The Israeli military last week published video of Palestinian children as young as elementary school-age being used to hurl rocks at Israeli soldiers. The dramatic footage sparked a debate that deepened this weekend with the publication of legal analysis identifying the tactic as a war crime:
As stone-throwing Palestinian children have been in the news lately it is relevant to observe that enlistment of children to carry out these violent acts is in effect no different than enlisting child soldiers, which is a war crime in terms of Article 8(2)(b)(xxvi) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The time has come to recognize that encouraging children to hurl stones and firebombs, as well as using them as human shields, as practiced by Hamas, cannot be described as anything but enlisting them to participate actively in hostilities and therefore a war crime…
Rock-throwers caused the crash which killed Asher Hillel Palmer and his one-year-old son. Last December a rock struck a 12-year-old girl, breaking her skull and on March 14, 2013, a three-year-old girl was in critical condition and her mother and two sisters seriously wounded after a car accident caused by rocks thrown by Palestinians. The three-year-old was not breathing when medics arrived at the scene. Before the accident, a number of drivers reported rock attacks. A bus was hit with rocks and a man and a 10-year-old boy also were injured by rocks in the same area.
This week a court upheld the conviction of a former officer in the Palestinian Authority security forces of the 2011 murder of 24-year-old Asher Palmer and his infant son Yonatan in a stone-throwing attack near Hebron.
The escalation in rock-throwing and the new analysis come at a time when media outlets are being criticized for minimizing the tactic employed by Palestinians. A New York Times Magazine cover piece published ahead of President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel last month repeatedly referred to Palestinian stone-throwing as “non-violent resistance.” The author, Ben Ehrenreich, had once penned a Los Angeles Times op-ed entitled “Zionism is the problem.” He was roundly criticized for his new story by among others Jane Eisner, editor of New York’s progressive Jewish weekly The Forward:
Just a couple of problems. Ehrenreich is hardly a disinterested observer of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And Nabi Saleh’s protests are hardly non-violent… That may be true. But that logic doesn’t excuse the original fault here. Throwing stones — not little pebbles, but at times stones that can damage or even kill — is a violent act. Gandhi didn’t do it. The courageous African Americans who stood at the bridge in Selma didn’t do it. It takes great determination, character and patience to engage in such protest, and I can understand how, after decades of occupation, it may be difficult for the villagers of Nabi Saleh to restrain themselves. But that’s unarmed resistance. Anything else is a misnomer.
The fact that Ehrenreich only glancingly raised this point and just as quickly dismissed it can only be explained by the bias with which he approached the story. Too bad his editors didn’t ask more probing questions.