in Israeli prison and what if any obligations Israel has either under their own laws or under international law to for the right to education for child prisoners. Right. Well, Defense for Children International wrote a report in April of 2016 called no way to treat a child and in that they did a comparison between an Israeli and an Ofer prison, where a lot of Palestinian children are held versus OFEC, which is a juvenile detention center for Israeli children. And Israeli children don't go through a military court system they go, they're tried under civilian law, and the contrast between what is was done at OFEC to help children. The whole idea is to like help their learning prepare them to go back into society be a rehabilitative center to help them with the transition of going back into society after being detained and having psychological counselors and staff and this really robust educational program, which is actually quite commendable, you know, when it comes to juvenile detention. That is totally not what's available to Palestinian children. Many of them who have to sit for exams like the Daoji exam that I had took. And while she was in detention. Oftentimes, the preparation is inadequate. They're, for instance, not allowed to teach science in prison, because of security concerns. So they will have Arabic and math classes pretty much and that, and that's it. The, what typically is done is the classes are offered by older Palestinian prisoners who are also in detention and this is a way of also those prisoners being able to be a support to the children who are coming in. But, you know, the classes are, you know, very minimal 45 minute kind of classes and it's inadequate I mean they don't have the materials that you would would have on me on the outside. Many kids actually want to learn Hebrew when they're in detention center, which raises a whole question about like how, how once children have been in detention what happens to them afterwards and it'll be interesting to see what happens to ahead you know if you listen to her say I want to be a lawyer now I that is a common. That is something that other children who've gone through the system of set they come out kind of more committed to justice because they've directly experienced injustice. And they, or they may come out more committed to resist the actual opposite of, of what was intended to, you know, in detaining them in the first place. And, and yet other children don't have the support system so they come back. They retreat from society they drop out of school they can't some, because their schooling has been interrupted. Many of them can't reintegrate or they lost a whole year of studying so they're not with their friends anymore and and it, it, it also one has to recognize that many of them are going back right back into a situation of military occupation so they might see the soldier who arrested them, still in their village. Maybe they have to walk past the checkpoint to get to their school as is the case and in some areas so again fearing that they might be grabbed again or the soldiers will come again and it has so many repercussions for community and for children and as much as the society tries to welcome people back I mean, I had homecoming was remarkable. Partially because of all the press coverage. But for the other 699 children that come out of detention. There isn't that that kind of welcome home. In some cases there's certain communities do what they can. But in at least one case that we know that was also in our documentary. Boy was told, okay, you're leaving today, and they never told his family. So he was like, let out of prison and he's just standing by the side of the road like, okay, how do I even get home and you know it was. So it was not a hero's welcome by any means. And, you know, further traumatizing further making children. You know, question question authority question safety what does safety mean in that scenario. You spoke earlier about where how difficult it is for families to be able to visit their children and I know even in Ahid's case I think it took a month or more for her father boss and to be able to visit her how you tell us more about this. Yeah, well, in part because of how the occupation is structured with needing to get permits and travel travel from one place to another is so difficult in any circumstances really. But also getting into Israel where or into the north for people that live like in the Hebron area for instance for them to commit to traveling to a detention center to see potentially see their child which actually usually the only time parents can see their child is for court hearing. So when the children are brought into the military court is often the first time, and maybe the only time that they will see their child. And I was in one of those court sessions once as an observer and you know you're not allowed to talk to your child, you can there's no touch. Like whisper. It's really heartbreaking I sat by a mother who just silently sobbed in the corner as she looked at her son who was like saying mama mama it's okay I'm strong, I'll be okay. You know, he's calming her down and it was, it's just heartbreaking. There's no phone calls in prison. There, you know, there's no, you don't get letters. So that really is total isolation from your family and, and peers and. Yeah, it's just describing the process and what happens. Has led people to question the occupation question things in a way that, you know, we always say this has to end there needs, people need to live with life of dignity and freedom and, but I think unless you've been there you don't know all these kind of intricate details. And that's why we started the no way to treat a child campaign because we wanted to talk about the treatment of children that this kind of treatment is is not visible. It's against international law, any person with a heart can see that this is there's no justification for what for what's happening even if you're, you try to make an argument that this is to protect security. And how can that be it's just, it's just not and I think most people see that and I'm excited that they're now members of Congress that actually have taken up this issue have spoken about the issue. Three years ago when we were knocking on doors in the halls of Congress, we weren't sure if people would respond, you know, because we've become so jaded in this work to think that, you know, people don't aren't going to care about anything, but just like we've seen at our own US borders that the minute that you start talking about children being taken away from their families and held in cages and detention centers with no rights. That kind of crosses boundaries, whatever your political leanings are that that can speak to you and so we were pleased to find a champion and Betty McCullum, a representative from Minnesota who watched a couple videos of children being detained read the UNICEF report and other human rights reports and including the own the our US State Department report that has talked about this issue over the last decade, and just said, Yeah, no. And this isn't right, like, Israeli and Palestinian children should be treated equally, and we shouldn't be financing this with our tax dollars so that that kind of started a wonderful couple of years of talking about this issue on Capitol Hill and finding allies and people to do more than just say, I'm sorry but actually in private but actually put their name onto public letters and now sponsor legislation. So could you tell us about this legislation where it's at and what people can do to get involved. I think it's, you know, well, first of all, it's, it's got a long name, but you can remember the, the numbers 4391 is is maybe easier than saying the promoting human rights by ending Israeli military detention of Palestinian Children Act. Like, okay, it's typical bill language right, but HR 4391 was introduced last November. It started with 12 co sponsors with Betty McCullum. And by the end of the year. Well, by up to this point we have now 30 members of Congress who signed on to the, to the bill, which is exciting. Many of them are members of the progressive caucus, but not all of them. Some of them have spoken out on other human rights issues in Israel and Palestine. Some are new to the issue. Some are approach it as a human rights issue, others approach it for from a perspective of what will bring lasting peace to the region. There's all kinds of motivations. I think it's exciting for us as organizers and activists around the country to actually have something that we can go and say to our member of Congress, do you support this or do you not, because if you don't support the bill, then it does mean that you want your community to be spent on detaining, detaining Palestinian Children so that, you know, I have a friend in Indiana who says, Oh, I can't go and talk to my member of Congress because they're a supporter of the Tea Party and I say, Well, put them on the record, like, have them make a statement. I support sending us military aid to Israel to detain Palestinian Children as young as 12 years old for throwing stones, but that in writing like, and so that I think it's a, it's a great way to hold people accountable. That's what we haven't done for so many years. And I think, as we are seeing in our movement in general whether we're talking about house demolitions are ending the blockade of Gaza, or restoring funding to UNRWA, or, you know, all these issues that we are advocating for. We're gaining ground, and we're having discussions that we haven't had in the many decades that I've been working on this issue. So I'm quite excited about it. Well, I want to thank you for being on with us. We are just about out of time and we will put in the caption for this video link so that you can message your member of Congress and tell them to sign on to our 3941 4391. Yeah, and actually there's a there's a citizen sign on petition to so that, you know, we, we are copying now, Senator Sanders and his citizen co signing petition so also on the no way to treat a child or a child site and we can put a link to that in your comments. People can sign as an individual so if you can get your member of Congress we hope to have at least 10,000 signatures by the end of the year supporting this bill. Add your name and that's no way to treat a child.org. Right. Thank you so much Jennifer for being with us and let's hope we soon get the rest of the children out of Israeli prison. Thank you for your activism. Thank you.