Photo on flyer for last night's Palestinian Child Prisoners event held at NUT.
Israel hate came to the National Union of Teachers last night when the PSC was allowed to hold one of its meetings at the NUT’s sumptuous Hamilton House HQ in Euston, London.
About 80 teachers heard PSC Honorary President Betty Hunter call for a boycott of security firm G4S because of its work with Israel. G4S is tasked with securing the Olympics. Imagine the chaos in the UK this summer if the PSC had its way.
Chairing the event was Geoffrey Bindman of Bindman’s solicitors and the event was opened by Kevin Courtney, the Deputy General Secretary of the NUT, who welcomed us.
The title of the event was Bound, Blindfolded & Convicted: Palestinian Child Prisoners and the main speaker was Gerard Horton of Defence for Children International – Palestine Section who presented us with his organisation’s just released report Bound, Blindfolded & Convicted: Children held in military detention.
Horton had recently presented a similar talk at this year’s NUT annual conference.
Here is the 144 page report which took four years to compile. The report was based on interviews with 311 Palestinian children mainly aged from 14 to 17 (116 were 14-15 and 176 were 16-17).
97% of the testimonies were by males. Most arrests were for alleged stone throwing.
The report also contains 25 individual case studies of alleged bad treatment and/or torture by Israel.
The range of common complaints of the 311 included hand ties (95%), blindfolds (90%), physical violence (75%), detention inside Israel in violation of article 76 (63%), arrested between midnight and 5am (60%), confession during interrogation (58%), threats (57%), verbal abuse and/or humiliation (54%), strip searched (33%), transferred on floor of vehicle (32%), signed/shown documents written in Hebrew (29%), solitary confinement (12%).
So either Israel has a lot to answer for in its treatment of Palestinian children or someone somewhere is making a lot of money at the taxpayers’ expense producing what amounts to nothing more than anti-Israel propaganda.
Here’s some information about Defence for Children International – Palestine Section courtesy of NGO Monitor:
Its revenues in 2008 were $1,084,357. Known support includes a 600,000 Euro grant from the EU for the period 2009-2012 for a project called “Promoting and protecting the rights of Palestinian children affected by armed conflict and occupation.” It is receiving $639,000 from Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden and Holland and £12,500 from the UK. It is an active supporter and promoter of boycott campaigns against Israel. It supported the Goldstone Report. It published a list of 352 children who died during Operation Cast Lead but some of them have been identified by B’Tselem as combatants. It continues to promote the libel of a “Jenin massacre” on its website. It calls for Israel to recognise the “right of return” for Palestinians.
The main problem with the report is that, unless I am missing something, you cannot properly identify any of the 311 who gave testimony. There is also an interview with an Israeli soldier from Breaking The Silence where the interviewee is merely known as “Soldier”.
Last night Gerard Horton quoted from Breaking The Silence’s own website, a website that, again, contains anonymous testimony from Israeli soldiers.
But surely, with the alleged offences being so serious some people, at least, need to be named. As a solicitor Geoffrey Bindman, himself, would acknowledge that the report lacks credibility and wouldn’t stand up in a proper court of law.
Gerard Horton seemed to be very pleased with himself that testimonies from 311 people had been taken. But even if the report was based on the testimonies of 3,110 people the result is the same if they are anonymous.
After his short talk Gerard Horton showed us this Defence for Children International propaganda clip starring both himself and anti-Zionist activist Jeff Halper who wishes to boycott Israel out of existence. We are shown Palestinian children with bruised eyes and swollen wrists allegedly inflicted by Israeli soldiers, but who really knows the truth behind the bruises and swellings.
On her way out one of the teachers told me that Israel is acting like the Nazis did. It’s a frightening prospect if any of your children are being taught by her.
In the meantime NGOs like DCI- PS need to be producing properly substantiated reports. Only then can the quote by Mark Regev, that Gerard Horton is so keen on, that “The test of a democracy is how you treat people incarcerated, people in jail, and especially so with minors” be tested with reference to Israel.
Otherwise what is the point of this NGO being heavily financed by us, the taxpayer? And what is a union like the NUT doing hosting what amounted to an evening of anti-Israel propaganda? Hasn’t the NUT got enough problems to sort out for its own members?
RichardMillett's Blog 
http://www.thejc.com/blogs/jonathan-hoffman/good-riddance#comment-34901
NGO Monitor….. why don’t you just quote The Dandy or The Beano and be done with it ?
When you try to view the clip “Voices from East Jerusalem” at its source, on YouTube, you discover that commenting has been disabled. Evidently, the only “voices” they want to hear are their own.
I would like it comment on Jonathan’s JC blog, but frustratingly one can only do so in working hours – duh! – during working hours we are…. you got it…working! Anyway, what I would have said there is that Jonathan, like Richard, stand up to be counted where it matters, not only occassionally, but week in and week out, diligently being witness for the history books.
Jonathan Hoffman is without doubt one of the most passionate devoted members of the Jewish community who puts his reputation on the line to stand up not only for Israel, but against the genocide of the Jewish nation. Those who oppose what he stands for, who support the PSC, BDS or ISM also support Hamas and suport for Hamas includes nodding through at the least, it’s active and current charter calling for genocide of all Jews worldwide. (see campaign4truth.org.uk)
And that’s what it is all about, another genocide planned for the Jewish people by an ideology that’s engineering it’s replacement theory with the expertise of the Nazi propaganda machine. For a teacher to brazenly place the Nazi beastial criminality on Jews – after all that is what is meant when they refer to Israel as they are hardly talking about Arab Israelis – on this Holocaust Memorial day, borders on Holocaust denyal, as she is displaying in that comment a total lack of education and understanding of what took place in Europe last century. And as she is failing to understand that, she also fails to recognise that the same is happening right here, right now under her nose in the UK and she is part of its process no less than those in Germany who not only stood by as Jews were marginalised from society, but who actively ushered the Nazis into power by buying its propaganda and disseminating its final solution. No doubt her counterpart teacher then demonised Jews in much the same way as she “sig heiled” the revered dictator.
In many ways, these lawyers who chair such “debates” are the facilitators of the perpetrators of this crime against humanity, a crime that is ushering in that new genocide that we vowed would never happen again and is yet happening again. They provide them with defence when they are arrested for criminal activities and even coax them to join in the offence as happened at the kangaroo court they named the Russell Tribunal in London.
We all owe a big thank you to people like Richard and Jonathan who are our recorders, who will stand as witness to the vileness that is invading our democracy, trying to steal it away from us by indoctrinating its messengers. It is indeed a sad day that the NUT has chosen to support genocide rather than the ethical, honest and diligent education of our children.
I remember Jenny Tongue relating a story about Israeli troops leaping from a jeep in the West Bank and firing into the crowd wow! Trouble was there were no photos, not reliable witnesses, and the story sank into oblivion. BUT, the damage (deliberately) had been done. I guess this story is the same, no REAL proof, but Israel haters (like this pathetic solicitor) happy tp believe anything.
Can anybody tell if the soldiers in the picture are Israelis?
Good question, and I would not be surprised if the ‘incident’ was staged. We have numerous examples where ‘casualties’ wre involved. A prime example was the Lebanon war where I-for one- saw photos of the same little girl being carried away from an Israel strike. Our problem is the public at large has been so brian washed by an excellent PR campaign, they’ll believe anything against Israel.
My best guess is that the picture of the soldiers is genuine. The kid with the red thing on his head was using it to cover his face for obvious reasons.
They sometimes cover their faces when throwing boulders at civilian vehicles, etc – though I have no idea what exactly they were up to.
The soldiers look calm and professional. I was detained by police several times by London Bobbies at those boys’ age, and they were far more angry than the soldiers in the picture.
It goes without saying that every country in the world must protect innocent civilians against hooligans whatever their age.
‘throwing boulders’ let’s not understate the facts daniel
As I wrote in an early posting my sister was driving home from work a couple of weeks ago when some “Palestinian children” stoned her car with building blocks and shattered its windscreen. Sara had the good sense to keep on driving with bits of glass flying in her face. Had she have stopped the “Palestinian children” would have lynched her and probably wouldn’t have lived to have seen her sixth child get engaged (please G-d) this Thursday.
This is not a game “mostly harmless”. It is a matter of life and death, our lives and our deaths and for that reason I find your opinion about the “facts” of this matter to be irrelevant.
Thanks for being one of the few willing to confront these (predominately) white middle class antisemites:
We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.
George Orwell
No ” Sharon ” they are Partans
Imean Spartans
wot the fuck
Go tell the Spartans that we lie here, obedient to thier will
If the speaker was genuinely interested in challenging his audience he might have had a word to say about the exposing of Palestinian children to hate narratives from well below the age of 12 (by Hamas and PA sponsored media), their deliberate procurement for violence and use as human shields by Hamas terrorists. He might have begun: “if tonight is like other nights, Palestinian children are being ruthlessly and shamelessly exploited by Hamas and others for violent means, and I don’t give a damn about it because I’m paid to demonise Israel, not stand up for Palestinian children”.
ps I don’t think 80 teachers were at this event. By my reckoning 80 PSC activists, some of whom might possibly have been teachers before they retired – it wasn’t a young crowd.
‘We are shown Palestinian children with bruised eyes and swollen wrists allegedly inflicted by Israeli soldiers, but who really knows the truth behind the bruises and swellings’ however they got them, they deserved it hey Richard?