The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network congratulates the ABC’s Four Corners and The Australian Newspaper on their co-production of the “Stone Cold Justice” documentary that was screened last night.
“It was a thorough exposé of the abuse inflicted upon Palestinian children by Israeli security forces in the occupied territories,” said APAN President Bishop George Browning. “It showed that such abuse is not just a case of individual soldiers acting without orders, but is part of a systematic regime of intimidation, torture and detention of children.”
Bishop Browning also expressed his wish that such violence receive more media coverage.
“Too often the media only covers the retaliatory violence of Palestinian militants, while ignoring the much greater structural violence associated with Israel’s occupation. Such coverage is vital to understanding the context of colonisation and apartheid that is driving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” he said.
Browning dismissed the claim by Israeli spokesman Yigal Palmor that Israel was doing its utmost to ensure that such abuses are not repeated.
“The root cause of the violence is Israel’s illegal occupation and colonisation of the Palestinian Territories. There is no humane way of abducting children from their homes and forcing them to become informers. Until Israel commits to ending the occupation and letting the Palestinians live as a free people in their own country, any talk of humanising the occupation is no more than a cynical public relations exercise,” he said.