بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
News and Comment
UN Excludes ‘Israel’ from List of Violator of Children’s Rights, Proving Yet Again its Function as a Compliant Tool of Western Colonial Governments
News:
On Monday 8th June, the UN published its annual report on children and armed conflict but excluded Israel from its blacklist of states or armed groups that violate children’s rights. This is despite calls from various rights organisations to include the Jewish state on the list due to its murder of around 540 children and injuring of over 3000 in its onslaught against the Muslims of Gaza last year which also caused at least 373,000 children to require specialist psychosocial support due to the extreme distress they suffered as a result of the indiscriminate bombing of homes, hospitals and residential areas by Zionist forces. Furthermore, the report comes just 2 months after a UN inquiry found that Israel’s military was responsible for 7 attacks on UN schools in Gaza that were being used to shelter innocent women and children in the 2014 conflict.
Comment:
It seems that for the UN, images of babies covered in shrapnel, toddlers with extensive burns, children with their bodies torn apart and its own schools and shelters being bombed to pieces under its own nose is not enough to classify this Jewish entity as a state that violates the rights of children. This is despite the fact that its own UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs stated that on the 23rd and 24th of July during last year’s conflict, 1 child was being killed each hour in Gaza. And according to the UN’s own report, the number of Palestinian school children killed in conflict in 2014 was the 3rd highest in the world. Indeed, the UN has chosen to disregard the blatant fact that this conscienceless regime systematically targets children in its wars against the Palestinian. Scenes of children slaughtered in cold blood on Gaza’s beach, playgrounds, rooftops and schools still haunt the mind. Dr. Medhat Abbas, Medical Director of Al-Aqsa Hospital stated in an interview to Channel 4 News during the 2014 conflict, “If you want to stay alive, stay far away from any child because these are the declared target of the Israeli army.”
Furthermore, the Jewish entity has a notorious track record of using Palestinian children as human shields as well as arresting, abusing, and jailing thousands of them, sometimes for simply throwing a stone at ‘Israeli’ forces which can land them several years in prison. This April, ‘Israeli’ courts were criticised for their convictions and harsh judicial measures enacted against hundreds of Palestinian minors accused of stone-throwing. According to the Defence for Children International-Palestine Section (DCI-Pal), more than 700 Palestinian children are sentenced in ‘Israeli’ military courts every year. Earlier this year, Malak al-Khatib, a 14 year old girl from the West Bank was imprisoned for 45 days for throwing stones. A recent report by Military Court Watch, an organisation that monitors ‘Israeli’ detention of children, stated that 182 Palestinian children were detained in the jails of the Jewish entity as of the end of February 2015. Furthermore, the abuse of Palestinian children in the‘Israeli’ military detention system is widespread and systematic. According to DCI-Palestine, nearly 3 out of 4 children arrested by Zionist forces experience some form of physical violence during arrest, transfer or interrogation.
After all this, what more proof is needed that the UN is a Western-orientated politicised body which along with its International Laws is nothing but a tool to serve the global political interests of Western colonial governments and their allies?! It will therefore never serve the interests or safeguard the rights of Muslims. Its resolutions and conventions, such as its 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, have proven to be utterly redundant in campaigns of genocide against Muslim populations across the world. ‘Israel’ ratified this children’s convention in 1991 which binds it legally to its articles. Yet, even despite this, the UN has shown that it is both unable and unwilling to take any action against the Zionist state for its repeated violation of the rights of Palestinian children, providing it instead a green light to terrorise, maim and slaughter innocent civilians with total impunity. Surely it should also be more evident than ever, that as Muslims we should have NO hope nor trust in the UN or any other International body that they will ever protect our lives or deliver us justice and accountability against those who shed our blood, steal our lands, and violate our honour. Any dependency upon the UN or international law to solve our problems as an Ummah is grossly misplaced for it will never be a neutral player in global politics and has been intentionally structured to help maintain the global dominance of Western powers and their agendas. Indeed, Allah (swt) says,
﴿مَثَلُ الَّذِينَ اتَّخَذُوا مِن دُونِ اللَّهِ أَوْلِيَاء كَمَثَلِ الْعَنكَبُوتِ اتَّخَذَتْ بَيْتًا وَإِنَّ أَوْهَنَ الْبُيُوتِ لَبَيْتُ الْعَنكَبُوتِ لَوْ كَانُوا يَعْلَمُونَ﴾
“The likeness of those who take as Auliya (protectors or helpers) other than Allah is the likeness of a spider who builds (for itself) a house; but verily, the frailest of houses is the spider’s house – if they but knew.” [TMQ Al-Ankabut: 41]
Therefore as Muslims, we must take the solving of our problems into our own hands and not outsource it to others which will only result in disappointment after disappointment and the continuation of the spilling of our blood without end. And taking our problems into our own hands, means establishing with urgency the Khilafah "Caliphate" that is the fundamental and ultimate solution for all our problems as an Ummah, for it is in the full implementation of the Laws of Allah (swt) that our salvation from oppression and path to justice lies.
Written for The Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Dr. Nazreen Nawaz
Director of the Women’s Section in the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir