TEL AVIV – The United Church of Christ (UCC) overwhelmingly approved a resolution this week claiming Israel mistreats Palestinian children and called on the U.S. to suspend military assistance to the Jewish state.
The protestant church, which is one of the largest in the U.S., with close to a million members, notably previously including former President Barack Obama for many years, passed the resolution titled “A Call for the United Church of Christ to Advocate for the Rights of Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation” on Sunday night at the general synod in Baltimore, with 79 percent voting in favor, 13 percent against and nine percent abstaining.
The resolution calls for “attention to the plight of children suffering under Israel’s prolonged military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.” It continues with the claim that Palestinian children are “living with constant fear of arrest, detention and violence at the hands of Israeli forces” and calls on Israel to “exercise an absolute prohibition against torture and ill-treatment of detained children.”
The UCC’s resolution fails to mention any culpability on the part of the Palestinian Authority for the mistreatment of children, nor does it make any mention of whether these “detained children” were caught while carrying out terror attacks. As of last August, 47 of the terror attacks carried out against Israelis in the latest wave of violence sometimes dubbed by Palestinian media the “al-Aksa” or “knife” Intifada, were carried out by children and youth in their early to mid-teens.
The Israeli Mission to the UN’s legal adviser Amit Heumann told the UN Security Council at the time that attacks carried out by youth were “the direct result of the venomous hatred preached to children in Palestinian society.”
“Palestinian children are fed a steady diet of hatred for Israel and glorification of violence in the lessons they learn in school, in the sermons they hear in the mosque and in the streets that are named after terrorists,” he added.
Apart from inciting violence against Israelis, the PA has shown on multiple occasions that Palestinian children can be used as pawns in other ways, for example in political infighting between the PA and its rival, the terrorist group Hamas, which rules Gaza.
Last month, Hamas’ Health Ministry claimed that three infants had died as a result of not receiving permits from the PA to receive urgent medical treatment in Israel. Gazans who wish to leave the Strip in order to undergo medical treatment elsewhere must first receive permission from the PA.
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI) accused the PA of cutting medical aid to Gaza by around 90 percent. Whereas in 2016, the PA approved 2,041 requests for Gazans to travel to Israel or the West Bank to receive treatment, in the last two months the number dropped to only 120.
Hamas took the PA to task for allowing children to die.
“The behavior of [PA President] Mahmoud Abbas in stopping the medical transfers for Gaza’s sick, which has led to the martyrdom of a number of children, constitutes crimes against humanity,” said senior Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zurhi in a statement over Twitter.
Hamas itself, however, is not averse to martyring its own. As Heumann pointed out the UNSC last year, “Hamas uses young boys to dig their terror tunnels, and uses children of all ages – along with their mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, to serve as human shields.”
For over half a decade, Hamas has been employing this tactic. The group itself admitted that in 2012 “at least 160 children have been killed in the tunnels” during construction, the Institute for Palestine Studies found in a report.
Hamas also admitted during 2014’s 50-day conflict with Israel that it fired rockets at Israel from within its own civilian population. At the time the UN further revealed that rockets had been found in UNWRA schools on multiple occasions. A report from the international body a year later confirmed that the terror group both stored and fired weapons from UN schools. As recently as last month, the UN reported that it had found terror tunnels under two of its schools in Gaza.
Yet the UCC’s newest resolution makes no mention whatsoever of any infractions against children on the part of the Palestinian leadership. Instead, the vote is the latest in a series of anti-Israel motions the protestant denomination has approved. Two years ago, the church voted to divest from companies that profit from Israel’s control of the West Bank.
Rabbi Noam Marans, the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) director of interreligious and intergroup relations, responded by saying the measure was “deeply disappointing” and continued “a trajectory dictated by the BDS movement, accusing Israel exclusively of human rights violations and preventing the end of the conflict.”
“The real solution to problems of necessary detention of children who commit acts of violence is a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians that leads to two states for two peoples,” said Marans. “The latest UCC resolution does nothing to advance the possibility of peace. Rather, by continuing to demonize Israel, UCC supports those who oppose peace.”
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