Palestine - A Stone's Throw Away From Syria

[Published 14 March 2014]


It boggles the imagination that Australia’s national broadcaster the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) could have been involved in a joint investigation between its premier Public Affairs show - “Four Corners” - and one of Australia’s leading newspapers – The Australian – in producing a 45 minute television documentary – “Stone Cold Justice” - examining the treatment of Palestinian children in Israel’s military court system.

ABC News announced that:

“Children are being intimidated and forced into false confessions by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank, according to allegations to be broadcast tonight on the ABC’s Four Corners program.

A joint investigation between Four Corners and The Australian newspaper has examined the treatment of Palestinian children in Israel’s military court system. Four Corners looks at claims the Israeli army is arresting hundreds of Palestinian children during night raids for alleged crimes, such as throwing stones at Israeli soldiers and settlers.

Israel’s security services have also been accused by lawyers and youth workers of using Palestinian children to gather intelligence.”

The news item went on to reveal that:

“700 Palestinian children [are] detained each year by the Israeli army…”

Any allegations concerning the mistreatment or abuse of children should be vigorously questioned and exposed - but the allocation of substantial resources by the Australian taxpayer funded ABC to investigate allegations that relate to 700 children a year in the West Bank must be seriously questioned.

There are certainly far more serious abuses being suffered by children – most notably in Syria for the last three years – that deserve detailed investigation by national broadcasters like the ABC.

The impotency of the United Nations and its “humanitarian” agencies in allowing inhumane outcomes for children resulting from member states either backing the Assad regime or those seeking to overthrow it – has been starkly revealed in a report - “Under Siege -The devastating impact on children of three years of conflict in Syria” - issued by UNICEF this week.

The Report reveals that:

1. Since March 2013, the number of children affected by the crisis in Syria has more than doubled from 2.3 million to more than 5.5 million.

2. The number of children displaced inside Syria has more than tripled from 920,000 to almost 3 million.

3. The number of child refugees has more than quadrupled from 260,000 to more than 1.2 million. Of these children, 425,000 are under the age of five

4. One in 10 children – over 1.2 million – have fled the country to become refugees in neighbouring countries. And these numbers are rising every day. By the end of January 2014, 37,498 Syrian children had been born as refugees.

5.As of January 2014, more than 10,000 children have lost their lives to Syria’s violence reflecting a blatant disregard for civilian lives by all sides to the conflict. Most have reportedly died in the last 24 months - and there is evidence that children are being directly targeted.

6. Boys as young as 12 have been recruited to support the fighting, some in actual combat, others to work as informers, guards, or arms smugglers

7.According to a recent UN report, children as young as 11 are being detained with adults. In some cases, they are being subjected to torture and sexual abuse to humiliate them, force confessions, or pressure relatives to surrender

8. According to UN field estimates- one in ten refugee children is thought to be working – whether as cheap labour on farms, in cafes and car repair shops or as beggars on city streets.

9.Malnutrition and dangerous vitamin and mineral deficiencies – so-called “hidden hunger” - have been slowly undermining children’s ability to develop and thrive over the last three years.

10. Since the confirmation of a polio outbreak in the governorate of Deir Ezzour in October 2013, 25 cases of the disease have been confirmed in the north and east of the country. Despite a massive immunization programme since - polio remains a threat, especially to an estimated 323,000 children under the age of five in areas under siege or that are hard-to-reach

Australia currently occupies a seat on the United Nations Security Council –positioning it to take a lead role in demanding that an armed UN force be sent to Syria to implement an imposed cease fire to end this mayhem and slaughter – if the warring parties do not agree on a cease fire within a specified time frame.

If Australia’s national broadcaster has been moved to investigate the abuse of 700 children in the West Bank – surely it should be similarly motivated to produce a series of 45 minute documentaries interviewing UNICEF officials and those on the front line in Syria named in UNICEF’s report detailing the abuses being visited on 5.5 million children.

Indeed all national broadcasters – especially in those democratic countries forming part of the “The Friends of Syria Core Group of countries – the ‘London 11’” - the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Turkey – should be actively demanding a cease fire to end the suffering of these innocent children.

The other members of the London 11 - Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates must be prepared to join such an international force to end this genocidal assault on Arab children.

Russia, Iran and Hezbollah need to accept such a cease fire immediately.

The world must intervene without further delay.

Syria is only a stone’s throw away from the West Bank – not on another planet.

Gazans Get Gazumped Again

[Published February 2008]

The Moslem world has blown yet another opportunity to offer the 1.5 million Gazan Arabs hope for a better life and future by once again showing its total disregard for their welfare - preferring to play the political rather than the humanitarian game with potentially disastrous consequences for the Gazans.

This follows the absence of any attempt by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to keep the border between Egypt and Gaza open after it had been demolished by Hamas. This had taken place using the pretext of ending what the Arab League had called “a humanitarian crisis” - the refusal of Israel to supply fuel to Gaza in retaliation for the continued barrage of rockets and mortars being fired into Israel’s civilian population centers.

Whilst the border’s demolition was intended to - and did - allow freedom of movement by terrorists and armaments into and out of Egypt - and possibly from there to Israel - it also had allowed Gaza’s 1.5 million residents freedom of movement as well. Approximately 750000 Gazans took advantage of that opportunity during the 11 days the border had remained opened and unsupervised by the Egyptians.

The border has now been hermetically sealed by Egypt without a whimper from the 57 member States of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) - which includes the 22 member States of the Arab League.

The OIC was founded in 1969. According to its Charter its foundation members declared that it was established because they were:

“ CONVINCED that their common belief constitutes a strong factor for rapprochement and solidarity among Islamic people" and that they were “RESOLVED to preserve Islamic spiritual, ethical, social and economic values, which will remain one of the important factors of achieving progress for mankind”

On Sunday 3 February, the Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki told an Expanded Extraordinary Session of the Executive Committee of OIC Foreign Ministers, being held at the headquarters of the OIC in Jeddah:

“These days a real slaughter is underway in the 1.5 million Gaza Prison and an oppressed nation is being subjected to massacre by repeated bombardments, helicopter and tank attacks and a simultaneous cut off of water electricity and foodstuff”

Not one Foreign Minister present appeared to take issue with this hyperbolic statement - but that might have been due to no-one believing whatever Iran says these days.

This is not to ignore the considerable hardship being suffered by Gazans whose suffering has greatly increased since Gaza was taken over by Hamas in June 2007 following a bitter internecine struggle with the Palestine Liberation Organisation for control of this tiny area.

Yet remarkably the only affirmative OIC response at Sunday’s meeting was to:

1. Task the Islamic Group at the UN to pursue necessary measures to secure an adequate action by the United Nations and

2. Urge the Member States, the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), and private financial institutions to endeavour to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people in order to alleviate their suffering

Isn’t this a cop out? What humanitarian assistance should -and can - the Member States provide - not merely “endeavour to provide”?

What “Islamic spiritual, ethical, social and economic values” are being demonstrated by the decision to lock up the Gazans in their prison again?

Egypt is a member of the OIC. Surely the humanitarian message of the open border was clear - many Gazans relished the opportunity to escape - briefly or permanently - from what is no doubt a disastrous and oppressive environment.

Whilst hundreds of millions of Moslems in OIC member States enjoy the right to migrate, Gazans have now apparently been denied the same right by their own Moslem brethren

UNICEF states that 56 percent of Gazans are under the age of 18 years and that they are bearing the brunt of restrictions in the territory. How can the IOC actively countenance the continuation of this disgraceful situation and not seek to promote the opportunity for Gazans to choose a better life - either by resettlement in any of their 57 member states or elsewhere of their choosing?

Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak also took the opportunity to bluntly declare that Gaza will never be part of Egypt. Why not?

Apart from the fact that it was administered by Egypt from 1948-1967, what encouragement does the President’s spineless reaction give to Hamas in relation to its claim to continue to rule a strip of land just 25 miles long and 6 miles wide for the avowed purpose of destroying the State of Israel?

Does the OIC consider it an Islamic value to see 1.5 million Moslems subjected to continuous suffering because of the use of armed force and terror from Gaza against the Jewish State? Should the OIC not be pressing for those who are suffering to be given the opportunity of migrating to find a more peaceful and prosperous future for themselves and their children? Isn’t this inflicting collective punishment on these people by denying them the right to emigrate through Egypt?

The OIC emergency meeting was only attended by a few of its members suggesting little desire among Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies to do anything about this shocking situation. Moslems surely have a religious and moral obligation to alleviate the humanitarian suffering of other Moslems - unreservedly and without regard to the political situation in which those suffering Moslems find themselves.

Allowing those 1.5 million Gazans to live out their lives as they presently do, does not represent “rapprochement and solidarity” among Islamic people but rather “conflict and disunity” - a gross betrayal of everything the OIC is supposed to represent.

It is time for the OIC to give priority to humanitarian values over political goals.

The Gazans - for the umpteenth time in their wretched history over the past 60 years - have been once again gazumped by their Moslem and Arab brothers. Will anything or anyone ever be able to save them?