01/13/15 – Olivia Watson – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, the Scott Horton Show.
Our first guest is Olivia Watson.
She is with, well, let's see, it's Defense for Children International Palestine, and I guess they have their separate divisions here.
This is the Palestine division.
The website is DCI-Palestine.org, DCI-Palestine.org.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
Hi, I'm good.
Thanks, Scott.
Good, good.
Very happy to have you here on the show.
It looks like you guys are doing some very important work here.
I saw someone had sent out an article that about some work that you guys had done last summer about Palestinian children in solitary confinement.
And I see that you guys have some follow up here as well on the site.
So I might ask you about that a little bit later.
But first of all, I kind of wanted to run through this.
And I guess that's one of the that's one of the stories on the list anyway.
And you've got this great write up kind of retrospective here.
How was 2014 for Palestinian children?
Well, we know the answer is terrible, but obviously, first and foremost, the answer starts with the war in the Gaza Strip or war against the Gaza Strip last summer.
Correct?
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, I think the interesting thing here is that a lot of media attention obviously focused on the conflict in Gaza over the summer.
But what DCI Palestine was observing was that fatalities and injuries of children were continuing way before that started.
And they continue now as well.
All right.
Well, so let's go let's go back then to a year ago, the beginning of the year, the first half of the year, really, before the war started.
What was going on then?
And so the buffer zone that kind of closes the Gaza Strip is very heavily militarized.
And we observed three fatalities and three child fatalities in the run up to the Gaza conflict.
And those were in March, April, May.
And those children just continuing with their with their lives.
And often they were mistakenly on the agricultural section, which which borders the buffer zone.
And Israeli soldiers were opening fire.
And there were three fatalities and 43 injuries as a result of Israeli fire in the months preceding the conflict.
And by the way, because we probably won't get back to it, there was a point during the war where the buffer zone was shrunk by severe degrees by the IDF.
Did they keep it that way or did they retreat back to the former line?
It was some retreating, but it's still not at the level that it was before the conflict at the moment.
And so there's been even more of a squeeze, if you like, on the Gaza Strip.
And that's all the best land.
That's the agricultural land, yeah, that people need to survive.
Conditions are very hard in Gaza, obviously.
And people need to have access to that agricultural land to live.
And so you're talking about children being shot.
But how is it that the IDF justifies shooting children who are just wandering too close to the line?
It's not like they're trying to climb the fence into Israel.
They're just wandering too close to the line and they're getting sniped.
Yeah, I mean, I mean, Israel has basically no justification for it.
I mean, not that it would be OK to shoot a kid climbing the fence.
I didn't mean to say it that way.
No, of course not.
But there's very little justification for it.
I mean, in the cases that DCI Palestine documented, children were trying to take in sheep that they'd allowed to graze on the land.
They were collecting hay, that kind of thing.
They weren't posing any kind of threat.
And there's absolutely no justification for shooting children in those circumstances.
Yeah, it's just terrible.
And then, so now how many children were killed in the war?
So, DCI Palestine documented at least 480.
It depends, the UN thinks over 500 children lost their lives.
But, yeah, at least 480 children.
I saw one statistic that had, I think, at least a couple of score of family lines completely destroyed, where no member of the family lived.
And, you know, their last name is over for now.
Or their branch of whatever family is over.
Yeah, and there was one family in which the extended family was at home at the time of an attack.
And the extended family lost 19 children in the same attack.
So, yeah, this was because buildings were being targeted and families were living in close proximity with one another.
So lots and lots of children were present when houses were being bombed.
And now, of course, the Israelis say, well, you know, we're only shooting back where Hamas is shooting rockets at us.
And it's the Palestinians' fault for being nearby or for allowing Hamas to fire rockets from near where they're staying.
Is that not correct?
Yeah, that's what they say.
But I think if you have any understanding of the demographics and the context of the Gaza Strip, I mean, this is an incredibly densely populated area.
Half a million of the population is under 18.
So wherever you are, there are going to be large numbers of children.
And we've already talked about the buffer zone.
People can't get in and out.
So they're trapped.
And so I think it's misleading to talk about Hamas fighters embedded within the population.
I mean, that's to ignore the context completely.
Well, yeah, I mean, they say that everything is a very carefully targeted strike.
And yet they're using 500 and 1,000 pound bombs.
And you can see from the footage where they've just decimated entire sections of town.
How the hell do you call that a precise strike when it amounts to carpet bombing?
Yeah, indeed.
And they're also targeting residential areas.
I mean, whole neighborhoods of Gaza City were flattened.
Like Shajia to the east of Gaza City.
It's very densely populated.
It's residential areas.
And yeah, as you say, they were bombing civilian neighborhoods.
And I'm sorry, I always mess it up.
Was it called the Shia doctrine or something like that?
Named after the neighborhood in Lebanon where they decided, let's just collectively punish this entire neighborhood by leveling it.
Yeah, the Shia doctrine.
Yeah, that was followed during the Gaza conflict, yeah.
I mean, that was one of the reasons for the very high loss of life of civilians and children.
Yeah, it's amazing that they're allowed in any media to get away with pretending that everything is a targeted strike against somebody firing a rocket at the same time that it's on the record that they have this doctrine of collective punishment and then they carry it out before our eyes.
Although, would you agree, Olivia, that something that was really different this time around and we have these periodic bloodlettings in Gaza, but that this time around, the ability of the average Gazan to put the pictures on Twitter had increased to such a degree that it really turned the tide in terms of public relations.
The Israeli lies just weren't holding up to the reality coming from Gaza.
To the reality coming to our desktops in real time.
Well, I wouldn't say that it turned the tide.
I mean, it definitely gave a much more balanced view of what was actually happening on the ground in Gaza.
But I think one of the problems with the way the media portrayed the whole conflict was that it was portrayed as an equal battle, an equal fight between Hamas and Israel, when that's not all the case.
So there are still problems with the way the media portrays the conflict.
But yeah, at the very least, people could see what was happening in Gaza from people who were there, who were living through it.
Yeah, I remember even Jon Stewart, who was pretty much silent on this issue most of the time, got in on the act and mocked how they were on CNN, I guess, interviewing two reporters, one from Gaza and one from Tel Aviv.
And the one from Gaza is wearing body armor and a helmet, and the guy in Tel Aviv is wearing a pink polo shirt.
But we're supposed to pretend that it's the Israelis who are the ones under siege.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, that perfectly encapsulated how unbalanced the whole conflict was.
And when there were that many bombs being dropped on the Gaza Strip repeatedly over the course of 50 days, I mean, just to look at the numbers, it's clear that it was a completely unbalanced conflict.
So over 2,200 Palestinians lost their lives, as opposed to approximately 70 Israelis, most of whom were soldiers as well.
And as we know, the majority of Palestinians who died were civilians.
So it's not balanced at all, no.
All right, now hold it right there.
We'll be right back with Olivia Watson from dci-palestine.org.
Defense for Children International, Palestine.
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All right, you guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Talking with Olivia Watson from Defense of Children International, Palestine.
That's dci-palestine.org. dci-palestine.org.
And we're kind of doing a year in review here of Israel's treatment of Palestinian children.
And so that goes for the Gaza Strip as well as the West Bank.
And I guess before we move right on to the solitary confinement story, could you please discuss for us here real quick, tell us about this instance of the Israelis using a Palestinian child as a human shield in the war in Gaza?
Because that's all we ever heard from the Israelis about why they kill, who they kill in the Gaza Strip.
It's funny the way they say it, too.
They go, oh, Hamas uses these human shields.
But it's sort of unsaid that it's okay to go ahead and wax them.
If they're being used as a shield, then by all means, shoot right through them to kill the Hamas guy on the other side.
As we already discussed, there doesn't necessarily have to be a Hamas guy anywhere nearby for them to go ahead and do it.
But so then we turn right around and we have, I don't know if there's a single actual proven case of Hamas using Palestinian civilians as human shields.
But you guys have at least one here of the Israeli military in this same engagement.
Can you please explain?
Yes.
So we found that the Israeli military had detained 16-year-old Ahmed Abu Raida during the conflict.
He was detained for five days, separated from his family.
And detained for no reason.
He's a child, of course, and he's not involved in any military activities.
During his detention, he was beaten with a wire.
He was made to walk in front of soldiers searching for tunnels inside the Gaza Strip.
And he was also made to dig outside in the sun on behalf of soldiers, as well as being made to go in front of soldiers inside houses to check for any booby traps, any bombs that might be in the house already.
And that's effectively to protect Israeli soldiers.
So, yeah, he was, I mean, it's a very clear case of using a Palestinian child as a human shield.
And it flouts international law.
We took an affidavit from both the boy who was involved and from people who saw him, other detainees who saw him during the five days that he was detained.
But as yet, the Israeli government hasn't launched any investigation into this.
And he hasn't been contacted for comment from the Israeli military.
Well, and how much of the story was verified by those external witnesses?
I mean, all of it is verified.
Yeah, I mean, to us, it's very clear.
But we have the Israeli military on the other side who deny the fact that he was used in that way.
And who haven't yet undertaken a proper investigation into it at all.
Right.
Yeah, because they don't want to know what it's going to find.
That's pretty obvious enough there.
All right.
So now to the solitary confinement.
And, you know, I'm an individualist.
So good thing, because if I was just speaking for America, boy, would this be a matter of the pot calling the kettle black.
But no, each individual injustice stands on its own.
Please tell us about solitary confinement of minors, of children, by the Israeli police and military.
Yep.
So just to give you a bit of background, there are approximately 200 children in military detention on average every month in the West Bank.
So of those children detained, some are subjected to solitary confinement.
And that's normally as a way of coercing a confession or extracting information.
And of the cases that we've documented, we find that children are placed alone in a cell, normally without windows.
They're given restricted food and water, not very much.
And they're placed there for up to sometimes two weeks and just completely alone with a view to extracting information perhaps about other people in the community or forcing a confession that may or may not be true.
And I mean, between 2008 and 2013, we documented 80 cases of Palestinian children subjected to solitary confinement like that.
And that's prior to them being charged with any offense at all.
So they're not actually charged when they're being placed in solitary confinement like that.
Obviously, using solitary confinement in that way is conduct that amounts to torture under international law.
When it's intentionally used like that during pretrial detention as a technique to obtain a confession, it amounts to torture, it's cruel, it's inhumane and it's degrading as well.
So we also found that children held in that way in solitary confinement are not being properly informed of their right to silence.
They're denied access to legal counsel and they don't have a family member present during interrogation.
So there's various ways in which children's rights are being violated.
Obviously, the most serious one is to be kept like that for days on end in solitary confinement, which is extremely traumatic for a child.
It's absolutely amazing.
And I think Americans, we have, all Americans have a very simple touchstone here, which is our Fifth Amendment, which provides that the government may not even attempt to, well, I mean, they can ask you, but they can't do anything other than ask you once and they have to shut up and leave you alone once you ask for your lawyer.
To get you to incriminate yourself.
There is no process under American law.
It's banned by our Bill of Rights for them to try to force a confession out of you because it's been that way since 1791 because they were applying the lessons of the past.
And what you're describing to me is, I mean, just think of this process.
Everyone listen to this process.
They arrest a kid, then they put him in solitary confinement.
Then they get his confession.
Then they charge him.
They're not even never mind.
He's been convicted and sentenced to solitary confinement, which would be the worst kind of human rights violation in the first place.
But here we're talking about this is how they come up with the bogus story about what the kid did that they're going to use to charge him in the first place.
You know, even in America now, they couldn't do this to a kid.
And I think the issue as well is that these types of confessions that are being coerced from children are used as evidence in a military court.
So judges routinely take evidence that's been obtained in that way by a coercive confession and use it to sentence the child.
And the vast majority of children are found guilty for the charges that they're accused of.
Amazing.
Hey, you know what?
I shouldn't speak with too broad of a brush.
I'm sure there are kids in jail right now in America who have been subject to this same kind of thing.
But it's certainly against the spirit of our laws and what all Americans.
You know, this is the one thing we agree on is the Bill of Rights supposedly around here and the justice and the truth and freedom it's supposed to protect here.
And that's, you know, torture is banned twice, really, in our Bill of Rights.
The Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and then also again in the Eighth Amendment against using it as a punishment.
Now, when we're talking about these minor Palestinians, how young of children are we talking about are being subject to this kind of treatment by the Israelis?
The vast majority are teenagers, maybe 15, 16, but some are as young as 12.
We've had cases of even younger children being arrested as well.
And I mean, I think it's also important to note that it's not just the fact of being held in solitary confinement.
It's also that interrogations continue throughout that period.
So they can continue sometimes for weeks.
The interrogations are extremely threatening.
Normally, the child is alone and they're intimidated verbally, physically.
So it's a very, very coercive environment for extracting confession.
And these are young children.
They're 14, 15.
And they're not at all equipped to be able to deal with this.
It's extremely traumatic for them.
Yeah.
Their families are threatened.
Is that part of it, too?
The families are completely absent.
So they're normally arrested during the night and taken away from their parents.
They're not given access to legal counsel.
And normally the first time they see their parents again is when they appear in the military court.
Yeah.
As part of the confession, if you don't confess, we're going to do this.
That or the other thing to your family, that kind of thing.
We've had cases of that as well.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because, you know, that sounds for some reason, I think that sounds to people like it's not that much of a thing if they don't do it.
But you think about anyone, but especially a child who's being held under the total power of these people.
And they're saying, yeah, we can do the same thing and worse to those closest to you.
That's a credible threat.
That's that's that can cause the, you know, absolute most extreme levels of stress, especially in a child.
A threat like that against, you know, their family members, their mother, their father, their brothers, their sisters.
It's just madness.
If this was any other country in the world that was not an ally of the United States, America would invade it and regime change it.
For these using these kinds of human rights abuses as their excuse to do so.
And it would be a pretty much open and shut case as far as the American people are concerned, too.
But anyway.
Yeah.
I mean, I think it's very clear that the international law is being just flouted again and again in terms of military detention of children.
And I'm sorry I ran a rave so much and we didn't get a chance to talk about all the rest of this horrible oppression.
Here, including the absolute impunity with which the settlers unleashed their violence on the people whose land they're stealing in occupied territories there.
But that'll have to wait for another time.
But thank you so much for your time on the show, Olivia.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
It's Olivia Watson at DCI Palestine dot org.
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