Humiliation and Child
Abuse at Israeli Checkpoints
Strip-Searching Children
By ALISON WEIR
Israeli
officials have been regularly strip-searching children for decades, some
of them American citizens.
While organizations that focus on
Israel-Palestine have long been aware that Israeli border officials
regularly strip search men and women, If Americans Knew appears to be
the first organization that has specifically investigated the policy of
strip searching women. In the course of its investigation, If Americans
Knew was astonished to learn that Israeli officials have also been strip
searching young girls as young as seven and below.
According to interviews with women in
the United States, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli border
officials periodically force Christian and Muslim females of all ages to
remove their clothing and submit to searches. In some cases the children
are then "felt" by Israeli officials.
Sometimes mothers and children are
strip-searched together, at other times little girls are taken from
their parents and strip-searched alone. Women are required to remove
sanitary napkins, sometimes with small daughters at their side.
Sometimes women are strip searched in the presence of their young sons.
All report deep feelings of
humiliation. Many describe weeping at the degradation they felt.
"I remember crying and pleading with
my mother," Gaza journalist Laila El-Haddad recalls of an experience
when she was 12-years-old, hoping that her mother could convince the
Israeli official to allow her to keep her undershirt on. But parents are
unable to shield their children, El-Haddad and others report.
"They had machine guns," El-Haddad
explains. "We just had to submit." El-Haddad, who holds a Masters degree
in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, believes
that the intention of the strip searches is to humiliate Palestinians so
that they won't return to Palestine.
Oregon attorney Hala Gores remembers
being strip-searched at the age of 10. Her family, Palestinian
Christians from Nazareth, were leaving Israel because of Israeli
discrimination against Christians. Gores has never returned to her
family's ancestral home in Nazareth, she says, in part because she does
not want to repeat the experience of having no control over what is done
to her.
The Israeli policy appears to target
only Christian and Muslim children, and is equally applied to those with
Israeli citizenship and citizenship in other countries, including
native-born Americans. There are no reports of Jewish children being
strip-searched.
New Jersey stand-up comedian Maysoon
Zayid describes being strip-searched at Ben Gurion Airport when she was
"seven, eight, nine years old" on family trips to visit her parents'
original home in Palestine. On her most recent trip in July 2006,
Maysoon, an American citizen, had her sanitary pad taken by officials in
Ben Gurion Airport. When the search was completed, she says, the Israeli
official in charge, Inbal Sharon, then refused to return her pad or
allow her to get another.
Zayid, who has cerebral palsy and was
sitting in a wheelchair, was then forced to bleed publicly for hours
while she waited for her flight.
Zayid, a former class president and
yearbook editor at New Jersey's Cliffside Park High School known for her
irreverent comedy routines and strong personality, describes sobbing
uncontrollably. "No one spoke up," she remembers. "There were several
women, including the woman who was pushing my wheelchair, none of whom
said a word."
When she boarded her flight, Zayid
recalls, "The flight attendants looked at me in disgust." She told them
what had happened, and the attendants then gave her some of their own
clothing to use.
In addition to taking her sanitary
napkin, Israeli officials also confiscated medication that Zayid is
required to take when flying. As a result, she vomited repeatedly
throughout the 12-hour flight.
Zayid, who founded a program for newly
disabled Palestinian youths many of them permanently disabled from
attacks by Israeli forces was so depressed by her treatment that she
determined never to return. "But that's what they want," she says, "They
want us to get to the point where we don't go back." She says that she
is already planning to return to her volunteer work in the West Bank.
Israeli practices vary and seem to be
applied randomly, from elderly women to small children. In some
instances women are taken into a room alone and are left sitting naked
for hours. At other times they are strip-searched in groups, their
clothes thrown in a pile. When they are finally allowed to get dressed,
they describe having to rummage through the heap of clothing, naked and
barefoot, to find their own garments.
Jewish Holocaust Survivor
While these policies largely target
Palestinian and Palestinian-American women and children, some
non-Palestinian Americans also report being subjected to strip searches
by Israeli officials.
St. Louis resident Hedy Epstein, whose
parents and extended family perished in Nazi camps, and whose story is
featured in the Academy Award winning documentary "Into the Arms of
Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport," reports being strip searched
three years ago following her participation in nonviolent protests in
the West Bank. Epstein, who was 79 at the time, describes being forced
to bend over for an Israeli official to search her internally.
The strip searches appear to be
illegal under numerous statutes. The Geneva Conventions, to which Israel
is a signatory, prohibit: "Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular
humiliating and degrading treatment" and specifically emphasize: "Women
shall be especially protected against any attack on their honour"
Article 2 of the Convention on the
Rights of the Child states: "No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or
unlawful interference with his or her privacy"
In the US, such policies would appear
to violate child abuse statutes. The state of Utah, for example, defines
Child Abuse as: "Any form of cruelty to a child's physical, moral or
mental well-being." The Encarta Encyclopedia defines child abuse as
"Intentional acts that result in physical or emotional harm to
children."
While the If Americans Knew
investigation focused on practices concerning women, many interviewees
reported frequent random strip-searching of males as well; including
American citizens, children, and the elderly.
While the practice is widely applied,
many people find it too humiliating to speak of. One 68-year-old
Christian businessman, who had been stripped naked at Ben Gurion airport
in 2006 before being allowed to board his flight to return home, had
never revealed his experience to his family until he learned of the If
Americans Knew investigation. He then explained to his daughter why he
had previously told her that he might never return to his original home,
now in the state of Israel.
Christians, a thriving community that
made up approximately 15 percent of Palestine's population before
Zionist immigration and the creation of Israel (Muslims were 80 percent
and Jews 5 percent), have now dwindled under Israeli occupation to
approximately two percent of the total population.
Israeli spokespeople and sympathizers
have bristled in recent months at the title of a book by former
President Jimmy Carter, "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid." In reply,
Carter has emphasized that the Israeli "apartheid" he is describing is
limited to the West Bank and Gaza. Many analysts have disagreed with
Carter, providing evidence of pervasive discrimination within Israel
itself. The If Americans Knew finding that Israel has been routinely
strip-searching non-Jewish citizens of Israel would also indicate a
wider policy of Israeli discrimination.
Since American taxpayers give Israel
over $8 million per day, the Council for the National Interest, a
Washington DC-based lobbying organization, is organizing a campaign to
call on Congress to demand that Israel end these policies.
"We are extremely upset to learn that
Israel is using American tax money in ways that degrade and humiliate
women and children," says CNI President Eugene Bird. "We call on all
Americans to help us on this campaign."
The organization urges people to begin
contacting their Congressional representatives immediately, and to
disseminate
the video report by If Americans Knew as widely as possible.