UNICEF ignores PA recruitment of kids to violence

• Date: 29 December 2020
• Author: YONAH JEREMY BOB
• Published date: 29 December 2020
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The report issued this past weekend covering the year 2019, did not address evidence from a February report by an NGO claiming that the PA uses school textbooks, television broadcasts, active recruitment and payment to terrorists after-the-crime serves to systematically incite and weaponize its child population into soldiers.

While other Israeli groups have also worked on this issue, Palestinian Media Watch's (PMW) February 2019 and February 2020 reports are unique in tracing the PA's recruitment step-by-step to explain why a substantial volume of Palestinian minors end up arrested by Israel.

PMW brought the issue to The Jerusalem Post's attention again on Tuesday.

Contrary to conventional global media wisdom that Israeli occupation is causing innocent Palestinian minors to become violent, the PMW report, which covers 2019, says that PA incitement is the primary cause.

"Damningly, PMW's report shows how the PA leadership openly admits that the child terrorists are the PA's soldiers," said the report.

Moreover, the report's author, Maurice Hirsch, who also was a former IDF chief prosecutor for the West Bank, submitted a letter to UNICEF demanding that it name the PA's violations and invest at least as much time in documenting these violations as it does regarding alleged Israeli violations of Palestinian minors' rights.

Despite receiving PMW's evidence in February, the UNICEF report issued this past weekend makes no reference to PA mistreatment of their own child population.

Rather, the overwhelming majority of the report alleges Israeli violations of Palestinian children's rights, with one short section about problematic indoctrination of Palestinian children by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

Hirsch said on Tuesday that PMW's reports, "left no room for speculation. It is clear that the PA operates a systematic and institutionalized policy and program to recruit child soldiers/terrorists. In implementing its program, the PA does not stop with indoctrinating, brainwashing and weaponizing the children."

"Rather, perversely, the PA pays the child terrorists' financial rewards for their acts of terror and even openly admits that it sends the children to carry out those acts… Instead of advocating on behalf of the Palestinian children, UNICEF has chosen to fundamentally betray its mandate and betray the children, while at the same time adopting any anti-Israel lies it is fed by its working-group," said Hirsch.

UNICEF did not respond on Tuesday...