Finian Cunningham
Locking children up and threatening their families with punishment if they show the slightest emotion is the dirtiest terror tactic.
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Despite Western media's systematic attempts to normalize Israeli state terrorism, it is inescapably evident even from their distorted lens just how wicked the Netanyahu regime is.
All Palestinians released so far in hostage exchanges by the Israeli regime are women and children. Women and children! Why were they even in detention in the first place? What sort of despotic regime does that?
One that is supported to the hilt, militarily and diplomatically, by the United States and other Western governments. So much for "Western Values".
And for all their valiant attempts to cover up for outrageous war crimes, the Western media can only be seen to be contemptible laundromats washing the blood away. They are as complicit in this sickening genocide as the U.S. and European governments are. The BBC and CNN, etc, are the most trusted news sources, according to their advertising. Yes, the most trusted to make you throw up.
Viewers are told that Israeli "hostages" are being exchanged for Palestinian "prisoners". The insulting implication is that the Israelis held by the Hamas militants are more innocent than the Palestinians held by the Israeli state.
More than 7,200 Palestinians are currently in Israeli prisons. Over the past six weeks since the deadly attacks by Hamas on October 7 when more than 1,100 Israelis were killed (a third of them soldiers and many of the civilian victims killed by the Israel Defense Forces using excessive lethal firepower), there have been more than 3,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and East Jerusalem thrown into detention centers.
Palestinians are being locked up at a greater rate than ever before. For every Palestinian released over the past week, more than ten have been put into detention. This makes a mockery of the so-called hostage swaps that the Western media are reporting.
Meanwhile, a surge in violence from Israeli state forces and settler vigilante groups has killed over 240 Palestinians in the West Bank, including nearly 60 children. The latest victims were two boys, aged 9 and 15, who were shot dead in the city of Jenin by IDF stormtroopers.
The massive bombing of Gaza has killed at least 15,000 people and nearly half of the death toll is due to children. Another 7,000 are missing and nearly half of them are believed to be children.
In the episodic slaughters over the 75 years of its existence that the Israeli regime inflicted on the Palestinians, the latest genocide is grotesquely differentiated by the huge proportion of children that are being murdered, or imprisoned and tortured.
The Western media provides cloyingly emotive portrayals of the Israelis released by Hamas. The conditions of their captivity in Gaza since October 7 are described as traumatic and hellish, even though the few accounts from hostages that are published confirm they were relatively well treated and not abused. The Israeli state appears to be curtailing any interviews by former hostages precisely because it fears what they may say as a few have already disclosed, namely, that Hamas militants treated them humanely and also that IDF tanks killed many of their own citizens with wantonly reckless firepower.
For Palestinians released, by contrast, the Western media give negligible coverage of their experience in Israeli detention. What are their names? Why were they detained? How were they treated while in custody? The information void dehumanizes the victims and whitewashes the perpetrators.
Fortunately, Al Jazeera and other Arab and Iranian media have commendably reported on the released Palestinians in a normal humane way.
One insightful 𝕏 report by Al Jazeera was from the cramped home of Ahmad Saleimi (14) in East Jerusalem. The youth was among the 210 or so Palestinians that have been released so far by the Israelis in exchange for captives held by Hamas. He was the youngest detainee.
All of the Palestinians released so far are women and children. Some of the minors have spent years in so-called administrative detention without charge or trial, some in solitary confinement. That is, under indefinite psychological torture.
On his release, as with other Palestinians, the family of Ahmad Saleimi was severely warned by the Israeli interior ministry to not display any celebrations on his reunion. Ahmad was threatened that he would be immediately taken into custody again if his family did not comply with the order. There were heartrending images of the mother and father kissing their son in a muted and suppressed manner. No doubt afraid that any sign of joy would incur the wrath of the regime. What should have been a cherished occasion was marred by fear and tension of reprisal by the Israelis.
Such vindictive cruelty! Hundreds of children like Ahmad are snatched from their homes by IDF raids and thrown into dungeons. They are beaten, tortured and even killed while in detention. They are accused of throwing stones or some other act of insurrection, without evidence or due process.
The Israeli regime has now over 7,000 Palestinian hostages, many of them women and children. When will they all be freed? The cumulative figure over the years runs to tens of thousands. Some children have been detained multiple times, and some have grown into adults while incarcerated.
Upon their release, they are threatened to not show any emotion upon being greeted by their mothers and fathers or younger siblings. Can you imagine the anguish, the joy, the heartache, and the anxiety of being thrown back into the dungeon at a whim by the Israeli regime?
This speaks of the perverse barbarity of the Zionist occupation regime that Washington and its European allies fulsomely support with military weapons and diplomatic and media cover.
After more than six weeks of murderous bombardment and IDF raids on hospitals leaving premature babies to die in cold defunct incubators, yet for all its vicious criminal terrorism, the Israeli regime has not defeated the armed fighters of Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups.
Indeed, the fact that Hamas has been able to release nearly 100 Israeli civilians unharmed after weeks of devastating aerial bombardment shows that the U.S.-backed Israeli regime has failed in its stated objective of destroying Hamas. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers should be sacked for the abject failure, and for the unnecessary deaths, destruction and monstrous war crimes hauled off to an international war crimes court - along with Joe Biden and other Western politicians.
It seems that the Netanyahu regime is so desperate to defeat the Palestinian population who have shown the most incredible resilience that this despicable regime is resorting to targeting children in every abominable way imaginable. Bombing, shooting, imprisoning and torturing them. Holding the threat of re-imprisonment is an ultimate terror weapon to intimidate and suppress Palestinian families. What parent would not be terrified for the sake of their children and be tempted to appease the tormentors for a little mercy?
Locking children up and threatening their families with punishment if they show the slightest emotion is the dirtiest terror tactic for a psychotic Israeli regime in its historic fiendish failure.