– Our Correspondent
New Delhi, October 30: A film which has been produced by a group of Australian journalists has sparked an international outcry against Israel after it explicitly detailed Tel Aviv’s use of torture against Palestinian children.
The film, titled ‘Stone Cold Justice’ documents how Palestinian children, who have been arrested and detained by Israeli forces, are subjected to physical abuse, torture and forced into false confessions and pushed into gathering intelligence on Palestinian activists.
Australia’s foreign minister Julie Bishop has spoken out against Israeli’s use of torture stating that “I am deeply concerned by allegations of the mistreatment of Palestinian children,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor has described the human rights abuses documented in the film as “intolerable”.
But rights groups have slammed this statement, saying that the Israelis are doing nothing to change Tel Aviv’s policy to torture Palestinian children.
Last year a report by the United Nations International Emergency Children’s Fund (UNICEF) concluded that Palestinian children are often targeted in night arrests and raids of their homes, threatened with death and subjected to physical violence, solitary confinement and sexual assault.
The film Stone Cold Justice has sparked an international outcry about Israel’s treatment of children in Israeli jails. However, rights groups have criticized Tel Aviv for not doing anything to create a policy that protects Palestinian children against arbitrary arrest and torture.
Meanwhile, Israel continued its indiscriminate bombing on the besieged Gaza on the 23rd day. According to the Health Ministry in Gaza, 8,005 Palestinians have died thus far, 3,324 of them were children. Over 20,000 individuals have sustained injuries. Only 3 percent of Gaza’s needs are being met by the meager humanitarian aid that has come in, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent, despite the territory’s struggling medical sector.
