‘Defense For Children International – Palestine’ Closely Tied to Terrorist Group PFLP

A report on the activities of DCI-P (Defense For Children International – Palestine) is here. As for DCI-P’s condemnation of Israel for its policy of “routinely unlawfully kill[ing] Palestinian children with impunity, using excessive force and unjustified intentional lethal force,” it consists of several blatant lies. Israeli police and soldiers do not “routinely kill Palestinian children.” They use deadly force only in situations where the perpetrator has already killed or tried to kill Israelis, is prepared to do so again, and can only be stopped, given the split-second decisions that must be made, by using deadly force. There is nothing “routine” about it. And no force is too “excessive” in a situation where a would-be murderer, who refuses to halt, is about to attack again. The use of lethal force is justified when it is the only way to stop a would-be killer. That was the situation here, with Zuhdi Al-Tawil.

DCI-P also demonstrates an apparent lack of interest in the recruitment and exploitation of children by terrorist organizations. In fact, in several instances in which Palestinian youths injured or killed Israelis and were not gravely injured themselves, DCI-P remained silent and failed to even report on the incidents. Its silence in the face of these grave human rights violations highlights the organization’s true political agenda.

DCI-P reports only on incidents where Palestinians are injured or killed, but not on those where only Israelis are wounded or killed. Apparently the injuries or deaths of Jews is deemed of no interest. Not only does the DCI-P not issue a statement when it is only Israelis who have been wounded or killed, but in some cases it has chosen not even to report those attacks. Why? Is it only Palestinian victims of violence who have a claim on our attention? And why doesn’t the DCI-P ever report on how young Palestinians, including teenagers and children, are recruited by terror groups to engage in attacks that can lead to their being wounded or killed? Doesn’t the manipulation and exploitation of children in this way deserve to be exposed? Not according to the DCI-P.

Were they genuinely motivated by a concern for Palestinian children, DCI-P would advocate and campaign against the endemic incitement against Jews and Israelis to which these children are exposed.

The DCI-P could be campaigning to save the lives of Palestinian children by keeping them from being inveigled into committing terrorist attacks, but it remains silent. It has only to look at the Palestinian television shows where children sing songs about killing Jews while they make stabbing motions with their tiny knives, to see the incitement that will lead some in the audience to go and –in real life, not for the cameras – do likewise. The DCI-P does nothing to prevent Palestinian children from emulating those they see on television, that is, to become murderers of Jews, and in so doing, endanger their own lives.

Instead, DCI-P has used the funding it receives primarily from European governments to cynically lobby for Israel’s inclusion on the UN’s “Children and Armed Conflict” (CAAC) annex of parties engaging in “grave violations” of children’s rights. To date, the annex almost entirely consists of failed states, state-sponsored militias, and terrorist organizations such as ISIS, Boko Haram, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. Inclusion on the list paves the way for sanctions and other measures. DCI-P has also lobbied the US Congress to cut support for Israel, based on this agenda.

The “grave violations” of children’s rights are committed not by Israel, but by the Palestinian Authority and by the Palestinian terror groups. It is the P.A. that disseminates television programs promoting murderous attacks on Jews by Palestinian children; this “violates” the rights of children to grow up free of violence; they are instead inveigled into participating in acts of extreme violence and in so doing, to risk their own lives. Is that not the worst kind of child abuse?

UN and government officials, diplomats, and journalists – who regularly uncritically repeat DCI-P’s claims and narrative – have a moral responsibility to acknowledge the evidence showing the true face of this NGO: a PFLP-linked propaganda group, whitewashing and ignoring Palestinian terror. DCI-P’s “reports” should be understood accordingly, as cynical attempts to distract from the grave violation of children’s rights as posed by incitement and recruitment. International donors should act accordingly by freezing grants and contracts with DCI-P, and ceasing to bankroll this manipulative NGO.

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All those people among the Great and Good who berate Israel – government and UN officials, diplomats, journalists – should stop repeating, without any investigation of their own, the accusations made against Israel by the NGO DCI-P. They should look at the meretricious claims about Palestinian children being arrested only for throwing “rocks at tanks” and instead of uncritically repeating them, admit that 1) rocks can be lethal 2) these “children” – teenagers, really — not only throw rocks at Israeli soldiers but also hurl Molotov cocktails, bottles with acid, and even the occasional grenade 3) Israel has not had any tanks operationally deployed in the West Bank for the past 20 years, so these “children” could not possibly have thrown rocks at tanks.

The DCI-P has described only as “alleged” — not necessarily proven — attacks by Palestinian teenagers on Israelis, even though they were clearly caught on video. For example, 17-year-old Zuhdi Al-Tawil was captured on tape in the act of stabbing an Israeli, yet the DCI-P described his attack as an “alleged” stabbing. It also insisted that Israel was “unlawfully killing children,” which is flatly untrue. In the case of teenagers who are caught in the act of trying to kill, usually by stabbing, one or more Israelis, and the circumstances are such that the only way to stop them is to shoot, then the Israeli police do what any police force in the Western world would do: they use deadly force….lawfully.

Those who have been bamboozled by the DCI-P, and were previously unaware of its close connection to the terrorist PFLP, can no longer ignore the evidence of that connection, now that it has been laid bare by the Israeli government. Since the DCI-P is so compromised, another NGO ought to be created, without any connection to any terrorist group, to study the way the Palestinians exploit, manipulate, and endanger their own children. The Palestinian Authority uses television programs aimed at small children to display would-be child terrorists, mimicking the stabbing of “Jews,” while they fiercely lisp their determination to someday, when they have grown up, to become killers of Jews for real. The three most prominent Palestinian terror groups – Hamas, PIJ, and the PFLP — continue the “education” in terror of the Palestinian young, which results ultimately in some of those brainwashed youngsters choosing to attack and murder Jews, with grim results, both for their Jewish victims and for themselves.