CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Criminalizing Their Protectors is Yet Another Crime Against Palestinian Children

For 35 years, Defense for Children International – Palestine did what no institution with power was willing to do: it witnessed. It deployed field researchers in the occupied West Bank. It collected sworn affidavits, obtained medical records, reviewed CCTV footage, confirmed identities through birth certificates and national identification cards. It produced documentation that met United Nations evidentiary standards. Its findings were not allegations. They were records of what a state does to children when it believes those children do not fully count.

DCIP has now been forced to cease operations as a result of relentless intimidation, vilification, persecution and obstruction by the Israeli government This would not be possible without the silence of the international community.

WHAT IS HAPPENING IS GENOCIDE

 It is either rapid genocide through aerial bombardment and starvation or it is slow genocide through violence, forced displacement, incarceration.  The International Court of Justice has found it plausible that genocide is being committed against Palestinians in Gaza. It has ruled that Israel’s military occupation of the West bank is illegal, constitutes apartheid and must be brought to an end. The record of what has been done to Palestinian children — the killing, imprisonment, torture, withholding of bodies — is not a matter of dispute. It exists. It has been carefully assembled and documented over decades, by people who have now been designated terrorists for protecting children.

Since October 7, 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have killed 194 Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank., They were shot with live ammunition, killed by drone  Apache helicopter strikes, shot in the back and through the windows of their homes. A 14-year-old shot in the head while picking almonds. A 16-year-old shot in the chest while closing up his shop while soldiers blocked anyone from reaching him for ten minutes. Ambulances were prevented from reaching the wounded. The bodies of 56 Palestinian children are being withheld from their families. There is no grief without a grave. This is not a consequence of war. It is a policy.

As of December 31, 2025, 351 Palestinian children are held in Israeli prisons — 180 of them without charge,........

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